Dartmouth Preview

The Bulldogs will travel to Hanover to play the Dartmouth Big Green Saturday at 1:30 PM ET.  The game can be seen on ESPN3 or the Ivy League Network.

Keys to Victory

• Dismantle the Dartmouth Offensive Line

The right side of Dartmouth’s offensive line features new starters this season and our veteran defensive line needs to manhandle the big boys up front to alter Teeven’s gameplan.  Tyler, Mullen, Crowle, Herubin, Callender, Chism and others are more than capable enough of shutting down the Big Green’s running attack led by Ryder Stone and Miles Smith.  Dartmouth also likes to use QB Jared Gerbino as the wildcat rusher and showed in the final seconds of the Penn game that this formation is their favorite short yardage package.

• Create Holes for Salter and Dudek

Dartmouth is proud of its defensive front featuring 300 pounder Jackson Perry.  Perry and his fellow defensive linemen have been able to keep defenders off of linebackers Jack Traynor and Eric Meile enabling them to rack up stats.  Traynor was named Defensive Player of the Week after registering 9 tackles and a pass breakup versus Penn.  Our offensive line will need to get a push up front while still making blocks at the second level to spring our backs this week.  Salter seems to be gaining steam each week, while Dudek continues to amaze with his vision, patience and balance.

• Slow Down Hagdorn

WR Hunter Hagdorn caught 9 passes for 91 yards and a score in the Penn contest last week.  In last season’s win over Dartmouth, Hagdorn was open on a number of occasions, but Heneghan failed to deliver time and time again.  With Peggs potentially out this week, it will be a tall task to shutdown the Dartmouth receiving corps.  Alburg and Dixon will need to rise to the occasion as they did last week.

• Fluster Heneghan

Tight coverage alone will not limit Dartmouth’s aerial attack.    We will need to put hits on Heneghan to get in his head.  We saw in the Penn-Dartmouth and Yale-Dartmouth contests last season that when Heneghan loses his confidence, his play quickly spirals downwards.  Fordham’s Anderson and Cornell’s Banks were pounded in recent weeks by our defense and a similar infliction of pain will result in a Yale win.