It’s late October in Manhattan and the Dartmouth football team’s defense, which held Columbia scoreless in the first half, had forced a three-and-out to begin the third quarter. Out trotted Lions punter William Hughes to boot the ball back to the Big Green offense. The half-minute chess match had begun.

Dartmouth’s punt rush unit shuffled all over the field, each movement seemingly eliciting a different reaction from one of Columbia’s players at the line of scrimmage. Fingers were pointed, assignments were identified and altered, the Lions’ formation rearranging in response to the Big Green’s continual movement. Columbia ended up changing its punt protection not once, not twice, but three separate times. By the third adjustment, the play clock had run out.

The ESPN+ broadcasting crew was bewildered by the Lions’ error. Did Columbia have to accommodate a late 11th entrant on the field? No. Did Hughes, now standing inside his own 15-yard line, need the extra space? Nope. So why was Columbia backing up toward its end zone, effectively giving five free yards to the Dartmouth offense?

You have to go all the way back to the spring to find your answer. Before the game-clinching plays, before the five player of the week honors, before the budding of a new energy within the special teams room, assistant coach Joe Castellitto earned a promotion and outlined a clear vision. Everything that has unfolded this fall is a byproduct of that preseason shift.

“(It’s) a culture of controlled and smart insanity,” said senior linebacker Braden Mullen.

Under the tutelage of the team’s current head coach, Sammy McCorkle, Dartmouth’s special teams was “a hell of a unit,” Mullen said. McCorkle’s affinity for the oft-billed third phase of the game, dating all the way back to his days as a player in Gainesville, Fla., for the Gators, is well documented. 

In his search for the program’s special teams coordinator ahead of the 2024 campaign, McCorkle wanted to find someone who understood the importance of the unit. The second-year coach forecasted the trickle-down effect Castellitto’s coaching style, namely his energy and excitement, would have in the room. He was right.

Castellitto, who was hired in March 2023 to coach the nickelbacks, oversaw the punt rush and field goal block units during his first year in Hanover. He was given free reign entering Year 2. He knew he wanted to be on the attack. He wanted to keep opposing special teams coordinators constantly guessing. Nothing — not even the act of punting the ball away — would be viewed as passive. 

“He had a meeting, talked for a minute, and just pretty much told us, ‘Hey, man, I’m gonna work my ass off to make sure this is the best unit that it can possibly be,’” Mullen recounted. “‘And I’m gonna ask for the same thing from you guys and if you don’t give me that, I’m gonna point it out. And if I don’t give you that, I want one of you to point it out.’”

Castellitto, a former linebacker at Utica University during the mid-2010s and later an assistant coach at Central Connecticut State and UConn, said he’s always been a guy with a lot of energy. He wanted his players to match that. So he brought “the juice,” he said.

The shift in vibes was immediately evident. Where players might have dreaded meetings in the past — some even falling asleep — there was a new excitement and energy, sophomore kicker Matisse Weaver said. 

“We would start a special teams meeting off and everybody would be screaming and cheering,” said sophomore kicker Owen Zalc, who earned a first team All-Ivy nod as a freshman and has hit 13 of his 17 field goal attempts this season. “You brought the energy (because) you’re excited to be on special teams. It’s not just the extra phase … you get the chance to be on special teams here.”

Castellitto could feel it too. Before breaking for the special teams period of practice, he could sense the anticipation. The players had bought in.

“Out on the field, we have our personal protectors getting in the calls, we have our holder, who is super stoked to be out there every single time,” said Weaver, who leads the Ivy League in touchback percentage, with 32 of his 48 kickoffs unreturned. “You have people that aren’t necessarily the people making plays being super invested. … Everyone just really loves it, and that starts with coach (Castellitto).”

The juice had trickled down, now it was time for the on-field payoff. 

Senior punter Davis Golick, a starter since midway through his freshman year, had previously joked with the coaching staff about rugby punting, Castellitto said. In the second-year coach’s efforts to stress opposing special teams coordinators — Castellitto estimates the team has come out with 30 different punt formations this season — he wanted to try rolling out on punts, which meant tasking Golick with the responsibility to adapt. 

The Georgia native was up to the challenge.

Golick is averaging a career-best 41.2 yards per punt this season, a mark that ranks second in the conference. Castellitto finds it ironic that Golick’s best boots this season have come on rugby punts, including two that were instrumental in Dartmouth’s win over Princeton on Nov. 8. 

Golick’s career-high 62-yarder precipitated a Mullen fumble recovery in Tigers territory and an eventual touchdown from the Big Green offense. His 59-yard punt late in the fourth quarter pinned Princeton at its own 2-yard line. Just three plays later, the Dartmouth defense forced a safety. 

For Mullen, those two sequences aptly illustrate “the world of difference” special teams can make and the “waterfall effect” the unit has on a game. The potential for success comes down to the lens in which teams view special teams as a task vs. as an opportunity, according to Mullen. At Dartmouth, it’s the latter, he said.

“Even though it’s less plays per game, the ball moves so much on special teams, and there’s so much opportunity to get the ball where you want it,” said Mullen, who is currently serving as the team’s long snapper following starter Andy Belles’ injury. “That’s really what coach (Castellitto) emphasizes: How can we put that ball in the best position for our offense and defense?”

Said Golick: “You see the payoff when you have that attitude team wide: that special teams is not an afterthought. It’s not a complement to an offensive or defensive performance. It’s an entire phase that can make or break a game. You definitely see the results.”

Whether it’s the unit’s imprint on the Princeton game or Zalc’s late-game heroics or Weaver’s kickoff consistency, the results have been apparent to Castellitto and Dartmouth throughout the season. 

In typical coaching fashion, though, the plays Castellitto gets most excited about are the ones where “the things we’re teaching are showing up on film.” When the Big Green force a delay of game penalty on an opponent’s punt like they did against Columbia, or all 11 players do the “technique they were coached” on a short Merrimack punt return, that’s when Castellitto gets fired up.

Ahead of the senior day festivities and regular season finale against Brown at Buddy Teevens Stadium at Memorial Field on Saturday — an Ivy League title still in play with a win and a Yale victory over Harvard — Dartmouth’s special teams unit will look to be on the attack one final time this fall, just like Castellitto envisioned last spring.

“Some of these guys don’t play as much, some of them play a lot,” Castellitto said. “When they reap the rewards of us winning a football game and having a positive impact on it, that’s what gets me most excited, more so than anything else.

“I love when special teams have success, but I love when Dartmouth football has success.”

Alex Cervantes can be reached at acervantes@vnews.com or 603-727-7302.