BGA Overtime is the successor to BGA Premium, a site that covered Dartmouth football with daily stories starting in 2005. The OT is written and edited by Bruce Wood, a former beat writer who has covered Dartmouth sports since the early 1980s. It is not affiliated with Dartmouth College and is supported by your generous donations..
HANOVER – The problem for football coaches in an intrasquad game is, if the offense is looking like world beaters, you start worrying about your defense.
And if the defense is dominating, you can’t help but worry about your offense.
All of which is why the series bridging the third and fourth quarters of Saturday’s highly entertaining Green-White Game played out almost perfectly in Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle’s view.
HANOVER – In part because it led to the poaching of their players in the transfer portal, a significant number of FBS football coaches stopped holding spring games and replaced them with one final practice.
The NCAA closed the second portal window this year but the number of spring games at the FBS level still continued to fall.
As they used to say in these parts, “It’s different at Dartmouth.”
HANOVER – The goal for Dartmouth’s final week of spring football is to reach a crescendo in Saturday’s Green-White Game.
Unfortunately, getting to that point might be a little easier than expected after the week kicked off Tuesday with practice coach Sammy McCorkle finding the offensive performance flat.
HANOVER – Sammy McCorkle came into the ninth practice of the spring with one clear objective and added a second along the way.
Mission accomplished.
Make that missions – plural – accomplished.
Over 15 seasons as Dartmouth’s defensive coordinator, Don Dobes posted up on Memorial Field’s home sideline for 75 Big Green games.
But he’s logged upwards of 1,000 practices – counting the spring, preseason and in season sessions – almost exclusively on the other side of the field.
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| Sammy McCorkle keeps an eye on the proceedings Tuesday. |
HANOVER – Sammy McCorkle's most forceful message to the Dartmouth football players Tuesday evening after they returned to the field following their "bye" week was much the same as it has been all spring.
And all last year.
And all through his tenure as head coach, for that matter.
HANOVER – If you’ve been following along, you read the other day that Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle made a point of avoiding the word “concern” while talking about rebuilding an offensive line that lost four of five starters to graduation.
After passing the midway point of spring practice Saturday morning, there was another word McCorkle avoided when talking about his coaches heading out recruiting during the team's week off.
Oops.
HANOVER – At the end of the first week of spring practice, Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle fielded a question about what positional “room” concerns him most at this juncture.
He pointed to one area, but cautioned against calling it a concern.
Dartmouth's fourth practice of the spring was moved to the early morning hours because the forecast in the usual 5 p.m. time slot indicated a strong possibility of a thunderstorm. As it turned out, the audible was a good idea because the forecast got it right.
Given pleasant weather at 6 a.m., the practice was held on Memorial Field where Zach Pierson, the Dartmouth program's manager of content services for football, put his camera to work and produced some epic photos.
These pictures were posted on the Dartmouth football Xwitter page as well as its Instagram page. Because a lot of Dartmouth fans do not visit those sites, the photos are reproduced here to help them get the viewership they deserve.
Huge kudos to Zach for his work producing these images from the first full-pad practice of the spring. Click on the photos for a better look.
BGA will be back at practice Thursday for a look at how full-padded sessions are going, and again Saturday for a breakdown of the first half of spring practice.
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| Jordan Belfori, linebackers coach and defensive coordinators, gives instruction to Sean Chester and the other Big Green linebackers. |
HANOVER – Dartmouth wrapped up the first week of spring football on a blustery Saturday morning, and coach Sammy McCorkle is hopeful the blue-chip prospects on campus doing official visits were impressed, because he was.
“We had a better day out here,” McCorkle said. “We were a little bit more of a well-oiled machine. You could see the growth from our first day. Each practice we’ve gotten better and better.
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| Offensive line coach Keith Clark watches a drill closely. |
HANOVER – There were a good number of high school juniors on unofficial visits gathered around the midfield huddle at the end of practice Thursday listening to the parting message Sammy McCorkle had for his players after the second of 12 spring sessions.
You didn’t need to be that close to hear what the head coach had to say.
HANOVER – Sammy McCorkle has no doubt been asked what kind of impact the many changes in the Dartmouth coaching staff will have on the Big Green this year.
What he may not have been asked – at least until Wednesday morning's delayed start of spring practice – is how bringing in no fewer than five new position coaches along with two new quality control coaches, impacts him.
