The cool autumn breeze is blowing in full force in still-sunny Philadelphia as Penn football prepares to kick off its 148th season. After a year marked by a sixth-place finish in the Ivy Conference and a measly 3-4 conference record, the Red and Blue are looking to reignite the flame for a promising, revamped Quakers team.

The conference record of 3-4 tells a misleading story about this team. Over the course of Penn’s four losses, the winning team’s average margin of victory was just four points. The team’s biggest of those losses came in their last game against rival Princeton, a 31-24 loss on the Red and Blues’ home turf. While the record may tell you otherwise, the true result shows otherwise – Penn still has every chance to win it all.

In August of this year, the Ivy League released its annual media poll to predict the state of the Ivy Conference in November. Penn received two first-place votes but finished third overall in conference predictions. Yale finished first with six votes and Harvard finished second with seven votes, making the Quakers the only team that did not win a share of the conference title last season — the third was Dartmouth.

The Red and Blue will be led by this season’s newly minted captains: senior defensive lineman Paul Jennings, senior quarterback Aidan Sayin and senior defensive back Shiloh Means. Jennings and Sayin, both All-Ivy honorable mentions in 2023, and Means, an All-Ivy first-team selection, will look to lead their team to glory as they try to close the gap in these consistently close contests.

“Really tough losses,” Sayin said of the team’s close losses last season. “You can’t dwell on them for long, but you can definitely use them as motivation… There are a lot of positives to look at, and that’s how we get through the offseason.”

While the new era of leadership may be exciting, it will take a lot more than the three men of these veteran captains to pave a path to success. The key factor for a team that has all the right things and led the league with around 401 yards per game last season is the persistence to finish games consistently.

The 2024 Ivy League football season begins for the 68th time this Saturday, September 21.

Sports writer Walker Carnathan contributed to this story.