Dartmouth 14, Yale 10
Dartmouth did it the hard way again, coming from behind in the second half and erasing a 10-0 deficit in the Yale Bowl, and then fighting off a desperate Yale rally in the closing moments of the game. The Indians even followed the script of the Harvard game to the extent of having Gene Howard the hero of the Yale encounter too. Both touchdowns were scored by the mercurial quarterback, who played the entire game on offense and produced the most exciting single foray of the contest with his 55-yard dash in the final period through the entire Yale team and into the end zone.
The afternoon was marked by anything but ideal conditions for players and spectators alike. The first half was played in a steady rain, which gradually turned to snow in the second half, a fact which seemed to inspire the boys from Hanover, as they reveled in this familiar medium. It had snowed heavily on the Hanover plain the Thursday before the game, and the Indians were thus presumably acclimated to this environment when they encountered it in the Bowl. Whatever the role of the atmospheric conditions, Dartmouth was a second half team again and pulled another one out of the fire. This was the fourth consecutive victory over Yale and the fourth consecutive victory for the Dartmouth aggregation this season.
The game started out in dismal fashion for the partisans of the Green. Early in the first quarter, Dartmouth was forced to punt on fourth down from their own 13yard line. A bad pass from center interfered with Howard's getting the ball off, and it was blocked and recovered by Captain Bob Spears of Yale on the Green 2. One try at the line failed, but on the second attempt the Yale quarterback went over and, following the conversion, Yale led 7-0. In the waning seconds of the first half, the Yales stormed down into the shadow of the Dartmouth goal and, with 15 seconds remaining, kicked a field goal for a (seemingly) comfortable 10 point margin. During both of these initial periods, the Elis had pounded the Dartmouth line for several sequences of short gains and it looked as if the Green forward wall would eventually be smashed into submission. Furthermore, the line had not been opening the holes to let the backs go tearing by so the Dartmouth running attack had been slowed to a walk in the first half. Things looked bad for the Green.
In the snowy third period, with more seasonable surroundings, the Dartmouth team began to move. One of the chief instruments in the 65-yard advance was Dick Brown, who was sent in at halfback instead of quarterback, where he has been not playing most of the year. Brown is too good a football player to languish on the bench, behind both Howard and Miller, and it was a happy inspiration to let him carry the ball from the halfback post. In this advance, Howard also exercised his option of running or passing and ran the ball for several good gains before he finally went over from the 1-yard line for Dartmouth's first touchdown. Hank Fry converted and the score was 10-7.
In the fourth period, Yale was held for downs twice within the Dartmouth 20yard line, a feat that indicated how well the holes in the line had been plugged since the first half. The work of sophomore line-backer Bayard Johnson was especially noteworthy in this connection, as was the stellar defensive play of Fred Fedeli at end. After the first Yale attempt had been stopped, Dartmouth took over and brought the ball from their own 20 to their own 45. At that point, Howard took off. Starting from behind the line on what purported to be a pass play, he went toward the right, then reversed his field, filtered into the Yale secondary and, helped by a couple of key blocks, went all the way. Fry converted again and Dartmouth led for the first time in the game by what proved to be the final score, 14-10.
The Green spectators had another series of harrowing final moments, similar to those the week before in the Harvard Stadium, when, with time running out, Yale stormed desperately down toward the Dartmouth goal. Clicking off one first down after another as the clock ran out, it looked as if the home forces might still pull this one out. The winning TD was, as it were, on third base, with the ball on the Dartmouth 11. But some inspired work by the eight-man Dartmouth line, plus a costly partial fumble by Yale's Captain Spears, staved off a last-minute triumph by the boys in Blue. With less than a minute to go, Dartmouth took over and Howard happily ran out the clock in a succession of time-consuming quarterback sneaks through the center of the line.
In view of the weather conditions, there were few fancy maneuvers in this contest. Only six passes were attempted all afternoon, with Dartmouth trying two and completing one for 13 yards, and Yale failing to make a single completion on four attempts. Yale was ahead in first downs, 17 to 13, due largely to their steady pounding during the first half. Dartmouth gained 347 yards rushing, as against 263 for Yale. The game was singularly free of fumbles, in view of the conditions, with Yale losing the ball only once by this means and Dartmouth not at all. The slippery status of the field and the ball encouraged the quarterbacks to run with the latter more often than is usual under conditions of the T formation. In Dartmouth's case, this proved to be a fine idea.
DARTMOUTH TOUCHDOWN SEQUENCE AT YALE: (Top) Dick Brown (27) carries 7 yards for first down on the Yale 4-yard line in the third period. (Middle) Charlie Curtis (46) advances the ball to the 1-yard line. (Bottom) Gene Howard plunges over for the first Green score. In the final period Howard went off tackle for 55 yards and the winning touchdown.
BOMM GOES BOOM at Baker Field. Columbia's star end, Wes Bomm (80), was thwarted by Dartmouth's center Bayard Johnson (51) on this pass play. Halfback A1 Reich (93) and Dick Danneman (83), Lion end,, are also shown.
