2008 Woodie Awards
Vote Absentee
Football looks to get physical against undefeated Yale
Stu Woo
Issue date: 11/2/07 Section: Sports
Jimmy Tull '08 has heard the talk. He knows Ivy League football fans are already looking forward to the season-ending Harvard-Yale game as the match-up of the year, as the battle of the undefeateds that will decide the league title.
Tull doesn't like that talk - especially since Yale first must beat the Bears on Saturday to keep that record unblemished.
"A lot of people may be looking past us," the offensive lineman said. "We're kind of using that as motivation."
The Brown football team (3-4 overall, 2-2 Ivy) will travel to Yale (7-0, 4-0) tomorrow to face a very physical Bulldog team. Yale has run to the top of the Ivy League behind the strength of its star running back, Mike McLeod, who leads all of Division I-AA with 182.4 yards per game.
If the Bears are to keep their championship hopes alive, they'll have to stop McLeod and a Yale offense that averages 34.9 points a game - tops in the league.
"Their strength is definitely the run game," Tull said. "They haven't done much from their passing game from what I've seen."
Brown will have a great chance to win, Tull said, if the defense plays like it did last week against the University of Pennsylvania, when it made several big hits on Quaker ballcarriers.
But as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense, and the Bears will counter Yale's with an almost equally potent one. Brown, which averages 31.3 points per game, will rely on the arm of Michael Dougherty '09, who leads the nation with 326.1 passing yards per game.
At the Yale Bowl, Dougherty said he expects the Bulldogs to play mostly in a zone defense that might neutralize the speed of wide receivers Paul Raymond '08 and Buddy Farnham '10. As a result, he said he will try to pick apart the defense with short- to medium-range passes.
"They don't really get beat deep, but there's a lot of opportunities," Dougherty said. "We're just going to take what they give."
Tull doesn't like that talk - especially since Yale first must beat the Bears on Saturday to keep that record unblemished.
"A lot of people may be looking past us," the offensive lineman said. "We're kind of using that as motivation."
The Brown football team (3-4 overall, 2-2 Ivy) will travel to Yale (7-0, 4-0) tomorrow to face a very physical Bulldog team. Yale has run to the top of the Ivy League behind the strength of its star running back, Mike McLeod, who leads all of Division I-AA with 182.4 yards per game.
If the Bears are to keep their championship hopes alive, they'll have to stop McLeod and a Yale offense that averages 34.9 points a game - tops in the league.
"Their strength is definitely the run game," Tull said. "They haven't done much from their passing game from what I've seen."
Brown will have a great chance to win, Tull said, if the defense plays like it did last week against the University of Pennsylvania, when it made several big hits on Quaker ballcarriers.
But as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense, and the Bears will counter Yale's with an almost equally potent one. Brown, which averages 31.3 points per game, will rely on the arm of Michael Dougherty '09, who leads the nation with 326.1 passing yards per game.
At the Yale Bowl, Dougherty said he expects the Bulldogs to play mostly in a zone defense that might neutralize the speed of wide receivers Paul Raymond '08 and Buddy Farnham '10. As a result, he said he will try to pick apart the defense with short- to medium-range passes.
"They don't really get beat deep, but there's a lot of opportunities," Dougherty said. "We're just going to take what they give."