A legacy of records and wins for Yale quarterback Kurt Rawlings
NEW HAVEN — Leadership. Resilience. Selflessness. Tony Reno’s commendation of Kurt Rawlings runs as long and impressive as his senior quarterback’s list of numeric school superlatives.
One attribute, however, seems to blow the Yale coach away.
“Kurt’s anticipation is incredible,” Reno said. “We say all the time he sees things before they happen.”
Asked for one example,
Reno starts and he can’t stop.
“We went up North (against Harvard in 2016),” Reno said. “We got the ball inside the red area, tie game. Key third down. Reed
Klubnik is coming across the field. If Kurt had stayed with the read, he wouldn’t have gone to Reed. Kurt felt he was open, stepped outside the rush and delivered a great pass. Rest is history.”
Final: Yale 21, Harvard 14. Freshman Kurt Rawlings threw two touchdown passes and ran for 74 yards as Yale broke Harvard’s nineyear winning streak in The Game and ruined the Crimson’s shot at an Ivy
League cochampionship.
“At Princeton, ’17,” Reno said. “We’re down 17, fighting our way back. Kurt made this huge pass to Ross Drwal. The ball was out before he even threw it. I mean, the ball was thrown before Ross was even open. He anticipated the (Cover 3) coverage rolling the way it did.”
Final: Yale 35, Princeton 31. Sophomore Kurt Rawlings threw for 304 yards
and two touchdowns as the Bulldogs went on to their first outright Ivy title in 37 years.
“We could sit here for an hour and I could keep going,” Reno said.
Rawlings couldn’t have anticipated what would happen on Oct. 19, 2018 though. Third quarter. Yale up 213 on Penn. Rawlings, now a junior, scrambled right.
“We had just gone like 70 yards in fourfive plays and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this is our offense,’ ” Rawlings said. “It had taken a little time for us to find our identity last year and I’m thinking during that drive, ‘We found it.’ ”
What he found was a broken leg and torn ankle ligaments. What Yale, after holding on for the win at Penn, found were three losses in its final four games.
“It was a weird play,” Rawlings said. “I was contemplating sliding and I was contemplating slowing down. At that moment of me figuring out what to do with two D backs in front of me, some guy grabbed my shoulders and rolled up on my ankle. I knew immediately I broke my leg. The fact that I was thinking
about sliding at that moment might have been the reason the guy caught me at that weird angle. I figured out if you run hard and make fast decisions you’re probably less at risk of getting hurt.”
Which brings us to Columbia and Saturday at the Yale Bowl, where we find a senior quarterback healthy again and at the top of his game. After throwing for 338 yards and two touchdowns and running for two more in the 4641 victory over Penn, Rawlings now stands as Yale’s record holder with 43 career touchdown passes and 6,681 yards of total offense. He also ranks first alltime in completion percentage (.636) and in efficiency (144.05).
“I told the team on Sunday we handed the ball to Kurt this week four years ago and said, ‘It’s your team. Let’s go!’ ” said Reno, whose team is 51. “It has been a pretty incredible ride for us.”
In many ways, Columbia is a starting point for Rawlings’ Yale career and for his maturation. A talented baseball player who turned to football and prospered at John Carroll in Bel Air, Maryland, where his dad Keith coached, Rawlings would enter Yale’s 2016 game at Columbia. Second quarter. Game Seven. The freshman threw for three touchdowns in Yale’s 3123 victory.
“As freshmen a lot of people just come in and are happy to be here,” Rawlings said. “I certainly was. I was lucky to have the opportunity to play football at this great university, but I think immediately I was like, ‘OK there’s a quarterback graduating. There’s not a guy there yet.’ ”
He chose football over baseball, he said, because he likes to have his hand on the ball at all times. He chose quarterback because he embraces the responsibilities of victory and defeat. It is a emotional sword that cuts both ways.
The Columbia game follows the Penn game on Yale’s annual schedule. Seven days after his injury he had to watch as his teammates went scoreless in the second half in a 1710 loss to Columbia.
“There are definitely some wins I’d like to have been in there more than the (recordsetting) numbers,” Rawlings said. “Especially last year having to watch the Columbia game from up in the box. That was tough watching when you know you can’t do anything … even worse than the outcome being separated from the team, not being on the sideline.”
Rawlings allows himself
a smile.
“I’m fortunate to get through the Penn game this year unscathed,” he said.
Going through rehab, fighting to return to a level where Monday he was named Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week for the third time in four weeks, Rawlings, 206 in games where he has taken the majority of snaps, said he learned plenty.
“The most important thing I learned is how special the game of football is and how it can be taken from you at any moment,” Rawlings said. “You cannot wait around until you’re retired and old news to miss the game and say, ‘Wow, I wish I had another chance.’ I thought I had put everything into it before and was giving it all I had, but once you realize how much it means to you and have limited time, you kind of take a different approach. My approach this year is daybyday just enjoy it, have fun. Coach will tell you I play my best when I’m having fun.
“Also, how important my teammates are. I knew how much they meant to me and what good friends they’ve always been but going through the injury showed me the true character of all my teammates. I’m fortunate to find friends I’ll have the rest of my life.”
Rawlings learned perspective at home, too. His mom was ruled cancer free in February and in April he told Hearst Connecticut Media that Kathy was his role model and super hero.
“My mom’s doing great,” Rawlings said Tuesday. “She’s back to her normal self. She’s at the Bowl every Saturday. She likes to pace the upper level.”
From the moment they started a group chat while still in high school, this class of 2020 … Sterling Strother, Dieter Eieselin, J.P. Shohfi, Klubnik, et al … was a class with considerable talent that would grow close. That group chat, Reno said, has started an annual trend for each recruiting class.
“It was pretty funny,” Rawlings said. “We’d have every new commit introduce himself, tell a fun fact. Watch each other’s highlights. I felt like I was really good friends with guys before I met them in person. We came here, it was like we’d spent our whole life together.
“Reed and J.P. played hard to get. Eventually we got them. I messaged J.P. once on Twitter and he didn’t respond.” That’s cold. And now? “I live with J.P. and Reed lives down the street,” Rawlings said. “I lived with Reed my sophomore year.
We’re really tight friends.”
Rawlings, a global affairs major, worked in the Yale Investments Office over the summer. This gave him a chance to sweat with his receivers Shohfi and Klubnik in workouts. One thing, we can tell you. He isn’t sweating out life.
Scouts, Reno said, he been watching Rawlings. A pro career? A permanent focus outside the game?
“I couldn’t tell you,” Rawlings said. “If I start worrying about what I’ll do next, I’m not giving everything to football and Yale the next four games. I don’t want to look back and regret I was worrying about what’s next.
“I’m going to have a long winter of starting to think about what I’m going to do with my life. I’ve always been a happygolucky kind of guy, not too worried about what the future holds. I wasn’t too worried in high school. I ended up at Yale and have had a great experience. If I don’t worry too much, hopefully good things come. One thing I probably won’t do is politics.”
Given the horrid state of political football these days, it’s like Reno said, Kurt Rawlings has incredible anticipation.