Crimson Offense, Defense Inconsistent In Saturday Debacle Against Rutgers

Writing a post-mortem analysis of your home football team is never much fun. Especially when your team let slip away a game it should have won. Even more so when the team it lost to is as innocuous as Rutgers. Losing to Yale or Dartmouth invokes a sense of frustration or anger. But Rutgers? More like embarrassment, particularly since a poor Princeton team tied Rutgers the week before.

But talking about why Harvard lost Saturday is a chore that must be done, if only in the hope that the same mistakes won't be repeated next week against hapless Columbia.

Of course no one man was responsible for the Crimson's defeat, but a good place to begin would be with the inconsistent quarterbacking of Milt Holt.

Milt showed flashes of brilliance for brief periods of time against Rutgers, but he made too many costly mistakes that lowered him to the depths of futility, especially in the second half.

On the one hand he completed 17 of 32 passes for 170 yards and three touch-downs. On the other hand he threw two interceptions, called a number of bad plays, fumbled and lost the ball three times, and threw a screen pass in the endzone to a halfback who was immediately pounced upon for a safety.

Milt is a good quarterback--there's no doubt about that. But he simply didn't play as well as he should have against Rutgers.

For the second week in a row, the ground attack, with leading runner Neal Miller on the sidelines, was disappointing. The only rays of hope were the performances of sophomores Tom Lincoln and Tom Winn. Winn, subbing for the injured Ed Cronin, was particularly impressive, averaging four yards a carry on 13 tries. He appears to be the only runner with good outside speed on the team.

Winn made a few mistakes in his first game as a starter, but that's to be expected. With his performance Saturday, he should get a crack at being the regular halfback.

For the second week in a row the pass receiving was good. Pat McInally was, well, Pat McInally--seven receptions, 74 yards, and three TDs. A pleasant surprise was the play of Tom McDermott at tight end. If McDermott begins to assert himself he'll take a lot of pressure off McInally and help the offense immensely.

The defense again wasn't impressive. Not that Rutgers marched up and down the field. The Scarlet Knights managed only one long drive the whole game. It's just that so far it seems a few players are doing the bulk of the work--namely Rob Shaw, Eric Kurzweil and George Newhouse, with strong contributions from Fran Cronin and sophomore Tom Joyce.

Against teams with poor offenses like Rutgers and Holy Cross Harvard can get away with a few carrying most of the load, but one wonders what will happen when a high-powered offense like Cornell comes to town. We'll just have to wait and see.

Well, there's no more use in crying over spilled milk, and nothing can be taken back. Besides, the only part of the schedule that counts, the Ivy League schedule, begins next week, and win or lose, a game with Rutgers is always best forgotten.