The Dartmouth football team will travel to New Haven, Conn., this weekend to take on Yale in its second Ivy League matchup of the season.
The Big Green (0-3, 0-1 Ivy) is coming off a frustrating 30-24 loss to the University of Pennsylvania, which pushed the team's losing streak to 15 games. The six-point differential was Dartmouth's thinnest margin of defeat since Nov. 17, 2007, when the team lost to Princeton 17-14 in overtime.
Dartmouth will need to learn from the Penn game's mistakes in order to produce a win against the Bulldogs(1-2, 0-1 Ivy) on Sunday.
Those troubles came largely on the defensive side of the ball, as Dartmouth was unable to keep pace with Penn's potent offense.
During the game, Penn lost both second-string quarterback Kyle Olson and third-string quarterback Billy Ragone to injury, but still managed to pull out the win, relying on rushing the football.
Penn's running game seemed to control the field, blowing by the Dartmouth defense and amassing an astonishing 288 yards.
Containing the rush has been the Achilles heel of the Big Green this season. The team has given up 849 total rushing yards in three games.
"We need more productive play from our linebackers," head coach Buddy Teevens said. "The run has hurt us, and that's one of the things were looking at this week who can step up and do the things that we need."
Dartmouth's leadership at the position will most likely come from younger players. With a starting rotation consisting mostly of sophomores, Teevens said that it is important for underclassmen to step up and make big plays.
"We have young guys and inexperienced guys," Teevens said. "A lot of the problem is just experience, but we need to be productive at the linebacker position, so we're going to try some new faces. What we need is one of the young guys to step in, make some plays, be comfortable, be confident and make some plays from there."
In addition to starters Diego Fernandez-Soto '12 and Royce Egeolu '12, Teevens said he would be trying out several players at linebacker including Garret Wymore '13, Michael Tree '13 and Tom Patek '13 in order to contain the run and stop the big play.
While Dartmouth must work to contain the rush, it must also be able to hold Yale's passing offense in check as well.
The Bulldogs offense, which features University of Nebraska transfer Patrick Witt, favored the passing game in last week's 31-14 loss to Lafayette College.
Dartmouth's secondary must be up to the challenge of containing Yale's deep receiving core, featuring Jordan Farrell and Jordan Forney.
Offensively, the team will have to run a balanced attack and manufacture drives that will keep the Yale offense off of the field. So far, Dartmouth has showed that it has the ability to put itself in a position to win games when the offense takes the field.
Quarterback Alex Jenny '10 has played well and threw for 204 yards and two touchdowns last week.
Complimenting the aerial attack, Nick Schwieger '12 ran for 78 total yards and added a touchdown of his own.
The Big Green's offense has begun to find its rhythm, but in order to win, Dartmouth will need to limit its own mistakes. Costly turnovers and miscues have plagued the team this season, often resulting in points for its opponent.
Last week against the Quakers, the game started with a snap over the head of punter Matthew Kelly '11, leading to a touchdown for Penn. Later in the game, a dropped kick-off return led to good field position and a Penn field goal.
Jenny said that he believes the team can recover from what have in the past been very costly mistakes.
"We're pretty resilient and a tough-minded group," Jenny said. "That's biggest change from this year to last year. There's this kind of an attitude this year that there is no reason that we can't come back. We could have won last weekend but everyone's excited to go and play another week."
The game kicks off 12 p.m. Saturday at the Yale Bowl.
