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Dartmouth 56, Brown 28

HANOVER — Quarterback Jackson Proctor found Chris Corbo for a 20-yard touchdown with three seconds left in the second quarter to give the Dartmouth football team a seven-point lead, and the Big Green wouldn’t look back, downing Brown 56-28 on Saturday afternoon.

The victory plus Harvard’s loss to Yale gave Dartmouth a share of the Ivy League Championship for a second straight year and fourth time in the last five seasons, upping its all-time Ivy leading total to 22. Proctor finished the day with seven touchdowns to tie a program record, four passing and three rushing.

GAME STATISTICS

Proctor was 18 of 26 through the air for a career-high 308 yards and four touchdowns. On the ground, he had 13 carries for 171 yards, giving him 479 yards of offense — a program record and 13th in Ivy League history.

“We trusted it all week and we had a good game plan going into the game,” Proctor said. “The O line did a great job, the receivers caught the ball, the running backs did a great job. We couldn’t have done it without any of these guys.”

Proctor’s seven touchdowns tie the Dartmouth football record of seven scores originally set by Fred Jennings in 1898.

Grayson O’Bara enjoyed a career day receiving with four catches for 124 yards and two scores. Daniel Haughton had a team-high five catches for 62 yards. Defensively, Danny Cronin led the way with nine tackles, with Micah Green adding seven. Jordan Washington returned an interception for a touchdown while Jamal Cooper also had a pick.

“Elated,” Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle said. “I can’t say enough about how proud I am of this football team, our players our coaches, our entire support staff, administration, across the board. It took everybody to put us in this situation to have a chance to finish the way we did this season. Like I told the players out there, it’s hard to find the words to say how proud you are of a group of guys who have just battled every week.

“They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do. Ever since last season ended, we said if you’re ready to set the bar higher, we need to set it higher, but you’ve better be ready to do what it takes. Not once did they question anything, not once did they not give every ounce of energy to try and raise the bar.”

The Big Green completed the season at 8-2 and 5-2 in the Ivy League, finishing in a three-way tie for first with Harvard and Columbia. Yale defeated the Crimson 34-29 at Harvard on Saturday.

“[The championship] means everything to us,” said defensive lineman Ejike Adele. “Obviously, we never want to tie. We always want to go 10-0. The way this team did it was incredible. All the things that we’ve gone through, especially us as a class, the past few years and for it to culminate in this, we’re just so happy that it ended up like this.”

Dartmouth took care of business early on Saturday, with Proctor finding O’Bara from 13 yards out on its first drive of the game. That capped off a seven-play, 73-yard drive. The defenses took over for the rest of the quarter until Proctor found Painter Richards-Baker from 35 yards away early in the second quarter.

Midway through the second quarter, a high snap over punter Davis Golick’s head lead to Brown getting the ball at the Dartmouth 9-yard line. The Bears capitalized with a 2-yard Jake Wilcox run. Brown went on to pull even with 55 seconds left in the stanza, capping off a six-play, 61-yard drive with a Ty Holtz 1-yard touchdown run, making the score 14 apiece.

The Big Green had a big answer to get momentum right back before the halftime break, driving 75 yards on six plays. Proctor connected with O’Bara for 30 yards to reach the Bears’ 20-yard line. Two plays later, Proctor found Corbo from 20 yards out, giving Corbo his seventh touchdown of the season and Dartmouth a 21-14 halftime lead.

The momentum continued to roll in the third quarter, with Dartmouth taking just three plays to go 75 yards. On 3rd-and-7, Proctor found O’Bara for 72 yards and a 28-14 Big Green lead less than one minute in.

The Bears’ next drive had eight plays, but it ended with a pick-six, courtesy of Jordan Washington, who returned it 58 yards into the end zone and a 35-14 Big Green advantage.

That score remained until the teams traded touchdowns over the final 2:55 of the third, with Brown scoring at 2:55 and 0:44, with the Big Green adding one at 2:32. Dartmouth’s came via a 75-yard touchdown run from Proctor, his second 75+ yard touchdown run against Brown in as many years (last year was a 78-yarder).

The Big Green erased any doubt by outscoring Brown 14-0 in the fourth quarter, both via Proctor touchdown scampers, good for the 56-28 final.

For the game, Dartmouth held a 552-427 edge in total yards, including 244-66 rushing. Brown held a 361-308 advantage through the air.

“It didn’t go perfectly all season; there were a couple times we could have packed it in, could have given up,” said McCorkle. “But you heard it from a couple of these guys, we’re built differently. The tough times we’ve had to go through these last few years has put us in a situation where we know we have to help each other.

“You can see the way we played today; we took care of each other,” McCorkle continued. “To be able to finish the way we did today, I didn’t want to think about it all week. It was hard. Didn’t want to talk about it, but obviously you have it in the back of your mind. Glad that it happened the way it did.”

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Proctor’s seven total touchdowns are tied for most in program history with Fred Jennings in 1898 against Amherst (a 64-6 Dartmouth victory). … His 479 yards are tops for the Big Green, tied for 13th in Ivy League history. It was 4 yards from the top 10, with the Ivy record being 538. … With his 64 yards on Saturday, Q Jones finished his Dartmouth career with 1,728 rushing yards, which is good for eighth in program history. … McCorkle is the third coach to win an Ivy League title in each of his first two seasons, the others being Penn’s Ray Priore (2015 and 2016) and Dartmouth’s own Jake Crouthamel (1971, 1972 and 1973). … Corbo’s seven touchdown receptions on the season are most by a Big Green player since Drew Estrada had eight in 2019. … O’Bara became the third Dartmouth player to eclipse 100 receiving yards this season (along with Paxton Scott and Haughton). … As a team, the Big Green’s 56 points marked its most since scoring 59 in a 59-24 win over Columbia on Oct. 25, 2019.

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