Column: The case for (cautious) optimism

Well, this wasn’t a great season, was it?

The Princeton Football Tigers? Not brilliant this year. A 1-9 overall (1-6 Ivy League) finish was not what they were hoping for, and it may not necessarily be what they deserved. But it’s what they got, and it’s what we’re all stuck with, at least until September. But, amid the gloom, there is — without a shadow of doubt — reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future of the program.

First, let’s get the obvious negatives out of the way — it may be painful, but it has to be done. The last two years of Tiger football have been disappointing. A 2-18 start to the Bob Surace ’90 era is not what anyone had hoped for. The team’s Class of 2012 — a highly talented and exciting group of players — finished tied for the lowest winning percentage in the history of the program. Some games this year (see: 56-39 at Harvard) were electrifyingly exciting, but most of those ended up in the “L” column.

The unfortunate final results of the last few seasons can’t just be chalked up to bad play, however: unparalleled injury problems, a drastic coaching change, a scheme change? None of that is easy to deal with, and the .100 winning percentage over the last two years illustrates that particularly well. Accordingly, any case made for optimism about a team with a recent record like this should be very cautious.

But now that the necessary qualifiers are out of the way, it’s time to look forward. When I was talking over column ideas with everyone from fellow reporters to casual fans, I heard one predictable refrain: “Just write all about Chuck.”

So, okay. I’ll take a minute to talk about freshman running back Chuck (“The Future”? “The Nimble Nazarethan”? “The Pennsylvania Pillager”? I’ll work on this) Dibilio.

Dibilio — a 19-year-old who fell just short of the Ivy League rushing title in his first season — is far and away the most exciting Princeton player since the days of Jeff Terrell ’07, a quarterback who led the squad to one Ancient Eight title and briefly found himself in the NFL. Dibilio, who was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year yesterday, is the first-ever true freshman to break the 1,000-yard rushing mark. An overpowering but agile rusher, his runs were consistently astounding, and even when opposing defenses knew what was coming — Rush-23, as we heard so regularly up in the press box — they were often at a loss to stop him. Early in the season I rhetorically asked while live-blogging a game if Dibilio was showing shades of former star running back Jordan Culbreath ’11. That turned out to be something of a stupid question; with all due respect to everything that Culbreath did for Princeton, Dibilio may be poised to run right past him. I could — as many have and will — go on for a whole column about Dibilio, but I suspect you all get the picture by now.

So lesson one from Season One of The Chuck Dibilio Experiment: This kid can really play. Lesson two: Surace can recruit. As such, freshman quarterback Quinn Epperly and freshman receiver Matt Costello showed flashes of serious potential throughout the year; the former got the start against Dartmouth to close the season, and the latter led the team in yards per catch. Fans can only hope this dynamic trio is indicative of Surace’s recruiting acumen. There is, of course, reason to believe this is the case: As an alumnus, he knows the school, and as he comes straight from the NFL, he can make a pretty compelling pitch to recruits.

These three — and the rest of the underclassmen — know only Surace’s system, which will be crucial moving forward. The talents of the upperclassmen were not necessarily always matched to the newly implemented offensive scheme over the last two years, leading to, at times, unfortunate mismatches and what seemed like misguided play-calling. Surace can now build his own team around players like Dibilio and co., however he wants to do so.

But, boy, does he need a defense before they start climbing in the Ancient Eight standings.

At times this season, the Princeton defense looked vaguely sieve-like. By the time the Yale game rolled around, the secondary appeared to be taking a “let receivers catch the ball, then consider tackling them” approach. That didn’t end well, as Eli quarterback (and some news outlets want us to think, Superman) Patrick Witt completed 26 of 33 passes, easily cruising past the Tiger defensive backs. If Surace, a former center, can recruit defenders like he’s racked up offensive prospects, I am not worried about this defense in the next few years. But if the status quo is maintained, consider this case for optimism debunked. The star defensive players — senior end Mike Catapano and junior tackle Caraun Reid come to mind — are upperclassmen, leaving a potentially scary gap in an already questionable unit.

That said, nearly every school in the league will be dealing with something new in its offense next season: Only 3-4 Cornell, 1-6 Columbia and 4-3 Penn return their quarterbacks, and the league’s biggest stars — like Dartmouth running back Nick Schwieger, Harvard quarterback Collier Winters and Yale’s Witt — are graduating. As a result, Princeton has a unique opportunity to step up in the coming years. Its unquestioned star is a freshman, and, by 2013, every player on the team will have been recruited by Surace’s staff for its system.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

But the real success of the team still relies on big “ifs.” If Dibilio, Epperly and Costello continue to improve, if Surace continues to recruit masterfully, if the defense can kick its game up a few notches and if the other Ivy teams don’t find some sort of secret anti-Tiger weapon, Princeton could climb back to respectability. I’m far from predicting a bonfire, but a few more years of 1-9 is unlikely.

Gabriel Debenedetti is a senior politics major from Princeton, N.J. He is a former editor for sports and editor-in-chief of the ‘Prince.’