Early in the third quarter, with the Dartmouth offense facing a third and short, the offense put the ball in the hands of running back Q Jones ’25 for the fourth consecutive time.
Jones ducked under a falling tight end Sean Ward ’26, side-stepped to his right and found himself with nothing but green grass in front of him. He turned on the jets and burst through the wide open gap straight to the endzone.
Now that was a Q Jones special.
Jones lit up Columbia University’s number-one Ivy League rushing defense for a career-high 182 yards and a touchdown on only 19 attempts — helping to spoil Columbia’s homecoming with a 24-21 victory. The win makes Dartmouth the outright leader of the Ivy League and extends its undefeated season to 6-0.
“Like I always say, my one job is just to hit the hole,” Jones said postgame. “And, fortunately, today in the trenches they were handling their business. … For me, I was seeing the hole, and I was just hitting it.”
After a scoreless first quarter, Dartmouth’s defense took control of the game in the second, intercepting Columbia quarterback Chase Goodwin twice. Cornerback Tyson Grimm ’26 recorded his first career interception to halt a driving Columbia deep in Dartmouth’s own territory.
“We’ve been waiting on these turnovers all season long,” Grimm said. “We had a great week of practice harping on the fact that we need the ball. … Finally getting it going today and putting together some turnovers was great for our defense.”
The Big Green offense took advantage of the takeaways, jumping out to a 10-0 lead off the back of a field goal from Owen Zalc ’27 and a touchdown pass from Grayson Saunier ’27 to Chris Corbo ’26 — Corbo’s fourth touchdown of the season. Saunier played efficiently, completing 10 of his 15 passes for 70 yards and adding 35 yards on the ground.
Out of the break, Dartmouth kept its momentum with a dominant drive by Jones, who rattled off four straight carries for 69 yards, including the 35-yard house call, to put Dartmouth up by 17. Late in the third, Dartmouth seemingly put the game out of reach as running back D.J. Crowther ’25 capped off another outstanding drive by the Big Green with a 36-yard touchdown to make it 24-7.
Columbia, with the help of 82 yards’ worth of penalties from the Dartmouth defense, came back late in the fourth quarter as quarterback Cole Freeman — replacing an injured Goodwin — and leading receiver Bryson Canty engineered three touchdown drives to put the Lions within three.
With less than a minute left, Columbia’s last-gasp onside kick landed safely in the hands of Dartmouth defensive back Sean Williams ’26, sealing the game.
While all three units of the Big Green have impressed this season, penalties have been a recurring issue, with the team amassing 45 fouls in six games thus far. On Saturday, it was disciplinary penalties, including multiple personal fouls against veteran defensive lineman Josiah Green ’25, that caused the bulk of the damage.
“He plays with a lot of energy, a lot of intensity, and he’s an aggressive football player,” head coach Sammy McCorkle said about Green. “You don’t ever want to extinguish that, but you have to be able to control that.”
Aside from the penalties, Green and the defensive line were stout upfront, limiting Columbia’s strong running attack — which has averaged more than 170 yards per game — to just 84 yards. The unit was also disruptive in the passing game, with four quarterback sacks and seven tackles for loss.
“[The defensive line is] aggressive, relentless, always vertical,” Grimm said. “They did a great job, and it just makes our job easier in the back end.”
Dartmouth will aim to continue its undefeated season and stay atop the Ivy League with a tough slate of games ahead of them. The Big Green faces the red-hot Harvard University Crimson — which demolished Princeton 45-13 in their last game — next week in its highly anticipated homecoming game.
