Crimson Still Has Much To Prove

Playing a woeful team can do wonders for your stat sheet, but Harvard coach Tim Murphy knows that it does little for his team’s Ivy title prospects.

The Crimson dominated an overmatched opponent for the second week in a row, rolling over Cornell Saturday to the tune of 314 yards on the ground and 505 total, but the offensive onslaught didn’t mask some lingering problems for a banged-up football team.

“I’m not really happy, because we don’t worry about yards, we don’t worry about points—the only thing we care about is how well we protect the football,” Murphy said. “If we protect the football well, the other stuff will happen.”

The coach was referring to three ugly turnovers in the contest—two on interceptions, when sophomore Colton Chapple tried to thread passes into tight spaces, and one on a fumble when the signal caller held the ball for too long. While these mistakes didn’t cost Harvard in a lopsided blowout, they will almost certainly be magnified against tougher Ancient Eight foes.

And this is what has Murphy so worried. With unprecedented injuries forcing new starters onto every inch of the field, the Crimson knows that it can’t rely on pure talent to get by opponents—starting with Chapple, the team needs to return to the mistake-free style that Murphy prizes.

Of course, Harvard is far from doomed in the Ivy League race. Despite missing his top two wideouts in seniors Chris Lorditch and Marco Iannuzzi, Chapple made many more plays than he did errors. The sophomore completed 16 of 35 passes for 191 yards a week after he was limited to just 11 attempts, and Chapple’s most encouraging moment came in the fourth quarter, immediately after his fumble on the Crimson five-yard line led to Cornell’s first score. Rather than give in to frustration, the young quarterback marched his team right back down the field, capping the drive with a perfect spiral down the left sideline to junior Levi Richards on a playaction pass, staking Harvard to a 17-3 lead.

“To his credit, especially, Colton Chapple, he hung in there,” Murphy said. “At halftime, we had struggled mightily as an offense, and he had struggled a bit, but the way he played in the second half just in terms of leadership and mental toughness—the kid’s going to be a player.”

The Crimson knows, then, that one piece of the puzzle is in place: the team will get its points one way or another. But not until the turnovers stop—and the defense stops having to protect short fields—will Harvard once again emerge as a team to fear.

“This is a very solid football team, Cornell that we played, but we’re going to play a lot better offensive football teams that will present more challenges,” Murphy warned on Saturday.

Indeed, holding Columbia or Penn out of the endzone from five yards away will be a much taller order, but the defense has proven that, even with two starting cornerbacks and two linebackers sidelined, in the right setting it can hold up just fine. On Cornell’s first two drives, when sophomore punter Jacob Dombrowski pinned the Big Red deep in its own territory, the Crimson forced a turnover on downs and a three and out. Cornell’s pair of touchdowns only came in garbage time, with the contest well out of reach.

Thus, Murphy’s message to his team is clear: play smart, protect the football, and the rewards will come. Harvard won’t rack up 500 yards against the Quakers, and the defense will not put up a shutout—if the Crimson looks to win that contest, it will be in very close fashion where one or two big plays make the difference. But if Harvard does the little things right the rest of the season, it will have done enough to win out.

The Crimson’s roster may be riddled with injuries, but as Chapple grows, and the offensive and defensive units become more comfortable with new starters, there is reason to believe that Harvard can at least share a league crown. Murphy has been to the top before, and if the squad can play his brand of football, the Crimson can certainly get there again.

—Staff writer Max N. Brondfield can be reached at mbrondf@fas.harvard.edu.