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BGA readers came through with questions for Coach Sammy McCorkle and he kindly answered a representative selection of those questions after Wednesday’s practice. What follows is a gently edited transcript of his answers to your questions. Where similar questions were asked they were combined.
And keeping with the theme, we begin the Q&A with a couple of questions I asked Wednesday coming out of last week’s loss to Monmouth.
Q: What are your thoughts looking back at that game?
HANOVER – While The Pessimist chats up their usual server at the door, The Optimist sits impatiently at the usual table studying a sheet of paper he brought from home.
When The Pessimist finally sits down The Optimist immediately slides the paper in front of his old friend.
It’s Monday, and that means it’s time for your weekly Six Pack–plus one look at Dartmouth football after week two of the season, so buckle up.
1) Might as well start with the big one. It says here that Dartmouth has to be
HANOVER – If retooling a football team that took a heavy graduation hit is a little like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, Dartmouth found one of the most important missing pieces in Saturday’s loss to Monmouth.
HANOVER – The concept was sound against a team that a week earlier had scored touchdowns on 60- and 46-yard passes. Stop the big play and see if a Monmouth team seemingly not built to play ball control can beat you with extended drives.
Turns out they could.
HANOVER – Sammy McCorkle answered the way you’d probably expect him to answer.
The question: Are you one of those coaches who believes a team’s biggest improvement is between the first game and the second?
HANOVER – There is something satisfying about picking upsets. That said, it’s certainly a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. Get an upset right, and you are a genius. But pick too many underdogs and you come across as a dolt.
Hello friends, dolt here.
HANOVER – For the second week in a row the old guys show up at their meeting place at exactly the same time. That’s a little out of the ordinary. Usually the happy one comes through the door and finds their table first.
The Optimist: Kind of like coach, I’m not into moral victories, but for a first game against a seasoned, undefeated and nationally ranked team, that was a pretty good day.
Here's your weekly half dozen observations between the Lehigh and Monmouth games.
1) The value of a talented, veteran quarterback was on full display Saturday, and never so much as on third down. Dartmouth was 9-of-14 on third down conversions and as you would expect, Grayson Saunier was a big reason why. His third down completions that brought a new set of downs:
• eight yards (on 3rd and 5)Saunier also ran for first downs on 3rd and 1, and for 10 yards on a must-have 4th and 10 at the end.
• 15 yards (3rd and 14)
• 19 yards (3rd and 9)
• 28 yards (3rd and 10)
• 30 yards (3rd and 11).
HANOVER – Given how monumental a win it would have been knocking off the No. 7 team in the nation on its home field, and how crushing the last-second loss ended up being, you might wonder how Dartmouth quarterback Grayson Saunier will bounce back from his game-sealing interception at the end.
But while you might wonder, his fellow co-captain Harrison Keith wouldn't.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – In 1997, Lehigh rolled into Hanover and handed Dartmouth a loss that snapped the longest unbeaten streak in the nation at 23 games. Twenty-nine years later, the Big Green was on the cusp of returning the favor and ending the nation’s longest regular-season winning streak on the Mountain Hawks’ home field.
Taking over at his own 20 with 1:38 left in regulation and his team down four points, Dartmouth’s Grayson Saunier surgically picked apart the Lehigh defense, completing four of five throws while driving the Big Green to the Lehigh 26. There were only 19 seconds remaining, but the way Saunier was running the two-minute drill, it felt like it would take a Herculean play for the Mountain Hawks to hold on.
That’s exactly what they got.
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – If Dartmouth needs proof that an Ivy League team playing its opener can knock off a nationally ranked team that already has three games under its belt, it doesn’t have to look back very far.
Or very far away.
Just 364 days ago, the Big Green opened its season on Memorial Field with a 27-20 win over No. 23 New Hampshire.
HANOVER – What does it say that the Fearful Forecast finished the final week of the 2025 season picking all three games that featured Dartmouth’s nonconference opponents correctly, but going 1-2 in Ivy League games?
What it may say is the Ivy League really is the Any Given Saturday conference – even if some games are played on Fridays.
Editor’s Note: The Optimist and The Pessimist made their debut even before Big Green Alert started in 2005. When you visualize the pair, think of Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy old guys from The Muppets.
