Friday Night Football

You know what's not great? 

An accident on the Merritt Parkway and an accident on I-95 in Connecticut. On a Friday. 

The result of that hopefully rare occurrence is that it took TigerBlog more than seven hours to go from Princeton to the Newton Marriott outside Boston Friday. There was about a three-hour stretch in there where he never went more than 30 miles per hour. 

At one point, he pulled off into a rest stop and walked into the building with a couple who had pulled in at the same time. They were on their way to Providence, where their son is a student.

"Are you enjoying your time on I-95 today as much as I am?" TB asked them. 

Turning negatives to positives, TigerBlog did have plenty of time to enjoy the amazing fall foliage along the route. It was definitely beautiful. And hey, people make weekends out of that this time of year in New England. 

Of course, in one way the timing of TB's arrival was perfect. TB settled into Room 424 right at 7 and broke out his roast beef and pastrami sandwich — purchased at Rein's Deli off exit 65 of I-84 in Vernon, Conn.

If you'll permit a short digression, TigerBlog has stopped at Rein's somewhere around a million times. He was first referred there by former Harvard sports information director John Veneziano back in 1996 or so. Ah, the great Johnny V, one of the best people who's ever worked in Ivy League athletics. 

Anyway, sandwich at the ready, TB sat down on the couch in his room, put his feet up on and put on ESPNU about 30 seconds before the kickoff of the Princeton-Brown football game on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

It was clearly a big moment in the Ivy League season. Princeton had lost its league opener two weeks earlier to Columbia and then fell 34-7 last week at No. 7 Mercer.

Brown, on the other hand, had beaten Harvard 31-28, scoring the last three TDs in the game to rally for the win in the Ivy opener for both of them. 

When was the last time Princeton started a season 0-2 in the league? That would be 2010.

When was the last time Brown started a season 2-0 in the league? That would be 2010 as well. 

That was pretty much the backdrop for the game.

TigerBlog suggested Friday that turnovers would be a big part of the story, and that's how it would play out. Princeton came into the game minus-8 on the year in turnovers. Against Brown, that number was plus-3.

That plus-3, by the way, suggested a Princeton win. And that's how it went: Princeton 29, Brown 17.

Princeton turned Brown over five times in the game, with three interceptions and two fumble recoveries. Making it an ever bigger impact on the game's outcome was that every one of those five turnovers came in Princeton territory. 

The turnovers were the biggest stat of the game in terms of how it affected the score. The craziest stat was the number of plays that were run. 

In all, there were 154 plays from scrimmage between the two teams. For Princeton's first four games, the Tigers and their opponents combined for 128 plays per game. 

Brown ran 93 of those plays (the Princeton record for plays in a game is 104, against Dartmouth in 2013). The first four opponents averaged 52.3 plays per game. 

That was a lot of ask for the defense. To see that many plays and allow only 17 points is extraordinary. Hey, the five turnovers were huge. 

Princeton averaged 6.2 yards per play. Brown averaged 4.8. For the year prior, Princeton was at 3.995 yards per play. 

That's progress. And it came at a good time. 

The win over Brown started the stretch of six Ivy games in six weeks. The past weekend saw the last of the non-league games for any of the league's teams, meaning it's now four Ivy games per week for the next five weekends.

Next up for the Tigers is a game at Harvard this coming Saturday, with kickoff in Cambridge at 3. 

Your current league standings are: 

Dartmouth/Columbia 2-0
Princeton/Brown/Harvard/Cornell 1-1
Penn/Yale 0-2