Here are five storylines to watch as Penn kicks off its football season on Saturday

Good enough to be number three.

That’s where Penn landed in Ivy League preseason polls. The Quakers will kick off against FBS-bound Delaware on Saturday (6 p.m., FloFootball). Last season, Penn finished 6-4 overall, with all four of its losses coming in Ivy play.

As the season ramps up, these are the major storylines:

Penn’s wide receivers are headlined by Jared Richardson, a junior All-Ivy first-teamer who caught 67 passes for 788 yards and eight touchdowns last season. Richardson, who was voted to the preseason FCS All-American third team, is expected to be the top target for quarterback Aidan Sayin this season.

Junior receiver Alex Haight was targeted on multiple occasions out of the slot last season and worked as a one-two punch alongside Richardson.

Penn is getting its speed back. Julien Stokes, the 2022 All-Ivy League return specialist and deep-threat receiver, will make return to the field after suffering a leg injury that sidelined him last season.

“[The receiving core] has depth,” Stokes said. “Even our twos, our threes ... we are very explosive.”

Running back Malachi Hosley is slated to have a big role in the offense following his breakout freshman year. However, Hosley’s “boys up front” have taken a blow as All-Ivy guards Jake Ligos and Jack Purcell graduated.

But there is a silver lining.

“We’ve had younger guys stepping up,” senior right guard Will Bergin said. “We’re really becoming more of a well-rounded offensive line now. We got a lot of game experience under our belt, even though we lost two guys.”

As Hosley looks to build off his FCS Freshman of the Year season, he will count on Bergin to command the offensive line — a newfound responsibility that Bergin says he loves.

If Penn’s offensive line is considered young, its starting defense is infantile.

Seven starting defenders for the Quakers last season have graduated, a defense ranked sixth in the Ivy League. Notably, Penn is now without Ivy Defensive Player of the Year Joey Slackman, an edge rusher.

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“During the course of a season, you are building players up on some of the things they have done before,” Penn coach Ray Priore said. “For instance, Grant Parker was not a starter last year, but he got on the field for us. It’s been lively competition on defense.”

In the absence of a surplus of defensive starters, first-team All-Ivy safety and team interception leader Shiloh Means and senior defensive lineman Paul Jennings were named captains. Penn’s young defense will face a Delaware team that put up a whopping 48 points in its season opener and another 42 in Week 2.

Priore stressed the challenge of facing an explosive 2-0 Delaware team but noted that the matchup will be a “great marker” for his squad.

There is a new offensive coordinator in University City after Dan Swanstrom departed to fill rival Cornell’s head coaching vacancy. Greg Chimera has stepped into the role following a successful stint as the head coach at Johns Hopkins, which he led to a 40-7 record.

“Coach Chimera is an offensive genius,” Stokes said. “He does a great job of figuring out what each player does well and puts them in a situation where they showcase that.”

Additionally, former Bucknell running backs coach Jordan Johnson is joining the Quakers to head the same position group, and former Temple safeties coach Marvin Clecidor is staying in Philadelphia to become the defensive backs coach at Penn.

Sayin is headed into his final year as the starting quarterback for Penn after starting all 10 games last season. In 2023, Sayin became the first Quakers quarterback to record four games with 350-plus passing yards in a season and totaled 2,805 yards with 16 touchdowns.

“Aidan is in tune with everyone, everything,” Bergin said. “Protections, obviously, routes, concepts in the run game. Up front, we can really trust him.”

Even with the strong receivers group and the emergence of Hosley, Penn will only go as far as Sayin can take them. Last season, he had 12 interceptions, a career high that led the Ivy League.

“He’s a very savvy, smart football player, as well as a great student. Applies that well to the football field,” Priore said. “He has done a [good] job with adapting to our new offensive system since we’ve changed coordinators. He knows what parts of his game that he needs to improve.”

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