Battered Crimson Still a Target

If this were any other football program, the Crimson would have been written off a few weeks ago. When a team is embarrassingly upset in its Ivy opener and then proceeds to lose starter after starter to injury in the days that follow, that’s often enough for the naysayers’ voices to rise up and herald the early end of a promising season.

But this isn’t any football program. This is Harvard, and despite the team’s personnel struggles and 3-2 record, the Crimson is still coming out every week with a target on its back.

“I have so much respect for [Harvard coach] Tim Murphy and this football program here,” Lehigh coach Andy Coen said. “I think it’s become a neat little rivalry for us, and we’d love to get back to playing Harvard down the road. So it means a lot to me that we were able to beat Harvard.”

It seems that every week in the postgame press conference, everyone’s got a lot of respect for the Crimson. And it’s a respect that’s well-earned, since Harvard had the second-best winning percentage in the FCS in the last decade (.768), second only to the University of Montana.

But right now, that respect is coming back to bite the Crimson a little bit, because dinged up as Harvard may be, no opponent will overlook it.

Just 12 of the 22 positional starters in the season-opening win against Holy Cross were in the starting lineup on Saturday. The Crimson has been without seniors quarterback Andrew Hatch and wideout Chris Lorditch for three games, senior receiver Marco Iannuzzi, junior linebacker Blaise Deal, and sophomore cornerback D.J. Monroe for two games, and junior corner Matt Hanson joined the street-clothes crew on Saturday. Throw in the preseason loss of incumbent starting quarterback Collier Winters, and it’s impressive that Harvard is 3-2—and arguably should be 4-1—today.

The one unit on defense that hasn’t been affected by injury is the line, which still has the same starting four as it did against Holy Cross. But in the third quarter, the defensive line couldn’t get to Lehigh signal callers Chris Lum and Mike Colvin, making the job of the depleted linebackers and secondary much more difficult.

“We were undisciplined, and...we can’t relinquish a 17-point lead like that in the third quarter,” senior tackle Chuks Obi said. “We gave up three touchdowns in the third quarter, and that’s unacceptable. And that’s because of a combination of penalties and also not getting to the quarterback on the pass rush.”

As Murphy has said, the lines both on offense and defense have been the anchor of the team through the turmoil of injuries, and they will have to continue to do the same as the season goes on if Harvard is to find success. The offensive line did its job well on Saturday, and for three out of four quarters, so did the defense. But with a short bench, the Crimson no longer has the luxury of taking any quarters off.

“Personnel-wise, we’re not exactly the same team we were at the beginning of the year,” Murphy said. “And we can still beat anyone, but the margin for error is much less.”

While the Crimson is far from the only Ivy team to be battered by injuries, that doesn’t make it easier to look ahead to a November schedule that includes home games with Columbia (3-2, 1-1 Ivy) and Yale (4-1, 2-0) and a road trip to face defending champion Penn (4-1, 2-0). The Quakers have been just as good as they were last season, when they went undefeated in the Ancient Eight to win the crown.

Harvard is a team with plenty of depth, and on any given Saturday, it has the potential to beat whichever team it runs up against on the gridiron. The Crimson should still be in the title hunt when it heads to Philadelphia, particularly if Hatch and some of his supporting cast are able to make an effective return to form. But if it makes a habit of coughing up big halftime leads, you can kiss that chance at an Ivy title goodbye.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.