Crusaders Unveil Harvard Weaknesses

WORCESTER, Mass.—For the first five minutes of the game, it felt like it was all Holy Cross. For the rest of the first quarter, Harvard held all the momentum and looked to be running away with the game. But with 17 points in the second quarter, the Crusaders controlled the afternoon from then on.

Holy Cross hardly put up better numbers than the Crimson on Saturday—first downs, rushing yards, and completions were almost identical between the two teams. The Crusaders won because of a few big plays, both on offense and defense.

It started just a few minutes into the game. Harvard stopped Holy Cross in its first drive, forcing a punt. But the Crimson botched the return, and the Crusaders recovered deep in the red zone.

At the start of the second quarter, just 18 seconds after a Harvard touchdown, Holy Cross quarterback Ryan Taggart threw a 68-yard pass for the score. A lapse in the secondary coverage left receiver Josh Hauser wide open to take it to the house and pull the Crusaders within four.

Minutes later, on fourth-and-15, Harvard tried a fake punt, snapping it to junior tight end Kyle Juszczyk, who made a run to his right. He fell about a yard short, leaving Holy Cross with good field position, and the Crusaders took their second lead of the day later in the drive.

And in the fourth quarter, down by nine, Harvard was in the red zone, poised to make it a two-point game. But senior quarterback Collier Winters underthrew a pass to senior wide receiver Chris Lorditch on the outside, and the Crusaders picked it and took it 97 yards for the touchdown.

“The punt, the interception, and the busted coverage—we made three [mistakes],” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “That’s 21 points, I believe. Beyond that, after the first quarter, we let our defense stay on the field too long.”

Harvard would have its chances at a comeback later in the game, but its errors proved too costly to overcome.

SILVER LINING

Murphy’s biggest concern going into the game, he said, was the team’s offensive line.

“When you’ve lost all the people we’ve lost, the margins are razor thin,” Murphy said before the game last week. “We’re travelling three freshmen on the offensive line. I don’t know if we’ve ever travelled one freshman before.”

In the offensive line’s first shot at game-day action, it had an up-and-down day. Winters was sacked three times, and blitzes forced him into bad passes on other occasions.

But, at other points during the day, the line held steady. On both of Winters’ touchdown passes, he had plenty of time to move around and find an open receiver. The line performed consistently throughout the day—it just so happened that when Winters was pressured, the errors proved especially costly.

“From my vantage point, you throw the ball 40-something times, it’s probably too many, but I thought [the offensive line] played overall well,” Murphy said. “There were no glaring mistakes, and they hung in there.”

Of the three freshman that travelled, only Will Whitman started, making his debut at right tackle for the Crimson. The 260-pound rookie was involved in the action all day, and he cleared the path for Winters’ scramble for a touchdown in the first quarter to give Harvard the early lead.

COUNTING TO FOUR

Early in the game, there were a number of unexpected fourth-down attempts from both teams. But late in the game, after both squads looked eager to take the fourth-down risk, the two suddenly seemed unwilling to go for it.

It started with the unsuccessful fake punt from Harvard, a clear turning point in the contest.

Holy Cross’ multiple—and questionable—fourth-down tries seemed driven by a lack of confidence in its place kicker. In the middle of the third quarter, the Crusaders opted to go for it on fourth-and-four rather than attempt a 43-yard field goal. Senior Matthew Hanson broke up the pass to force a turnover on downs.

The attitude towards the kicker became apparent again in the fourth quarter. Once again in field goal range—the successful kick would have put Holy Cross up by 11 with just minutes left in the game—the Crusaders again went for the chance on fourth. It paid off, and Taggart completed a pass to a wide-open receiver for the first down.

“Taggart was doing a really good job getting the ball out quick, and they were starting to pick up our blitz,” captain Alex Gedeon said.

But the teams lost their taste for fourth-down chances late in the game. With about four minutes to go, the Crimson elected to punt rather than go for it on fourth-and-10.

A few minutes later, with the Crimson out of timeouts, the Crusaders punted on fourth-and-short, opting not to try for a first down that would have ended the game.

The last fourth-down try was a desperation pass from Winters that Holy Cross intercepted to end the game.

“I thought he played extremely well at times and kept us in the game,” Murphy said. “We just got to do more to help him.”

—Staff writer E. Benjamin Samuels can be reached at samuels@college.harvard.edu.