Bulldog, Bulldog, How? How? How?

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The Yale Mystery



The biggest surprise in the Ivies last season wasn’t Dartmouth’s rebound.



After all, the Big Green had, (and still have), the best running back in the league.



No, the biggest surprise was that Yale came out of nowhere to finish 5-2 in the Ivies and darn close to winning both games they lost… to Penn and Harvard.



What was the Bulldog secret?



Well, Yale did run the ball well and the defense was generally good if not spectacular.



But the real reason why Yale did well in 2009 was because the Bulldogs won close game after close game, showing a surprising set of guts for team coached by a still very new staff.



How close were those close games?



In the week 7, 8 and 9 Bulldog wins Yale outscored its three opponents, Columbia, Brown and Princeton, by a grand total of seven points.



Just a TD difference equaled three wins.



Yesterday I spent some of this space going after Harvard Head Coach Tim Murphy.



And while I’ll need to see another year of Tom Williams and his coaching staff do their thing, I am close to being ready to awarding the Elis my sincerest admiration as a group of coaches who get things done.



As Bill Parcells has said and many of my readers remind me, “you are what your record says you are.”



And that being the case, Yale looked pretty good last year.



Will that continue in 2011?



It will be tough to do it again with the same overall talent, but if these Yale coaches are miracle workers, this will be the year to prove it.









Top 100 Moments of 2010





#67: 104 Seconds



After Columbia took a 7-3 early in the 1st quarter against Lafayette, the Leopards shredded the Lions defense again.



In fact, Lafayette needed just 104 second, or a 1:44, to grab the lead back.



It took just four plays, ending with a 34 yard Ryan O’Neil-to-Kyle Hayes TD pass.



To understand why the Leopards’ offensive onslaught was so important you have to remember that up to week four, the Lions defense had looked generally good. It gave up just 16 points to Fordham, 10 to Towson, and 14 to Princeton.



In this game Lafayette would score four times, all on drives that took fewer than five minutes.