Highly Defensive

In deference to Bill Carmody, TigerBlog did not look up the last time the Princeton football team had consecutive shutouts and opened a season with consecutive shutouts.

What does Princeton's former men's basketball coach – in fact he was the head coach when current head coach Mitch Henderson was a junior and senior – have to do with the 2021 Princeton football team? 

Well, Carmody believed strongly in something he called "The Whammy," which essentially means "don't jinx anything." Looking up a stat like consecutive shutouts before it happened would fall squarely in "The Whammy" camp.

As it turned out, TB did look it up, right at the start of the fourth quarter of Saturday's 63-0 win over Stetson on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. And as it turned out further, the answers were this:

* consecutive shutouts? That would be 1965, when Princeton shut out Colgate and Penn back to back. If you go back a year earlier, Princeton actually had four straight on its way to a perfect 1964 season.

* consecutive shutouts to start a season? That goes back a bit further, all the way to 1933, when Art Lane captained the team to a 9-0 record and the national championship. 

Princeton shut out Amherst and Williams to start that 1933 season. TB doesn't like the current Tigers' chances of matching the 1933 team's mark after that, as those Tigers actually pitched shutouts in the first seven games of that season.

Princeton's defense through two weeks has been insanely good. Princeton's shutout this week followed last week's 32-0 blanking of Lehigh in the season opener. Between the two games, Princeton's opponents have rushed the ball a total of 48 times. How many yards rushing did they have between them? One.

That's one yard. That's 36 inches. That's actually 109 yards gained and 108 yards lost. Keep in mind, in college football sacks count as negative rushing yards, while in the NFL they count as negative team passing yards. 

Through two games, Princeton has sacked the opposing quarterback 12 times, for a loss of 80 yards. Even taking that away, Princeton's numbers against the run would be 36 opponent attempts for 81 yards, or 2.3 yards per attempt.

Maybe TB's favorite early-season stat for the Tigers is that no player on the team has more than eight tackles. How insane is that? 

There is so much balance and depth that nobody needs to be the dominant player. As a result, they all are, at least collectively as a unit. In all 35 different players have made at least one tackle. They all swarm, and do so quickly and aggressively. It's fun to watch them.

Offensively, it is more of the same. At one point early in the third quarter, Princeton had only two starters on the field – right guard David Hoffman and right tackle Connor Scaglione. The Tigers had five different quarterbacks play in the game. There were 12 different players who carried the ball at least once and seven different players with at least one reception, including a touchdown reception for each of the Big Three of Jacob Birmelin, Dylan Classi and Andrei Iosivas.

Princeton led 35-0 at the half on Saturday. In the second half, Princeton ran the ball on 31 of 35 plays, including 16 of 17 in the fourth quarter. Part of this was that there was no need to pass. Part of this was to play things closer to the vest. 

With no offense to Lehigh or Stetson, the stakes will be raised considerably this weekend, when 2-0 Columbia comes to Powers Field for the Ivy League opener. After that is a non-league Top 20 team in Monmouth (on the road) and then six more Ivy League games.

The first two games have been a great opportunity to come back from a year off and play a lot of players. It's been a great chance to see what a new quarterback can do (Cole Smith is 45 for 65 for 637 yards and six touchdowns with no interceptions). 

For the next game, it's back to 0-0, both on the scoreboard and the record. The same is true for Columbia, which also goes back to 0-0. Harvard and Yale already have impressive league wins. There have been strong non-league performances. In the Ivy League, no game will be easy. 

On the other hand, every game in the league will also be exciting. There's a long way to go until November, and the goal is to play meaningful games when you get there.

The road to that begins at home this coming Saturday.