Yale QB Kurt Rawlings out for the year
NEW HAVEN — Kurt Rawlings, quarterback of the Yale football team, will miss the remainder of the season after a leg injury suffered during the Bulldogs win at Penn on Friday night.
Rawlings was taken off the field on a cart after being tackled in the third quarter of Yale’s 23-10 victory. He underwent successful surgery on Sunday to repair multiple fractures just above the ankle, according to a source.
“He’s doing well and we expect him to be on the sidelines Saturday hopefully, if he’s feeling well,” Yale coach Tony Reno said Tuesday.
Yale (4-2, 2-1) plays at Columbia on Saturday at 1 p.m. Sophomore Jimmy Check will get his first collegiate start for the Bulldogs.
The loss of Rawlings is a big one for Yale, which is one game behind undefeated league leaders Dartmouth and Princeton in the Ivy League. A junior in his third season as a starter, Rawlings is leading the Ivy League with 1,562 yards passing and second in total offense with 1,650 yards.
Rawlings, along with juniors J.P. Shohfi and Reed Klubnik, have become one the league’s most potent quarterback-wide receiver combinations, along with Princeton’s John Lovett, Jesper Horsted and Steve Carlson. Rawlings and Lovett are the league’s top two passers; Shohfi, Klubnik, Horsted and Carlson are the top four receivers.
Already in the top 10 of several Yale passing record lists, Rawlings, a resident of Bel Air, Md., has compiled quite a resume since winning the starting job with three games remaining in his freshman season.
He helped engineer a stunning victory at Harvard in his third start, which helped Yale, with only two wins to that point, spoil the Crimson’s chance at an Ivy League title. Last fall he became the first sophomore since John Rogan in 1979 to quarterback the Bulldogs to an Ivy championship — Yale’s first outright title since 1980. He completed 67 percent of his passes, the fifth-highest rate in the Football Championship Subdivision.
“We have a lot of great kids on this team, but Kurt always puts himself 107th on the team,” Reno said. “He’s continuing to do that. His biggest concern is everyone else.”
Yale has been dealing with key injuries on both sides of the ball.
Zane Dudek, who last fall became the first freshman to lead the Ivy League in rushing, has been limited most of the year with an injury. Junior Alan Lamar has picked up the slack, recovering from his own injuries to post successive 100-yard rushing games, including 179 and two touchdowns at Penn.
Check, a resident of Fairfax, Va., missed last season with an injury. He’s appeared in each of Yale’s past four games, though in limited capacity until getting the call for Rawlings last Friday. He completed 3-of-5 passes against Mercer when Rawlings was sidelined for a series. At Penn, he went 5-for-8 for 59 yards in just under two quarters worth of work.
He made a couple of plays that as a fan, you might not have notices how astute they were,” Reno said. “He stayed in bounds twice on quarterback scrambles to keep the clock going and force Penn to burn timeouts. For a redshirt freshman quarterback to do that is pretty impressive. He ran the offense really well. We have 100 percent confidence in whoever is back there. Jimmy’s earned this opportunity.”