Daniel Zhao, Senior Photographer

Dating back to 2017, the Yale football team has enjoyed a four-year period marked by an underdog run at the Ivy League crown, a season-altering injury to an All-Ivy talent, a double-overtime tour-de-force against a historic adversary and a year-long metamorphosis spurred by a global health crisis.

The Bulldogs entered 2017 as underdogs in the Ancient Eight after experiencing an underwhelming campaign the previous year. However, a season-opening 56–28 victory against Lehigh, the defending Patriot League champion, was the auspicious opening the Elis needed after their 0–3 start in 2016, and served as foreshadowing for things to come.

In the nine games that followed, the offense and defense of Team 145 fired on all cylinders. Yale’s defense was in the top ten in the FCS when it came to rush defense and sacks. This great defensive play complemented an offense bolstered by the best rushing attack in the Ancient Eight which averaged 216 yards per game. This was in large part due to the presence of then-rookie phenom Zane Dudek ’21, who enjoyed what is now widely regarded as the best offensive season a Yale first-year running back has ever experienced. Dudek led the Ancient Eight in every rushing and scoring category, amassing 15 touchdowns and 1,133 yards on the ground. 

The Bulldogs won all six of its rematches against teams it lost to in the previous 2016 season en route to a 9–1 record — good for No. 24 in the national rankings. This 2017 season ultimately culminated with a three-touchdown victory over Harvard in the last week, resulting in the Blue and White’s first outright Ivy League Championship since 1980.

The euphoria of finishing first in the Ancient Eight and hoisting up the Ivy League crown was over in a heartbeat, however, as Yale kicked off its 2018 campaign with a 31–28 overtime upset loss to Holy Cross — a squad the Bulldogs had resoundingly shut out 32–0 just a season ago. 

In the ensuing weeks, Team 146 appeared to be hitting its stride, pulling out victories against Cornell and then-defending Colonial Athletic Association champion Maine. However, in a mid-season game against Penn, disaster struck. In an effort to pick up yardage, Kurt Rawlings ’20 scrambled to the right side of the field as he had done countless times before in his collegiate career. Instead of earning a first down at the end of his run, Rawlings was tackled hard and sustained a season-ending leg injury.

Rookie Griffin O’Connor ’23 was then forced to step in and replace Rawlings for the remainder of the season. The California-native would go on to break school records in passing yards for a game — tallying 456 yards against the soon-to-be Ivy League champion Princeton Tigers — and earned the Ivy League Rookie of the Year award, despite starting in only three games. O’Connor’s herculean quarterbacking efforts down the stretch were not enough, however, as Yale wound up finishing the year a .500 team. 

“Being sidelined obviously is tough since I am a competitor that loves the game, but watching Griff tear it up was awesome,” Rawlings told the News back in 2018. “He has phenomenal talent but is an even better person. Even though he is younger than I am, I look up to how impactful his positivity is at all times. Watching him torch defenses is just an added benefit of being friends with Griff.”

With Rawlings making a full recovery heading into the 2019 campaign, the Blue and White looked poised to make a run at the Ancient Eight title once more. However, the season did not get off to the roaring start predicted by many college football pundits, most of whom had picked Yale to finish first in a preseason poll. Yale appeared to be playing down to their opponents, a style of play that eventually caught up with the squad in their first road contest of the season against Dartmouth. The Blue and White suffered a dismal 42–10 loss at the hands of the Big Green — the lowest point total of the Bulldogs’ season in what looked to be a lethal blow to Yale’s chances of securing an Ivy League championship.  

Aspirations for a bounce-back win looked to be in serious jeopardy one week later against a gritty Richmond team. The Elis faced a 13-point deficit in the final two minutes, and as things looked bleaker and bleaker with each second that ticked off the clock, a spark was lit under the entire team, fueling a highly improbable comeback in the game’s waning moments. A much-needed victory as the Blue and White entered the second half of the season, that spark from the Richmond game burned even brighter as the season progressed. 

Before defensive coordinators knew what had hit them, Team 147’s offense soared to a level of production unlike anything the team had experienced in the last 146 years of existence. With Rawlings and the receiving tag-team of captain JP Shohfi ’20 and Reed Klubnik ’20 at the helm, the trio of players wreaked havoc on every defensive secondary and broke every school passing and receiving record in the process. Yale scored a game average of more than 50 points in the four weeks leading up to a crucial, season-defining date with the Harvard Crimson. 

Needing a win against their Cambridge rival to close out the season as Ivy League co-champions, the Bulldogs found themselves facing a daunting 17-point fourth-quarter deficit. In what was a double-overtime, four-and-a-half-hour instant-classic that saw everything from half-time protests to dramatic onside kick recoveries, the Elis snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and secured a share of the Ivy League title alongside Dartmouth.

“Coming into overtime, we were so confident in ourselves,” Shohfi told the media in a post-game conference. “We had confidence all throughout the game, but especially at that moment. We were ready to go, it didn’t matter whether there were lights or not, it didn’t matter what time of day it was. We were ready to go again and again and again. It also didn’t matter what the score read, we were just going to keep going until the clock read zero. That was one of the most special experiences that I have ever been a part of.” 

Yale entered 2020 poised to defend its Ivy League crown, though things quickly took a turn for the worse. A pandemic consumed the globe and forced the Ivy League to make a swift decision to cancel fall sports altogether in 2020. 

With the pandemic shutting down Ivy League football, the Yale football program had to contend with the school’s newly instituted measures that strictly directed how the team would be able to partake in training while on campus. The phased practice approach, as it was called, allowed the Bulldogs to continue practices as long as the practices were in accordance with institutional restrictions — no indoor gatherings of more than 10 people, physical distancing and face-covering requirements.

As members of the team returned to football this past spring, training was designed to be more intense than previous spring semesters in an effort to prepare the players for competitive play, as opposed to helping them recuperate from a long season. In the second semester, changes were made to the Ivy League’s phased plan that, most notably, allowed sport-specific activities permissible in Phase I. This led to marked differences in the training sessions that head coach Reno carried out this past spring.

“There are stark differences in what we’ve been doing in the spring compared to the fall,” Reno told the News this past April. “We’re practicing with helmets and using footballs, which has allowed us to work a lot on individual skills and drills specific to positions. Even in years past under non-COVID-19 situations, most of those spring drills would be done without the use of football helmets. These practices have really allowed players that have been away from the game for over a year to begin to ease their way back into it.” 

Reno also made sure to emphasize to the News the confidence he has in the physical and mental state of his team, adding that they will be more than prepared to play competitive football this fall. 

The last time Yale took the field at the Yale Bowl was against Harvard Nov. 23, 2019, a contest that saw the Bulldogs pull out a 50-43 victory in double overtime.