Hanover
“Certainly, we were disappointed with the outcome of last season,” said coach Buddy Teevens, whose team followed its shared 2015 Ivy League title with a 4-6 campaign that included a 1-6 league record. “I don’t want to make excuses, but we had a lot of guys who couldn’t play last year. At one point, we had nine freshmen on the kickoff-coverage team.
“We don’t have a whole lot of seniors, and the younger guys now know game speed and execution. The tempo of practice has been great. Nobody gets distracted, and we’re focused and running around.”
The depth starts at quarterback with the return of junior Jack Heneghan. Waiting in the wings is Jimmy Fitzgerald, previously a quarterback at the University of Illinois. In December, Fitzgerald told his hometown newspaper, the Champagne-Urbana News-Gazette, that he intended to leave the Big Ten Conference school and compete for the Big Green signal-calling job. He would have three seasons of eligibility at the Football Championship Subdivision level.
Fitzgerald still needs to be formally accepted at Dartmouth, but he has been living and working in the Upper Valley, watching practices and learning the playbook.
Heneghan threw for 2,725 yards last season, the third-most in program history, and he and Fitzgerald will have the luxury of handing off to three capable running backs in junior Ryder Stone and sophomores Miles Smith and Rashaad Cooper. Smith ran for 516 yards and had a 5.2-yard average last fall.
Hunter Hagdorn was the Ivy League rookie of the year last season, catching 56 passes for 706 yards, and he is probably the most prominent of nine returning offensive starters. Unsung tight ends Stephen Johnson and Cameron Skaff are also back, as are several offensive linemen. That latter area is one Teevens is targeting for significant improvement.
“We’ve got to play better there so we can run the ball, which we struggled with last year,” he said. Dartmouth averaged 129 rushing yards per game last fall, but often couldn’t get yards on the ground when it absolutely needed them.
The defense loses five starters to graduation, including All-American linebacker Folarin Orimolade, but both cornerbacks, a safety and two linebackers return. Kicker David Smith is back, but Dartmouth will go with a new long snapper, presumably Grant Jaffe, and is staging a competition between receiver Drew Hunnicutt and quarterback Harry Kraft for the holder’s slot.
“People think it’s easy to do, and it’s not,” Teevens said of a job held the last four years by punter Ben Kepley. “You have to have good, quick hands and put the ball down on a spot the size of a dime. If it’s off, it affects the kicker’s strike point.
“I trust the kickers’ opinions on that. I tell them that, personality aside, who’s the guy you’re most comfortable with?”
Smith, who was 7-of-12 on field goals and made all 23 extra points last season to lead the team with 44 points, said a holder must leave the ball sitting at the best possible angle for the kicker. If the snap is off-target, the holder must be able to bring it back to earth smoothly. Anything longer than 1.4 seconds to get the boot off is problematic.
“You don’t want to be kicking the laces,” Smith said. “So we get a lot of repetitions together to build trust. It’s a part of the game that goes unnoticed on game day until something goes wrong.”
Notes: Asked for the best holder he’s known, Teevens identified his former Dartmouth teammate John Carney, now the governor of Delaware. … The Big Green’s new coaches are Cheston Blackshear (tight ends) who was most recently at Nevada; Kevin Daft (offensive coordinator), who comes from California-Davis; and Steve Thames (running backs), a former New Hampshire player who was a Big Green quality control assistant last season. … Dartmouth’s recent pro day for graduating seniors saw safety Charlie Miller run a 4.39-second 40-yard dash and long snapper Graydon Peterson bench press 225 pounds 22 times. That was one more than Orimolade, who’s considered to have the best NFL shot of any recent Big Green player. … Bruce Dixon IV, the quarterback who at this time last year was poised to become Dartmouth’s starter, struggled last fall and transferred to NCAA Division II Winston-Salem State in his native North Carolina. Dixon, battling to become the Rams’ backup, completed five of 14 passes for 41 yards and had a toss picked off during WSSU’s recent spring game. … Jake Bobo, a 6-foot-4 receiver from Massachusetts’ Belmont Hill school, has committed to attend Duke. He’s the son of former Dartmouth player Mike Bobo and is ranked as his state’s No. 4 receiver in the senior class. … Former Cornell punter Chris Fraser, who graduated in December, has a shot at being selected in the upcoming NFL draft. He would join former Big Red receiver Bryan Walters (Jacksonville) and guard J.C. Tretter (Green Bay) in the league. Dartmouth has not had a former player get into an NFL game since Casey Cramer in 2008, but center Jacob Flores (Green Bay) and cornerback Vernon Harris (Kansas City) were on practice squads last fall. … Lloyd Lee, a onetime Big Green defensive back who played with the NFL’s San Diego Chargers, has joined the Holy Cross coaching staff. The Crusaders, who have five new assistants, are led by head coach and former Dartmouth assistant Tom Gilmore.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.