Penn-cil Harvard Out: Game-Winning 32-Yard Field Goal Sails Wide Left

PHILADELPHIA-- It was an unenviable situation. The Harvard football team and Coach Tim Murphy had no outs.

With fifteen seconds left in the fourth quarter against Penn, trailing 36-35, Harvard was faced with fourth down on Penn's 16-yard line. Any hopes of an Ivy League title rested on the one thing the Crimson had not done well all season--field goals.

One month earlier, freshman kicker Robbie Wright had had his 27-yard game-winning attempt blocked by Cornell, giving Harvard its only Ivy loss coming into Saturday's game. Shortly after the Cornell loss, Murphy had declared the Crimson a four-down team.

But Wright had made a few field goals the weekend before against Columbia, and so there were no hesitations in sending him out to kick a 33-yarder into a strong wind. The snap was good, the kick went untouched, but Wright's kick was wide left, not even close.

Harvard will not win the Ivy League title.

"It's a huge disappointment, obviously," Murphy said. "Barring mistakes, and an aberration against Lehigh [a 45-13 loss], we can beat anybody. We didn't play our smartest game."

The missed kick was an unfortunate end to a game that had seen big-play offenses and timely defenses. Penn (6-5, 5-1 Ivy) and Harvard (5-4, 4-2) racked up almost 1000 yards of offense between them.

But in a way, the odd ending was the perfect fit to the best Ivy League game played so far this year.

Last year, when Penn played at the Stadium, it faced a fourth down-and-forever from midfield with little time remaining. Quarterback Gavin Hoffman, a star transfer from Northwestern, served up a 50-yard Hail Mary that found the hands of a Penn receiver in the end zone, giving the Quakers an improbable 21-17 victory.

On Saturday in Philadelphia, it was Hoffman's fourth-quarter heroics that again led to a Quaker victory.

Trailing 35-30, with 3:31 remaining, Penn had a golden-- and perhaps final--opportunity to win the game when cornerback Fred Plaza intercepted Harvard junior quarterback Neil Rose's errant throw at the Harvard 35. But the Harvard defense, as it had done most of the day, held its ground, and forced Hoffman to a fourth down. The pressure came, and Hoffman had no choice but to throw the ball straight up in the air, which then landed harmlessly on the ground.

Harvard blew the opportunity to put the game away.

Failing to make the first down, the Crimson was forced to punt from its own territory. A good punt by freshman Adam Kingston was almost erased when Harvard's punt coverage team leveled punt returner Plaza, who had called for a fair catch. The ensuing 15-yard penalty put Penn at the Harvard 48 with 1:36 remaining.

Hoffman's magic kicked in. On first down, he threw downfield into double coverage, but underthrew it. His receiver, saw this and came back to make a 32-yard reception. On the very next play, from the 16-yard line, Hoffman tossed up a beauty, which would be either caught by wide receiver Rob Milanese or fall out of bounds. Milanese turned his head, made the grab over the outstretched hands of junior cornerback Andy Fried, and tiptoed into the pylon for the touchdown.

A missed two-point conversion made it 36-35.

Harvard did not lay down its arms, however. Starting at its own 20, the Crimson was forced to do something it had only done once during the game-- drive the length of the field. Rose started things off by firing a bullet to sophomore wideout Carl Morris for a 14-yard gain.

Rose went to Morris again a play later and misfired, but gained the yards anyway when defensive pass interference was called against the Quakers. After an incompletion, Rose hit Sam Taylor, who made it to the Penn 30 before going out of bounds with 54 seconds left. Rose then went to tight end Chris Stakich, who picked up a short pass underneath, turned upfield and got taken down at the Quaker 11-yard line.

A false start sent Harvard back to the 16, where it now had 40 seconds and three chances to make it to the end zone. All three times, the Quaker pressure forced Rose into three incompletions.

"We went for a couple plays to get into the end zone," Murphy said. "They mixed up strong-side, weak-side blitzes, and we didn't have enough guys to pick up the blitz."

The crazy ending overshadowed an excellent football game played by both sides. Rose went 16-of-33 with three touchdowns, and his 266 passing yards moved him into first place on Harvard's all-time single-season passing list, with 2,345 yards going into this weekend's game against Yale.

Harvard's rushing attack picked up 181 yards against the top-ranked Quaker rush defense, mostly on sophomore Nick Palazzo's 122 yards. Morris also added big numbers to his season, catching eight passes for 181 yards and two touchdowns.

