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Princeton University Athletics
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Five Pre-Camp Questions: #1) What Did 2009 Do For Tommy Wornham
August 17, 2010 | Football
With fall camp approaching for the 2010 Princeton football team, GoPrincetonTigers.com will take a look at five questions surrounding the team as it prepares for its 142nd season of college football.
The first question surrounds arguably the most important position in all of sports, the quarterback. For the first time since 2006, Princeton has a returning starter at the position. That was also the last time Princeton was picked to finish as low as sixth in the Ivy League preseason poll.
By the way, it's also the last time Princeton won the Ivy League championship.
The returning quarterback of the 2006 team was Jeff Terrell, who won four of his last five starts in 2005 before guiding Princeton to a 9-1 record and winning the Bushnell Cup. It would be unfair to expect the same out of junior Tommy Wornham, but there is plenty to be excited about from The Bishop's School product.
Wornham, who played a handful of snaps as a freshman, won the job in the 2009 camp and was the starter for all 10 games during the roller coaster ride that was last season. His first six games were similar to a summer internship on Wall Street — brutally tough, painful and exhausting, but a necessary training for the long haul.
Wornham wasn't alone in his early-season struggles, nor was he without his highlights. His 68-yard touchdown run at Lehigh led Princeton to a 17-14 road victory, and he had a gutsy second-half effort in a near-upset of nationally ranked Colgate.
But when the smoke cleared after six weeks, Princeton was 1-5 and Wornham had thrown more interceptions than touchdowns. Princeton was converting only 34.8% of its third downs and the offense had scored at least two touchdowns in only two of six games.
It would have been an understandable time for a young quarterback, whose championship hopes passed weeks earlier, to get down and lose confidence. Instead, he wrote what he hopes was the 2010 prologue with a terrific final month of the season. Wornham raised his completion percentage by more than five points, threw more touchdowns than interceptions and helped the offense convert nearly 40% of its third downs. And that stretch included a game at eventual Ivy League champ Penn, which boasted the top-ranked defense in the nation.
More important than any other numbers, Princeton won three of its last four games. Princeton ended the season with a 24-17 win over Yale and a 23-11 win at Dartmouth. The bumps, bruises and painful memories of that six-week internship had (mostly) given way to some legitimate success. Wornham ended the season ranked third in the Ivy League in both passing yardage and total offense, and he knew that all of his top receivers would be returning in 2010.
What he didn't know was who else would be joining the offensive mix.
When Bob Surace '90 was named the Charles W. Caldwell Jr. '25 Head Coach of Football, he knew of several people he would consider for the position of offensive coordinator. One that he didn't know personally was Brown assistant James Perry; as an Ivy Leaguer, though, he was well aware of Perry's status in the league.
Perry graduated from Brown in 2000 as the all-time passing leader in the Ivy League; during his three years in Providence, including an Ivy League championship in 1999, Perry threw for 9,294 yards. At that time, no other quarterback in the league had ever thrown for even 8,000 career yards.
One decade later, Perry was named offensive coordinator at Princeton. He still leads the Ivy League in career passing, and there still isn't another quarterback with more than 8,000 career yards. The Ivy League leader in passing last season was Kyle Newhall-Caballero, who ranked 12th in the NCAA with 270.9 yards per game.
Newhall-Caballero's position coach was James Perry.
So what is a fair but optimistic hope for the Wornham-Perry combination this season? You never start a season exactly where you left the previous one, but you can also hope that Wornham is far more ready for the 2010 season opener than he was 52 weeks earlier.
Perry praised Wornham for his progress both on and off the field during the spring, and the junior quarterback was part of a large group of players who stayed around campus this summer to prepare for the upcoming season. There will be some natural growing pains in a new offense that Surace described as "fast and physical," but at least Wornham has three advantages over last season:
- has already has a comfort level with his top wide receivers, including Trey Peacock, Andrew Kerr and Jeb Heavenrich
- he has seen every defense in the Ivy League once
- he has been knocked down and gotten back up; with Wornham, toughness can never be questioned
Wornham will be one of six quarterbacks with starting experience in the Ivy League, so other teams will have a similar advantage. But only two of them went 3-1 to conclude last season. Wornham should feel good entering his first preseason camp as an upperclassman, and he will know the challenges awaiting him when Princeton travels to Lehigh for the season opener on Sept. 18.
But how quickly he picks up Perry's offense, and how ready he will be to lead it 10 Saturdays this fall, will go a long way in determining how much this group can achieve.