New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Yale and two QBs prepare for the heart of Ivy season
For the second time in the first five games, nominal Yale backup quarterback Nolan Grooms came on Saturday and took over full-time from nominal No. 1 Griffin O’Connor.
If those ordinals are changing this coming weekend, coach Tony Reno wasn’t ready to say so just yet on Tuesday.
“I think it’ll be decided through the week of practice,” Reno said in the Bulldogs’ weekly media availability. “I think both guys give us a chance to win. we’ll decide as we go through practices this week where we are and what we need to do and how we move forward that way.
“But obviously we’ve got to improve on all three areas, offense being one of them.”
UConn defeated the Bulldogs 21-15 at Rentschler Field, snapping the Huskies’ 11-game losing streak
and dropping Yale below .500 at midseason.
Grooms’ scrambling ability helped the Bulldogs get back into the game after they trailed 21-0. The sophomore lefty was 8-for-31 for 132 yards, including a 60yard touchdown pass to Chase Nenad, but also ran 12 times for a game-high 67 yards.
O’Connor was 11-for-23 for 59 yards with three interceptions.
From the start of the season, Yale has used both quarterbacks at times. Grooms took over in the win at Lehigh when Yale was up 21-0.
“I think you look at it a couple different ways,” Reno said. “One is, what we’ve been doing with quarterbacks is putting them in different situations. trying to try to use their skill sets the best . ... Some of it is just the feel of the game.
“We’ve had some really good offenses here. There’s a rhythm to it, and you’re trying to reestablish the rhythm offensively, is really the most important thing to me.”
There have been flashes of that rhythm, Reno said, but not enough consistency. He has also said often that he’s waiting to see the team play to its standard.
“Like Coach Reno said, we showed good flashes at the end,” senior right tackle
Cam Warfield said. “I love the heart of the offense. It shows that we’ve have great potential but obviously (we) had to execute earlier in the game.
“To do that, every detail matters, and we’ll definitely be hitting on that in practice. “Hopefully next week we’ll be able to come out really strong and play a full 60 minutes of football.”
The non-Ivy League schedule is done. The Bulldogs (2-3, 1-1) have five Ivy games remaining, at home against Penn and Columbia the next two weeks, at Brown and Princeton the two weeks after that, and closing with Harvard at the Yale Bowl.
“I think there’s a lot of things that we’re looking at, individually and collectively as groups, and then obviously as a team that we needed to address and move into this next half of the season in a in a much better light,” Reno said.
“We’re 1-1 in the league. We’ve been in this situation plenty of times before. So we’re looking forward to the opportunity on Saturday to play against a good Penn team.”
He’s not kidding: Yale has split the Cornell and Dartmouth games to start the
Ivy season every year since 2013. They’ve finished 3-4 four times, 5-2 once and 6-1 with league championships in 2017 and 2019.