ESTES

Brown must play its best football of the season on Saturday to beat undefeated Yale and remain in the race for the Ivy League championship.

“We have to play inspired football from here on in,” said coach Phil Estes, whose Bears are 3-4 overall, 2-2 in the Ivy League, after their 31-17 victory over Penn last week.

Yale, 7-0 overall for the first time since 1981 and 4-0 in the league, is ranked No. 15 in the Sports Network FCS poll and number four in the ECAC Lambert Championship Subdivision poll this week.

This could be the best Yale team Brown has played in Estes’ 10 years as head coach. The Bulldogs are third in the nation in rushing (302.9 yards per game) and feature the nation’s leading runner in Mike McLeod (182.4). They lead the Ivy League in scoring (34.9), scoring defense (12.4), total defense (273.7), first downs (153), fourth-down conversions (6-6), field goals (11-13), PATs (29-29), time of possession (35 minutes per game) and red-zone offense (31-34, 91.2 percent). They are tied with Harvard for the lead in turnover margin (plus-12) and are second in pass defense (177.1), rushing defense (96.6), total offense (428.3), red-zone defense (11-16, 68.8 percent) and third-down conversions (48-107, 44.9 percent).

In addition to McLeod, Yale has the fifth-best rusher in the Ivy League in quarterback Matt Polhemus, who is averaging 49.6 yards per game.

“McLeod and Polhemus are a two-man wrecking ball,” Estes said. “McLeod gets his 150 yards and three touchdowns, and Polhemus gets two touchdowns with his feet or throwing it. The defense leads the league in every category. They create turnovers. They’re very aggressive. They sit back in the zone and wait for you to make a mistake. They don’t give you a lot of possessions, so you have to make plays on the possessions you have.”

McLeod, a 5-foot-11, 200-pound junior from New Britain, Conn., is rewriting the Yale record book. He holds the career record for touchdowns (47) and needs only 64 yards to break Robert Carr’s career mark (3,393) and 166 to break Rich Diana’s single-season record (1,442). He needs three touchdowns to tie Ed Marinaro’s Ivy League record of 24 in a season and 604 yards to tie Marinaro’s single-season Ivy rushing record (1,881). He needs seven touchdowns to tie Nick Hartigan’s career Ivy record (54).

Estes remembers McLeod as a faking, fancy runner when he was a freshman in 2005. He gained 689 yards and scored six touchdowns that season. Last year he became more of a power runner, gained 1,364 yards and rushed for 19 touchdowns. This year the transformation is complete.

“Now when he commits, he’ll go downhill and run you over. He’ll make you tackle him. We’ll have to put three or four guys on him because if you try to put an arm on him, you’re not going to take him down,” Estes said.

McLeod runs behind fullback Joe Fuccillo, a punishing blocker with a team-leading 62 knockdowns. He hits so hard that he has smashed seven of his own facemasks and cracked two of his helmets. He scored his first career touchdown Oct. 6 against Dartmouth on his first carry of the season.

mszostak@projo.com