The Optimist, as you might have surmised, is 100 percent convinced Dartmouth is going to win every time out. And even if he’s not, he’s going to tell you why they will win.
BGA had detailed previews of each Ivy League team last month. Here is more of a capsule look at each team, with updates where available.
The "Bottom line" projection for each team in the 2026 season is carried over from the individual previews, with only minor changes.
The BGA season prediction for the Ivy League race is at the bottom of this lengthy post.
HANOVER – Season previews frequently begin with the number of starters lost and the number of starters returning. It is a silly convention because there’s no universal definition of what constitutes a starter.
If your first play on offense is in a 13-personnel set, are all three tight ends credited as being starters for that particular game? If you usually play a 4-3 defense but change things up and open with a 3-4, is one of your regular starters up front who plays pretty much the rest of the game not credited with a start?
HANOVER – Urgency.
If there’s one word Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle stressed to his team throughout the spring and the preseason, that was it.
McCorkle didn’t have to mention it to his players on Sunday afternoon.
It’s what they were all about.
HANOVER – About the only thing missing was the Lehigh fight song.
Then again, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if operations director Dino Cauteruccio or social media guru Zach Pierson dug up a recording of Rearing Tearing and played it over the sound system at Memorial Field:
Rearing, Tearing down the field, down the field,
Lehigh's team will never yield, never yield,
Past the last white line that marks the goal,
And brings a victory again to old Lehigh
 |
| The flag stays in the official's pocket on this kick. |
HANOVER – It wasn’t perfect. Name the coach, it never is.
That said, Dartmouth's final "preseason" practice Friday was a very good way to turn the page to "game week" according to coach Sammy McCorkle.
HANOVER – You can spend a lot of time at Dartmouth practices, and it’s a pretty safe bet you will never hear the sweet harmony of Crosby, Still, Nash & Young coming out of the huge boom box on the sidelines.
Still, it would only be fitting if a lyric from the group’s 1970 album Déjà Vu echoed through Buddy Teevens Stadium one afternoon:
HANOVER – It’s easy from the sidelines to see wide receivers breaking free, how accurate the quarterbacks are, who is knocking down passes, and which defensive ends are bear-hugging running backs.
It’s a little harder to see what happens in the trenches, which is something that caught Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle’s attention in film review from Monday’s second scrimmage of the preseason.
HANOVER – What’s the opposite of, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts?”
Whatever it is, it tells the story of Dartmouth’s second scrimmage of the preseason.
HANOVER – On days when a Dartmouth football practice went particularly well and someone made an outstanding play in the final minute – or even sometimes two minutes – Buddy Teevens would sometimes blow the whistle to end the practice.
The players would cheer lustily, not because they were being cut much a break, but rather because they knew they had put together the kind of practice Teevens wanted to see.
The weather had finally turned, and he was on a spring recruiting trip when an old friend pointed out something he’d already discovered on his own.
“This was at a big high school combine with 50 different schools there,” recalled Montgomery. “A coach from the SEC who I’ve known for a long time told me, ‘I’ve been on the phone trying to get transfers for two months. I’ve neglected our players.’
“He said, ‘Shane, I envy you. You might have the best job of anybody here.’ ”
HANOVER – With the benefit of video review and 48 hours to reflect on the first scrimmage of the camp, Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle gave it a passing grade after Friday’s practice, much as he did in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s action.
“We had some guys step up that we need to step up, guys that we’re counting on to play for us this year,” he said. “Assignment-wise, we didn’t have many busts, which was good. We’ve still got some stuff we’re putting in, but overall I thought the guys knew where to be and how to line up.
“I liked the physicality. The guys did a good job of getting after each other. That’s always important and will be important for us this fall.”
HANOVER – You might say it was a meaningless play featuring freshmen at the end of a meaningless scrimmage.
And you would be wrong.
On all accounts.
HANOVER – Dartmouth finished final exams on Monday.
Midterms are on Wednesday.
Confused yet? Listen to what Big Green coach Sammy McCorkle had to say Tuesday morning after the final practice ahead of the first of two preseason scrimmages.