The game was exciting from its first minutes. Penn, on its first possession, marched 82 yards on ten plays and scored on a one-yard keeper by Hoffman. Harvard's defense got beaten up, and the strong start by Penn looked ominous.

Harvard barely waited to make its comeback. OK, it waited twelve seconds.

On the first play from scrimmage from its 23-yard line, Rose threw a quick, 7-yard slant to Morris. Morris beat his man on one step and then used his long legs to motor down the next 70 yards for the touchdown.

The Crimson didn't even wait to get on offense to score again. On the next Penn possession, the Quakers moved to the Harvard 48. Hoffman, pressured in the pocket, threw a strike which freshman cornerback Benny Butler had been waiting on. Butler intercepted the ball in stride and outran the Quakers for 50 yards before reaching the end zone.

Both defenses stepped it up a notch the rest of the game. The Quakers worked the field with their front four, while the Crimson used its speed to fly to the ball and make tackles. Penn picked up an easy score after Harvard turned the ball over on a Rose fumble, and then took a 21-14 lead on a long drive set up by Hoffman's passing.

After several series of three-and-outs, the Crimson once again hit the jackpot with four minutes left in the second quarter. On the second play from scrimmage on the drive, Palazzo, only 190 pounds, broke three tackles before turning on the Energizer battery and getting a 66-yard touchdown run to tie the game at 21-21.

"I've got to give credit to our run game," Murphy said. "Penn is number one in the league in defending the run."

Before the fatal mistakes of the late fourth quarter, the rest of the game was marked by Harvard's defense bailing out the mistakes of the offense by coming up big in the red zone.

At the end of the first half, the Crimson twice stuffed Penn at the one-yard line, forcing them to settle for a field goal and a 24-21 halftime lead.

Again, at the start of the second half the Crimson offense blundered. On the first play, from the Harvard 14, Rose struggled to find an open receiver, missing sophomore Kyle Cremarosa 20 yards downfield. Instead, Rose was picked off by linebacker Travis Belden.

Harvard's defense came up big, forcing Penn to settle for a field goal.

Like dej vu, the Crimson didn't even wait one play to mess up the next time. Palazzo took the handoff, went a few yards and then fumbled. Penn recovered in Harvard territory, but moved backwards and was forced to punt after a three-and-out.

"Our defense overall played extremely hard the entire game, and really was excellent in the second half," Murphy said.

Similar to a joke told too many times, the next incident wasn't even funny. After the punt, Harvard had the ball on its own 20. On the first play, Palazzo carried. He fumbled, and Penn recovered.

After a short pass and a false start penalty, Penn again lined up for a field goal, which fell short this time. The Crimson defense, led by another strong game from freshman linebacker Dante Balestracci, once again came up with the goods.

"After those turnovers to start the second half, we came together as a team," Morris said. "No one was really down. We all knew we could move the ball."

Harvard returned to its bread and butter game to take the lead. Instead of benching Palazzo, Murphy just gave him the ball more. His jaunts up the middle, and some trickery by the offense, set up a 30-yard pass to Morris, who broke two tackles and got inside the five. Two plays later, Rose threw a touchdown to Stakich, and Harvard had a 28-27 lead.

With momentum on its side, and the realization that a win could seal up at least a share of the Ivy title, Harvard pressed forward. Balestracci made a one-handed interception of a Hoffman bullet, and four plays later, on a fourth down, Rose found Morris on a "flag" pattern near the end zone for a touchdown. That made it 35-27 going into the final minutes of the fourth quarter, before all the final craziness.

Coupled with a Cornell win over Columbia, Harvard's chances for a share of the Ivy title died with Wright's kick. On a day of blustery, strong winds at Franklin Field, there wasn't solace in knowing that, at the very least, Yale wasn't going to win the Ivy either.

"We put ourselves in position to win the game," Murphy said. "But we didn't make the plays we had to."

In any case, the only things Harvard can come away with are records (either Rose's passing mark or the team's overall points scored in a season, the most since 1894). Redemption comes to Cambridge next week in the form of the Elis Always a memorable contest, The Game can erase all of the season's previous mistakes.

But the football team's thoughts will also be drifting towards happening hundreds of miles way in sleepy Ithaca, N.Y., where Penn plays Cornell. It is the de facto Ivy League championship, between two teams that each beat Harvard by only one point.

Beating Yale can only help so much.