In just over a month, the defending Ivy League champion Dartmouth College football team will open the 2022 season at Memorial Field against Valparaiso. But with preseason practice set to begin Sunday, the Big Green have a lot to nail down before they line up against their first opponent.
Head coach Buddy Teevens, senior quarterback Nick Howard and senior defensive lineman Shane Cokes addressed reporters Monday at Ivy League virtual media day, all emphasizing Dartmouth’s ability to reload year in and year out.
For the first time since Teevens returned to the top post in Hanover in 2005, the Big Green are co-preseason favorites to win the Ivy title, although Harvard picked up eight of 16 first-place votes to Dartmouth’s four. The other four votes went to Princeton, which shared the championship with the Big Green last season.
“It’s nice to settle back into somewhat of a normal routine,” Teevens said. “We graduated a good number of players, and we do that every year, (but) we have guys in our program who people haven’t seen a bunch, and will learn about them as we go forward.”
Howard appears primed to be the full-time quarterback after splitting duties in 2021 with Derek Kyler, who has transferred to Pittsburgh. The native of Green Bay, Wis. attempted just 18 passes last year while leading the team with 787 rush yards, but he will look to become more of a true dual-threat this fall.
To that end, Howard was a counselor this summer at the Manning Passing Academy in Louisiana, where Teevens is co-director. Other counselors included 2021 Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young of Alabama, CJ Stroud of Ohio State and national champion Stetson Bennett of Georgia.
“It was a really special experience,” Howard said. “It’s such a crazy thing to go from watching Bryce Young and Stetson Bennett on TV on Saturday nights before our season starts or in the postseason, to all of a sudden hanging out and coaching football with them. I took away some memories that I’m going to hold onto for a lifetime.”
Howard’s mobility should serve him well considering that Dartmouth is replacing four starters on the offensive line, with only right tackle Griff Lehman returning. Teevens highlighted seniors Michael Flores and Adam Will, juniors Nicholas Schwitzgebel and Thomas Hartnett and sophomore Konstantin Spörk as potential starters in the trenches.
Elsewhere on offense, the Big Green return running backs Zack Bair (498 rushing yards a season ago) and Noah Roper (349 rush yards) as well as leading receivers Paxton Scott, Dale Chesson and Jamal Cooney. Dartmouth was third in the Ivy League last year with 30.6 points per game, eclipsing 40 points three times but suffering a shutout against Columbia for its only loss. The Big Green’s 406 yards of offense per game were second in the conference behind Brown.
The defense will see more changes, with only three starters returning, but it’s a unit that in 2021 ranked fifth in the Football Championship Subdivision in total defense (271 yards allowed per game) and third in scoring defense (14.7 points allowed per game). Cokes and safety Quinten Arello, co-captains this year along with Howard, both started on that dominant group, as did senior linebacker Marques White.
“It goes back to making sure they’re all informed on what to do,” Cokes said on getting the new starters up to speed. “Continuing to understand what’s gotten us there and what’s made us that nationally-ranked defense, and making sure they understand and continue to push that forward.”
Dartmouth faces the same opponents as last season in the same order, with home and away games flipped. Following the opener against Valparaiso, the Big Green travel to Sacred Heart, which won the Northeast Conference in 2021, before starting Ivy play on Sept. 30 in a nationally-televised Friday night game against Penn.
The third non-conference game will be a home date with New Hampshire on Oct. 15. Not even the seniors have made any of the four Ivy League road trips Dartmouth will make this year — to Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Cornell. The Big Green last visited each of those teams in 2018.
“You can do so much as a coach, but when it’s important to them… our guys take an awful lot of pride in representing themselves, their families, Dartmouth College and our football program,” Teevens said. “That pride spills into tremendous dedication. Players won’t let players slide. They hold each other accountable. If someone’s not pulling their weight, they’re going to be called out by their teammates.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.