One Rough Day

Criticizing Harvard's football team after a one-sided loss is usually like eating a Fig Newton: you first carefully nibble at a thin outer layer of remediable vices before getting to the icky heart of the matter.

Case in point: Harvard's 45-17 loss to William and Mary September 25. The Crimson had a number of avoidable offensive and defensive mistakes, but these certainly weren't the major factors in the game. William and Mary was so much bigger, faster and stronger than Harvard that Restic and Co. wouldn't have won if they had executed like the Texas penal system.

In this kind of game, while focusing criticism on the correctable, you ultimately concede the uncorrectable; you ultimately concede the uncorrectable; you let the team off the hook and pray for a more fortunate schedule next season.

Harvard's 27-0 blowout loss to Cornell last weekend, however, escapes such easy consolation. Although coming into the game with three tough losses to very good teams (Princeton 12-18, Colgate 6-22, Lehigh 13-35), the Big Red could never be confused with William and Mary in the talent department. In fact, Cornell matched up very well with Harvard on paper, a fact leading oddsmakers to guess that the game would be close, perhaps even to Harvard's advantage.

So, on the lips of Crimson faithful today when Harvard battles perennial Patriot League stand-out Holy Cross is, simply, what went wrong? The answer lies in a number of holes on both offense and defense.

Offense

The most salient problems for Harvard occurred on the offensive side of the ball. The Crimson mustered only 207 yards total offense on the day, including a measly 82 yards rushing.

In his post-game interview, Harvard quarterback Mike Giardi blamed the offense's poor play entirely on himself.

While Giardi certainly wasn't the only cause of Harvard's woes, he was a part of them. Usually an impressive runner and a highly proficient passer, Giardi rushed for only 12 yards on eight carries and was only 15-for-37 for 125 yards passing. In addition, his timing on hand-offs and pitches seemed to be slightly off, causing many plays to seem out-of-sync.

But those sorts of days will happen to a quarterback. It just leaves one to wonder why they haven't happened more often to Giardi, who's been a sterling performer since his first, sophomore season. The big question is what the Crimson can do to compensate offensively for such play. Last Saturday it did very little.

The offensive line put in some of the best Harvard offensive performances of the day when pass blocking for Giardi, but, when it came time to run, seemed to fall asleep. Even when they did open holes, however, the running backs failed to either hit them or hit them with force. Unlike in the Lafayette game, the backs seemed to take it east-west, rather than north-south, leading to a number of big-yard losses.

Last, and perhaps most remediable given the weather conditions, was the play-calling.

Restic conceded in the post-game interview that losing the lead early forced him into long-yardage passing situations which he might not have taken had he not been behind. This is very well, but the nature of those long-yardage plays are very debatable.

Too often he seemed to rely on long, drop-back passing plays (Giardi threw the ball 37 times), rather than the multi-flex's strength: short passes off of roll-outs and option plays. The plays are easier to execute in rainy weather, and less likely to end in a sack or a forced throw.

Defense

Offense was certainly the Crimson's weakest point in the game, but its defense had its share of problems, too, many owing to the simple fact that they were out on the field a good deal more than half the time.

Fatigue seemed most evident on the Crimson's defensive line, which failed to both put a significant amount of pressure on Bill Lazor and stop the running game of Pete Fitzgerald.

The defensive woes, however, were certainly not all the line's fault. The defensive secondary had its share of mistakes, too. Although nabbing two interceptions and holding Lazor to a low completion percentage, the defense was beat on a number of significant plays, including a 23-yard pass from Lazor to receiver Matt Shulman.

This, however, may not have been the player's fault, so much as the defensive coach's, who continue to use a bump-and-run man-to-man coverage at various times throughout games despite the Crimson secondary's relative lack of speed.

"We had watched a few films and knew that we could beat them deep when they were in that bump-and-run," Lazor said. "That was a real goal of ours."

Unfortunately for the whole team, Holy Cross probably watches films, too.