The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Freshman makes impact for Yale football team
Freshman RB averaging 120 yards in first 3 Bulldog games
NEW HAVEN — Only 11 high school running backs in the country gained more rushing yards than Zane Dudek did last fall. At Armstrong High in western Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most fertile recruiting pockets, he rushed for a conference-record 2,936 yards in 11 games.
He also set Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League records for the most points scored in a season (254) and set the single-game rushing record, a 492-yard outburst that was broken last month. In the spring, he ran the 100-meters in 10.88 seconds to win the WPIAL outdoor track championship.
Yet there wasn’t much interest from major college football programs. Dudek said Pitt came to see him once. Penn State and Stanford said he was welcome as a walk-on. Kent State was the lone FBS-level school to offer a scholarship.
Yale coach Tony Reno had been recruiting Dudek since his junior year, ultimately landing the prized running back in December.
“Why wasn’t he recruited more?” Reno says, repeating a reporter’s question. “I don’t know. But I know what I saw.”
Dudek is well on his way to becoming one of the Ivy League’s elite runners.
Three games into his college career, he’s aligned with senior Deshawn Salter to form the league’s most lethal running back tandem. Dudek, from Kittanning, Pa., is averaging 120 yards rushing per game with five touchdowns; Salter is just behind at 101 yards and seven touchdowns.
There’s an old football saying about how the key to a consistent run game is three yards and a cloud of dust. At Yale, through three games, each run is essentially a first down. Dudek is averaging a whopping 10.3 yards per carry; Salter isn’t far behind at 9.2.
Those numbers likely aren’t sustainable. When the Bulldogs (3-0, 1-0) head to Dartmouth (3-0, 1-0) on Saturday in an early season meeting of Ivy League heavyweights, they’ll face a far stiffer defensive challenge than the likes of Lehigh and Fordham.
Still, the alternating backs, with different running styles, will be a headache for opposing defensive coordinators. Both have above-average speed. Salter, at 5-foot-10, 215 pounds, fits the mold of a power back. Dudek, at 5-9 and 190, can jump-cut tacklers out of their shoes.
The added threat of a passing quarterback in sophomore Kurt Rawlings — he set a Yale record for completion percentage in last weekend’s win at Fordham by completing 18-of-20 passes — keeps defenses honest.
“My job has been pretty easy with the offensive line we have, and the quarterback we have, and the receivers we have,” Dudek
said. “The holes the offensive line makes for me and Deshawn are awesome. Kurt makes the right reads. The receivers are out there blocking their tails off for us. I couldn’t ask for anything more from them. It’s a great system for us.”
Dudek was expected to be Yale’s third running back this fall, behind Salter and sophomore Alan Lamar, a second-team All-Ivy selection. Lamar was lost for the season after a non-contact practice injury, but Dudek had already made an impression on the coaching staff.
“We couldn’t tackle him all preseason,” Reno said. “He had five touchdowns in two preseason scrimmages. I don’t think we put him on the ground. We couldn’t tackle him. Brown (in a scrimmage) couldn’t tackle him. So we thought maybe he’s ready.”
His first official collegiate game, a rout of Lehigh, resulted 131 yards rushing on just nine carries, including touchdown runs of 69 and 29. A week later at the Yale Bowl against Cornell, he narrowly missed the Bulldogs’ single-game rushing record for a freshman by 12 yards, going for 173 and a touchdown on 16 carries.
At Fordham, he got 10 carries for 56 yards in a blowout that was over for the Yale regulars early in the third quarter, but still managed a 22-yard scoring run.
Dudek’s transition to college football has been so seamless that he’s actually averaging more yards per carry at Yale than he did as one of the top high school runners in the country.
“I’ve been playing football for what, 13 years now,” Dudek said. “I was a little nervous about how it would carry over to college ball. But it’s just football to me. The defenses are bigger, stronger and faster, but so is the offensive line. Our line is so strong and athletic, being able to run downfield and make extra blocks that other linemen can’t get downfield to make. Me and Deshawn have been able to take what should be an 8-yard run and make it a 25-yard run.”
Reno isn’t concerned with why larger programs with big money and national TV exposure might have overlooked a hidden gem. It’s their loss and Yale’s gain.
“You can either run the ball or you can’t,” Reno said.
Dudek can run.