Like father, like son.
Cole Pennington, the son of former Jets quarterback Chad Pennington, threw the first touchdown of his college career in Marshall’s 45-3 blowout win over Stony Brook on Saturday in Huntington, W.Va., the season opener for both teams.
The redshirt sophomore, who is the team’s third-string quarterback, threw a 16-yard touchdown to Bralon Brown late in the fourth quarter of the Thundering Herd’s blowout victory.
Cole was 4-for-5 for 80 outings in his abbreviated outing.
Transfer quarterbacks Stone Earle and Braylon Braxton each threw for a pair of touchdowns for Marshall.
Cole is following his father’s big footsteps at Marshall.
Chad led Marshall to the 1995 NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship Game, where it lost to Montana, 22-20.
The following year, Pennington was redshirted in favor of Eric Kresser, a transfer from the Florida, who guided Marshall back to the I-AA Championship game in 1996, a game they won.
Pennington Sr., who also threw to Randy Moss during the star receiver’s illustrious two years at the school, returned as Marshall’s starting quarterback from 1997-1999 and put up some impressive numbers to eventually earn induction in the school’s Hall of Fame, along with Moss.
Pennington’s storybook career at Marshall culminated with a perfect 13-0 record in 1999 and a program-high No. 10 national ranking following that magical season.
The former Jets quarterback, who also played with the Dolphins during his 11-year NFL career, was a three-time All-Mid-American Conference quarterback as he led Marshall to conference titles in 1997, ’98 and ’99.
He finished his career at Marshall with 1,026 of 1,619 completions for 13,423 yards and 115 touchdowns with just 45 interceptions.
As Jets fans know, Pennington also led Gang Green to three playoff appearances — including a division title in 2002 — during his eight seasons in New York.
But we won’t elaborate more on his NFL stats since his son is still trying to just make his mark at Marshall.
