Cornell Notes

The Bulldogs fell to the Cornell Big Red 23-47 in one of the worst contests of Reno’s career. 

Even with Pitsenberger and Felton back in the mix, the offensive performance was lackluster. McCaughey earned the starting nod at quarterback but failed to provide much of a spark with abysmal offensive line play and nonsensical play calling contributing to the demise. While McCaughey didn’t throw an interception, he again tried to unsuccessfully force passes into tight coverage and had a costly fumble on a bad handoff exchange with Peterson. Howe made his first appearance of the season but didn’t fare any better with low passes and an interception. If Jordan is healthy this week, one has to imagine he’ll be given another chance to put this team on his back. The offensive line had one of the roughest performances over the past five years as they were pushed around by an undersized front and never seemed to be able to pick up blitzes. Pitsenberger didn’t appear to be fully healthy and could not break the arm tackles that he’d normally brush off. Denney, Dahl and Peterson all played with effort but couldn’t overcome the lack of rushing lanes. Shipp, Pantelis and Yates were bright spots for the Bulldogs offensively with stellar catches to keep Yale alive early on. The coaches bear much of the responsibility for the loss as well with a complete lack of preparation and head scratching play calls. As bad as the offense was, the defensive and special teams units were far inferior. 

The defense allowed 475 yards with 9.6 passing yards per attempt and 4.9 rushing yards per attempt. The Bulldogs will not win a league game all season with statistics of that nature. Aside from a few nice plays from Gulley and Yang, the defensive line was manhandled, couldn’t set the edge, and failed to impact Wong. Egodogbare was still out of the lineup at defensive tackle and Shaber just doesn’t have the power to dominate the interior. Yang played at the defensive end position but doesn’t seem to be a natural edge defender. It would seem more logical to have Yang and Gulley at the defensive tackle positions with Shaber, Tyler, McDonough, and Jackson-Bass rotating on the outside. The linebackers were once again nowhere to be found as they were taken out by blockers on running plays and provided little support in the passing game. The constant, undisguised blitzing of the linebackers had no effect on Cornell and actually gave the Big Red an advantage as once runners broke free from the line of scrimmage, there was no second level support. Allowing a 68-yard touchdown reception from a tight end is simply inexcusable. The coaches made grave errors in fielding the freshman safety Eastep who gave up two costly touchdown receptions. For every one freshman such as Breylan Thompson who can make an impact as a youngster, there are another 15 first years who have no business seeing the field. Having Daniyan, Kamara or Tarver in the same coverage would have at least given the Bulldogs slight hopes of deflecting a pass. Guyton was the only member of the starting secondary to have a decent outing as Daniyan and Kamara were routinely torched by middling receivers and Thompson made a few mistakes typical of a freshman still adjusting to collegiate football. This painful loss to Cornell needs to be a wake-up call for the defense that the level of intensity and physicality needs to drastically increase in a hurry.

After two crucial defensive stops, the punt return team promptly gave the ball back to Cornell. Felton failed to catch a punt that bounced off of Barkley-Smith and was recovered by Cornell while Tarver roughed the punter and was cited for an unsportsmanlike penalty after the initial flag. Conforti made his only field goal attempt of the afternoon and was perfect on PATs. Florio had a better showing than last week with 43.6 yards per punt and two touchbacks on kickoff returns.