Take the Kennelly: Potential and the Season That Might Have Been

“That wasn’t our best game on offense, and that’s what so exciting about this.”

—Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, Sept. 20th, 2003 after the season opening win against Holy Cross.

How times have changed.

That game the Crimson scored six touchdowns, had 636 yards of offense and 32 first downs and racked up 42 points. The offense was explosive, efficient and brimming with potential. It was the first game of the year, and looking down the road it wasn’t tough to envision a flawless league record, the Ivy League crown or even a top-10 ranking as Harvard’s for the taking.

How fickle is fortune.

The team that miserably slouched off the field Saturday was not the same team that so eagerly burst out of the gates in September. Wounded in a dozen places by injuries and hampered by uncharacteristic turnovers, this Crimson offense is a shadow of its former self. Against Columbia, Harvard managed only 13 points, and none in the second half. It amassed 262 total yards, only 88—88!—of them passing. 15 first downs. Two touchdowns, both set up by interceptions.

And you can’t really blame anyone.

You could blame the helmet of the unknown Cornell player that had an unfortunate meeting with Ryan Fitzpatrick’s little finger. You could blame Kyle Cremarosa’s broken ankle, Rodney Byrnes’ recurring high ankle sprain or James Harvey’s injuring ACL. You could blame Ryan Tyler’s numerous ailments. You could blame it on the injuries to five of the seven original offensive tackles.

Heck, while we’re at it you could blame the woeful kicking game that forces the Crimson to go for it on fourth down because field goal “range” is an unknown concept. This is the same kicking game that often leads Harvard to forgo extra-point attempts for two-point conversions—which it’s not so effective at either.

And if we’re really getting fired up, let’s blame Coach Tim Murphy for playing quarterback roulette two weeks ago against Dartmouth, re-breaking Fitzpatrick’s hand and breaking Garrett Schires’ confidence.

But at this point it’s not about blame.

After a certain stage there are so many contributing factors to the Harvard downfall that the logic of cause-and-effect falters.

Bewildered by the loss of two top receivers in one quarter, a shell-shocked Murphy tried to make sense of the latest installation in the breakdown of his potentially title-contending team.

“We really struggled to throw the football without those people in there, for whatever reason,” Murphy attempted to explain.

It’s hard to be more specific on which reasons when you can’t keep track of how many injuries your offense has sustained over the past eight games.

For a while the team held it together, and did it admirably—patching weak spots and shifting positions in the offensive line, handing the ball off to untested freshmen like Clifton Dawson and Corey Mazza to make up the deficits in the depth charts.

The team found makeshift solutions for what it hoped were temporary setbacks and still pounded out wins by any means necessary.

But the relief Harvard was waiting for hasn’t yet come. Injuries heal slowly. Supposed lulls in the schedule like Dartmouth and Columbia improbably prove too much to handle. And for whatever reason, the team that even this week still led Division I-AA football in total yards per game has simply imploded when it comes to producing offense.

Murphy called Saturday’s game “a nightmare.” But it was really more of a blissful dream gone horribly awry; the rosy vision of September mutated into the ravaged reality of November.

There were flashes of former brilliance on display Saturday, just enough to tantalize. Dawson had a nifty 43-yard dash near the end of the first half, speeding up and passing his defender with forcefulness that recalled his four touchdown game against Lafayette.

Of course, when the opponent realizes that your throwing game has gone up in smoke, it’s hard to keep posting gains like that. After amassing 106 rushing yards in the first half, Dawson was shut down by the Lion defenders—who, having half a brain, were aware of precisely when and where he would get the ball—and managed only 51 yards more.

This is not a statistic that wins football games, especially when your quarterback completes zero passes in the fourth quarter.

And still there were sparkles of the talent and possibility that were promised two months ago. The punishing defense that blanked Cornell 27-0 and had been absent for the previous two weeks returned in full force for almost the entire game. Linebackers Dante Balestracci and Bobby Everett mercilessly hounded Columbia quarterback Jeff Otis and running back Ayo Oluwole with a fierceness that implied they, too, were frustrated and angry by how this team has been playing. The hapless Otis received the full brunt of Balestracci’s aggravation in the second quarter, when the Harvard captain delivered a crushing hit that temporarily knocked the Lion quarterback out of the game.

But as the clock wound down and the weary defense took the field for the umpteenth time after a Schires interception, resignation took over determination. You could see it in their slumped shoulders and exhausted gait.

Otis looked at the score printout, saw two zeros for the last two quarters of Harvard scoring and gave all the credit to his Columbia defense.

It would be nice if an amazing defense was an excuse for the Crimson defeat. But let’s face it, the Lions are last in the Ivy League in total defense, scoring defense, passing defense and first downs allowed. So it’s fair to say that the source of Harvard’s offensive inability comes from Harvard and Harvard alone. The same offense that, back in September, Fitzpatrick gleefully predicted would be “amazingly good.”

And it could have been.

But the dream slips away, and you are left mystified.

You can put blame on an ankle, a hand, a player, a coach.

You can say, “There’s always next year.”

You can look back at the last two games, and you can look ahead to the next two games.

And you can stop, and wonder, about the season that might have been.

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.