A Half Decade of Dominance: Football Aims For 45th Win in Five Years

­In the history of the Ivy League, Harvard football has never been as dominant over a five-year stretch as it has been between 2011 and 2015.

Statistically speaking, there is not even a debate. Just examine the records: 9-1 in 2011, 8-2 in 2012, 9-1 in 2013, 10-0 in 2014, and 8-1 in 2015 with one game remaining.

During this period, the team has won three Ancient Eight championships and gone two seasons—2011 and 2014—without dropping a conference game. The team has outscored opponents by over 600 points over that span in total, and the defense has held opponents’ attacks to single-digit totals 34 percent of the time. Within this half-decade of pure dominance, no stretch has been more impressive than the 22-game win streak that Harvard put together starting in 2013 with a 24-21 triumph over Dartmouth and ending last weekend in a 35-25 defeat against Penn.

“When you’ve won 22 straight games, wow, you have a target on your front and a target on your back,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “We’re used to it, but I’m not sure there’s been any team for a long, long time that gets that shot.”

That 22-game run encompassed a perfect 2014 season, only the second 10-0 campaign in school history, which included a last-second, title-deciding, nationally televised 31-24 nailbiter over Yale.

Yes, the Crimson has been pretty good over the past few years.

The team has been so good, in fact, that one of the only people to face consistent late-game pressure, week in and week out, is the team statistician, who must come up with novel ways to describe excellence every Saturday.

For example, did you know this year’s defense held opponents without a touchdown for a period of 212:30, a vast desert of time that spanned from a Sept. 26 matchup against Brown to an Oct. 24 game versus Princeton?

Did you also know that Harvard’s current seniors have the second-highest winning percentage of any modern-era Crimson class? That Harvard has an active streak—and program record—of 14 straight road wins? That the 1931-1932 Penn team was the last side to hold opponents to a total of 39 points or fewer over six games, a feat that the Crimson accomplished earlier this season?

Complex or not, all these numbers add up to an impressively clean one. If Harvard wins on Saturday, it will clinch at least a share of its third straight Ancient Eight title, something no Crimson team has ever achieved.

Never has the Harvard approach to football been so validated.

However sobering these statements can be, they fail to tell the whole story. Figures and facts do not win games; players do, and over the course of five years, if not longer, the Crimson program has refined a routine for teaching excellence.

As a fifth-year senior, wide receiver Seitu Smith has witnessed the success of the team since its 9-1 season in 2011. For Smith, the aspect of success that sticks out the most is the time-heavy dedication of players.

From the winter through the start of the next season, Harvard athletes normally wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get in an early workout. During last summer, about 50 of them stayed on campus for additional work, and during the season, players fill their schedules with film sessions and group meetings in addition to daily practice.

The players work together, eat together, and live together, and the cohesion means when they play together, the performance is that much more seamless.

According to Smith, this level of dedication is not par for the Ivy League. For example, schools such as Princeton do not require morning workouts. Likewise, Yale does not run as robust a summer program.

“We work year in and year out, day in and day out,” Smith said. “Every day is a competition.”

One particular area in which this hard work pays off is special teams. In 2015 alone, the list of categories in which Harvard ranks nationally reads like a special-teams coach’s dream. The Crimson is second in the FCS with five blocked punts, third with seven blocked kicks, fourth with an average punt-return defense of 1.2 yards, and fifth with an average punt return of 18.7 yards.

An ability to manipulate field position opens up space for the Harvard attack, which has demonstrated its potential as a passing threat over the past few years. Heading into Saturday’s action, senior quarterback Scott Hosch needs 149 yards to break the school record for passing yards in a season.

Prior to last weekend, Hosch had gone 14 career starts without losing a game, also a Harvard record. Such is the benefit of playing behind an offensive line with three returning starters—and in an era of expected dominance.

To complement the passing attack over the past five years, the Crimson has relied on a ground game that has used exactly two starting running backs: Treavor Scales ’12 in 2011 and 2012 and Paul Stanton since. Both are sub-5’10” rushers who nonetheless have relied on a bruising running style, and both have provided a reliable veteran presence from year to year, steadying the team’s attack.

In recent seasons, however, Harvard’s true source of strength has been on the other side of the ball.

In 2014, the Crimson led all of FCS football in scoring defense. While the 35-25 defeat to the Quakers dampened that statistic for this season, Harvard has maintained a base of tough-nosed defenders.

Consider this fact—10 of 11 defensive starters returned from last year’s undefeated team. Intact was a senior linebacker trio of Jacob Lindsey, Matt Koran, and Eric Medes that finished one-two-three in tackles for Harvard in 2014 and will do so again this season.

“[In practice] we had the best defense this year in the Ivy League against one of the best offenses,” Smith said. “When we play anyone else, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a step down.’”

One way that the program has institutionalized the strength of the defense is through the tradition of selecting a defensive player as captain. Not since 2004 have team members selected an offensive star as their leader—and in that case, it was NFL-bound quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05.

So much success over such a long timeframe inevitably raises yearly expectations. A year without a championship could be counted as a failure, but Murphy disagrees.

“I don’t look at it that way,” he said. “If the kids give us everything they can, and they live up to their potential, then I can live with that…. That’s how I judge them.”

But for a 2015 squad that started the year with eight straight wins, playing up to preseason expectations very likely means leaving New Haven with a victory.

It is not just a matter of beating an archrival to close the season—Harvard has already done that eight times in a row, another school record.

Rather, it’s a matter of continuing a narrative of excellence that began in 2011 and shows signs of continuing well past 2015.

“These kids, they’ve given us everything they could give,” Murphy said. “They’ve played hard. They’ve been so committed. They’ve been so selfless.”

—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sam.danello@thecrimson.com.