Judgment Day Is Here

After months of training, miles of traveling, and endless speculation, the decisive day has finally arrived for Harvard quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Tomorrow or Sunday, the 2004 Ivy League Player of the Year will find out if his brains, athletic talent, and illustrious college career are enough to compel a pro team to pick him in the NFL Draft.

“I’m not really sure what to expect,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s a big crap shoot for someone like me, coming from a small school.”

Several Harvard grads are currently on NFL practice squads or in the NFL Europe, including wide receiver Carl Morris ’03 and Jamil Soriano ’03. But no Crimson player has been drafted since linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski ’00 who, as a fourth-round pick, is the highest drafted player in school history.

The last Harvard signal-caller to catch a glimpse of the pros was quarterback Brian Buckley ’81, who was drafted by New England in the 11th round in 1981 and saw preseason playing time before getting cut early in the season.

The current version of the draft has seven rounds, three tomorrow and four on Sunday. The buzz around Fitzpatrick suggests he will be picked on the second day. A mock draft run earlier this week by Scouts, Inc., has the Crimson quarterback taken as the 26th pick in the fifth round—162nd pick overall—to the Kansas City Chiefs.

In the event that Fitzpatrick is not drafted, however, it’s far from the end of his pro chances.

“If nothing happens on that second day, halfway through the seventh round a lot of teams that are interested will start jockeying for position to sign me as a free agent,” Fitzpatrick said. “By the end of the seventh round I should know which team I’m signing with.”

PUTTING HIM OUT THERE

Since the Crimson’s season ended Nov. 20, Fitzpatrick has immersed himself in preparation for the draft. His agent, Kyle Rote Jr., set Fitzpatrick up with a quarterback coach to refine his technical skills for the professional level.

“He was an effective and dangerous runner [at Harvard], but at the NFL level they don’t want you to run at all,” Rote said, adding that instead of working out of the shotgun as he often did with the Crimson, Fitzpatrick worked at taking more snaps under center.

The second part of Fitzpatrick’s preparation was to get the virtually unknown Ivy prospect some national exposure. In January, he participated in both senior all-star bowls—the East-West Shrine Game and the Hula Bowl—and the NFL Combine in March.

He also participated in two pro days. Higher-profile prospects usually only attend one, but Rote said that with Fitzpatrick’s lack of television time during the season, it was important to “have as many people who could see him as possible.” In addition, Rote made certain that Fitzpatrick was fully rested before last month’s Combine in order to have plenty of time and energy for interviews.

“The NFL didn’t know him as a personality,” Rote said. “So exposure was an important aspect of our preparation.”

BRAINS MATTER

On one hand, Fitzpatrick has a lot to overcome: his Division I-AA and Ivy League origins look paltry against the primetime names of the Big 10 or SEC.

On the other hand, his unique background—and his ability to compete on a physical level with the other draft-hopefuls—may actually work to Fitzpatrick’s advantage come draft day. The Harvard name and the intelligence it implies make him an enticing pick for a team looking for a trainable quarterback in the mold of the Tom Brady, a former sixth-round pick who has won three Super Bowls with the Patriots.

And Fitzpatrick’s Harvard brains have earned him attention from the media, as well.

At the NFL Combine, Fitzpatrick garnered national publicity for his score on the Wonderlic Personnel Test. The economics concentrator reportedly got a perfect score on the 12-minute, 50-question intelligence exam, finishing with enough time to check over his answers.

Though Fitzpatrick told The Crimson that he had in fact left a question blank on the exam, his feat was enough to add to the buzz already surrounding the Harvard captain.

For Dan Shanoff HBS ’02, a writer for ESPN.com, it only confirmed what he had suspected about Fitzpatrick—here was a kid who not only had the athletic goods, but a compelling back story.

“The last couple of years I’ve been following [Harvard football] really closely,” said Shanoff, who was at Harvard Business School for the Crimson’s 2000 undefeated season when Fitzpatrick was a freshman. “Fitzy’s obviously great and especially for Division I-AA he’s exceptional. The record was great, his stats were great, but I didn’t know how it would translate to the NFL, or the NFL Draft. And then I saw the all-star games, and how the scouts were talking. I flagged him as someone to keep an eye on. But what really put it over the top was the story about the Wonderlic.”

Shanoff saw Fitzpatrick’s story as compelling to a wide audience and a welcome change to the number-crunching that characterizes draft preparation.

“The whole draft culture of ‘four hundredths of a second can make you drop in the draft,’ this is crazy,” Shanoff said. “Let’s throw some weight behind how smart a player is.

“You don’t have to go Harvard to be more intellectually inclined than physically gifted,” he added, explaining Fitzpatrick’s appeal. “The guy brings a whole other dimension.”

WAITING GAME

Shanoff plans to include his own conjecture about Fitzpatrick’s chances in today’s “Quickie” column. He sees Fitzpatrick’s intelligence as being a key motivating factor for a savvy coach.

“My personal theory is that [New England head coach] Bill Belichick—who appreciates, probably more than anyone in the NFL a player’s intellectual skills—has Fitzy’s name written on a board somewhere,” Shanoff said. “He’s going to grab him in the 6th round, and he’ll be backing up Tom Brady.”

Shanoff added, however, that if the majority of quarterbacks get picked on the first day, Fitzpatrick could go as high as the fourth round.

Fitzpatrick, however, doesn’t care to speculate about his chances this weekend. He will be watching the draft with his family at home in Gilbert, Ariz., having done all in his power to make a case for his draftability.

“I thought I performed well in all the stuff I did, at bowls and practices and pro days,” Fitzpatrick said. “Everything is out of my hands now and into the hands of the scouts.”

Rote refused to say when he thought Fitzpatrick would be drafted, but expressed optimism for the Arizonan’s chances.

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and [speculating] is a fool’s game,” Rote said. “But there’s a lot of teams that want him.”

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