The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Bulldogs’ O’Connor is stellar in his debut
NEW HAVEN — As Reed Klubnik trotted onto the field for the Yale football team’s first offensive play on a blustery Saturday afternoon, he wasn’t quite sure how wide-eyed freshman quarterback Griffin O’Connor would handle his first collegiate game action.
Well before O’Connor completed his first pass in a convincing 46-16 win over Brown, Klubnik and the rest of his teammates got their answer.
“We get out there on the first drive, we are huddling up and this guy cracks a joke to all of us so at point in the game we knew he was ready to roll,” said Klubnik, who had six receptions for 153 yards including touchdown catches of 60 and 11 yards.
JP Shohfi also had a pair of touchdown receptions, a 13-yarder early in the second quarter and a 6-yard grab in the first quarter
where he made a highlight reel one-handed grab in the corner of the end zone.
By the time O’Connor left the game for the final time, he was 30 for 38 passing for 436 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions. If the game wasn’t such a one-sided affair, O’Connor probably would have had a chance to get the three additional yards necessary to break Alvin Cowan’s single-game Yale record with 438 passing yards. As it was, it was a debut for the ages for a player who did not play a snap in the Bulldogs’ first seven games of the season.
“I am very cautious with our freshmen quarterbacks because of the academic demands of Yale, I really don’t want to fast forward on quarterbacks too quickly freshman year because of that,” Yale coach Tony Reno said.
O’Connor threw for more than 7,000 yards with 73 touchdowns in his final three seasons at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, Calif., so he was no stranger of being asked to sit in the pocket and let the ball rip.
Yale’s coaches played it safe in the early stages, letting him throw highpercentage passes over the middle of the field. But before long, they allowed O’Connor to take some shots down the field.
“I have been playing football my whole life and it is more of a fun thing than a nerve-racking thing so I was more just energized to go out on the field rather than nervous about what I was going to do,” O’Connor said. Coach [Kevin Cahill, Yale’s offensive coordinator] does a really good job with the quarterbacks and trying to prepare us, he has helped me out all week with watching film, understanding coverages and fronts. I owe a lot of it to him.”
O’Connor also was quick to credit Yale’s starting quarterback Kurt Rawlings, who suffered a seasonending leg injury in a 23-10 win over Penn on Oct. 19, for helping him this week and during the game.
“Kurt’s been a really good role model for me throughout the whole game he was right in my ear telling me if I was missing a coverage or I needed help on anything so he was a real big supporter,” O’Connor said.
It was another quarterback, however, who put the thought into O’Connor’s head about telling a joke to his teammates on the Bulldogs’ first offensive series.
Video of San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Harris Barton telling the story about how Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana turned to him during Super Bowl XXIII and asked, ‘Isn’t that John Candy.’”
“I always think of Joe Montana in one of the Super Bowls he pointed to the stands and pointed out a celebrity,” O’Connor said. “It calmed the feel for the huddle and I like to crack jokes too so that is what I was trying to do when I was out there on the field.”
Although Yale was playing without reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year Zane Dudek, Alan Lamar ran for 76 yards and a pair of touchdowns while Spencer Alston added a 7-yard scoring run.
Ryan Burke had two of Yale’s eight sacks, Rodney Thomas set up the Bulldogs’ first touchdown with a diving interception as Yale improved to 5-3, 3-2 in the Ivy League heading into next week’s showdown with undefeated Princeton. There will be added motivation for the Bulldogs as the morning of the game there will be a ceremony to honor the memory of legendary former Yale coach Carm Cozza.
Scott Boylan had a 53yard touchdown reception and 2-yard scoring run for Brown (1-7, 0-5).