Bulldogs look to bounce back after wake-up call
NEW HAVEN — The Yale football team held a huge early lead against Holy Cross in last week’s seasonopener, yet coach Tony Reno was concerned the 21-point, first-quarter lead might be too much, too soon.
They may be defending Ivy League champions, but Yale is a young group. Seventeen players were making their first career start. Inexperience can be a breeding ground for complacency.
Yale, despite Reno’s warnings, got complacent. Holy Cross rallied for 14 points in the final five minutes to send the game to overtime, where it pulled off a 31-28 upset.
As the Bulldogs prepared for Saturday’s Ivy League opener at Cornell (3 p.m., ESPN Radio 1300), another opposing defense vulnerable to Yale’s vaunted offensive attack, they focused on avoiding the mentality and mistakes caused the unraveling at Holy Cross.
“I think this team was woken a bit on Saturday,” Reno said. “We talk about how you get to where you want to be. You need to work and earn things. You have to keep your foot on the gas. It happened once last year. We took our foot off gas. To reapply in a game is tough. It was a great learning opportunity.”
Reno is referring to Yale’s 28-27 loss at Dartmouth last Oct. 7, an almost identical scenario in which the Bulldogs held a comfortable fourth-quarter lead only to surrender 14 unanswered points in the game’s final minutes.
That loss could have been devastating. It occurred in the second Ivy League game, leaving no margin for error for Yale’s championship dreams. The Bulldogs responded well, winning the remaining six games to capture a title, the Dartmouth loss all that stood in the way of what would have been the program’s first unbeaten and untied season since 1960.
While Yale easily picked itself up after a heart-breaking loss last season, things have changed in the program. Loaded with seniors in 2017, the Bulldogs of last Saturday had only one senior starter between offense and defense at Holy Cross.
Two more seniors have snuck to the top of the depth chart for Cornell. Jamal Locke is listed as a starting wide receiver and Devin Moore a starting defensive end. But this remains a team still getting its feet wet.
“We showed we can rack up a lot of yards, but that doesn’t matter because we shot ourselves too many times in the foot in the red zone with penalties and turnovers,” Yale junior left tackle Sterling Strother said. “Everyone’s come back with a good attitude this week.”
Cornell hasn’t enjoyed a winning season since 2005, when it snuck past the .500 barrier by winning six of 10 games. Yale has controlled the series over the past two decades, despite some lean years of its own, and had no troubles last September, winning 49-24 in New Haven.
All indications are Yale’s offense could be in for another big day.
Sophomore tailback Zane Dudek, the first freshman to ever lead the Ivy League in rushing, picked up where he left off by averaging 9.9 yards per carry against Holy Cross. His 217 yards rushing was the 10th-best single-game performance in school history. Spelled by junior Alan Lamar, who went for 66 yards over his 11 carries including a touchdown, Yale’s ground attack is again the class of the Ivy League.
A year ago the Bulldogs, behind Dudek’s 173 yards rushing and a crushing performance by the offensive line, dominated the line of scrimmage.
Cornell, which dropped a 27-10 decision at Delaware in its opener last weekend, certainly hasn’t forgotten.
“We’re coming out there with a little vengeance remembering what happened last year,” Big Red junior defensive lineman Jordan Landsman told the Cornell Daily Sun earlier this week. “Coaches, players, we lost some nights of sleep over what happened last year.”
Yale’s defense may not see the same offensive scheme Cornell rolled out for its opener, when it used three quarterbacks against Delaware. Cornell coach David Archer told the campus newspaper the repetitions will likely change for Yale. None of the Big Red quarterbacks stood out, as short passes were the order of the day for all three. Senior Dalton Banks, the most experienced, will likely see more time this weekend.
They key points for Yale will be to finish drives and avoid being satisfied with a lead, no matter how big.
“I felt from day one that we needed to get punched in the face,” Reno said. “I wanted us to get punched, we did, and to be honest, I’m pretty happy we did … when you go in with a young team coming off a championship season, you’re hoping that you get humbled a little bit. We did.”