Right Where They Left Off: Football Wins Opener, Stretches Unbeaten Streak to 10

It remains to be seen if this year’s Harvard football team will string together an encore performance of its 2001 Ivy League championship season. But Saturday afternoon’s opening act—a 28-23 victory over No. 23 Holy Cross before 10,107 at Harvard Stadium—was certainly a good way to start.

The Crimson scored the game’s first 14 points, built a 28-10 lead in the third quarter, then kept its composure after the Crusaders surged with two fourth-quarter scores to preserve the victory.

Senior wideout Carl Morris had 11 catches for 210 yards and senior quarterback Neil Rose was a model of efficiency before leaving the game after sustaining a tough hit in the third quarter. The pair led Harvard to its tenth straight win, dating back to last season.

“Our kids played as well as we possibly could’ve expected,” said Harvard Coach Tim Murphy. “You can tell a lot from the first game, and I’m really happy with how we played, especially defensively, with how young we are there.”

Harvard had control of the game from the outset, a mild surprise given the Crimson’s youth on its offensive and defensive lines. Holy Cross Coach Dan Allen, though, thinks the talent on this year’s Harvard team is “very comparable” to what it was last season.

“That’s the best Harvard team I’ve seen in a long time,” said Allen, whose team came into Saturday’s contest with a 2-0 record, which included a road victory over Division I-A entry Army.

Holy Cross cut into the Crimson’s 18-point lead midway through the fourth quarter, as quarterback Brian Hall led the Crusaders on a five-play drive that culminated with a 24-yard TD pass to Ari Confesor. That made it 28-17 Harvard with 9:16 to play.

Harvard got the ball back, but made just one first down before the Crusaders forced them to punt. As it turned out, the punt was all Holy Cross needed to make another dent in Harvard’s lead.

Confesor fielded Kingston’s punt at his own 15-yard line, started left, picked up a couple blocks and headed up the sideline. After weaving his way through traffic near midfield, he went untouched to the end zone.

“The punt return was just a great team effort,” said Confesor, who finished with an eye-popping 318 all-purpose yards on the day. “I just caught the punt, and everyone made some great blocks for me. I hit the hole, and the rest was history.”

The score brought the Crusaders to within just one possession of the lead. Harvard, though, was able to seal the game by eating up the final five minutes of the clock, thanks to two critical first-down rushes by sophomore Ryan Fitzpatrick, who relieved Rose, and another by Morris, who gained nine yards after he lined up in the shotgun as the quarterback.

“We needed to stop them and get the ball back to win,” Allen said. “But they made the plays down the stretch that they had to.”

Earlier on, Harvard’s first drive of the game was reminiscent of its championship form, with its no-huddle offense running as efficiently as ever.

Rose completed five of six passes to four different receivers, the final one a 7-yard scoring strike to tailback Nick Palazzo, giving Harvard a 7-0 lead with 7:12 to play in the quarter.

After the Crusaders’ subsequent possession halted in Crimson territory, Rose set to work again.

On the first play of the drive, Rose rolled left and threw across his body for a 14-yard gain to Morris, a candidate for the Payton Award as the best offensive player in Division I-AA.

Just two plays later, Rose and Morris hooked up again. This time, Morris had a step on his defender downfield and Rose put the ball right on the money for a 60-yard touchdown play. The Crimson led 14-0 with just 1:09 to play in the quarter.

It was Morris’s fifth career reception of 60 yards or more and his 21st career touchdown catch.

After Holy Cross fumbled at the Crimson 23-yard line early in the second quarter, Harvard seemed to be in great position to take a commanding, three-touchdown lead. But Rose was intercepted in the end zone by Crusader linebacker David Dugan, swinging the momentum to Holy Cross.

The Crusaders then ripped off an 80-yard scoring drive, capped by a 28-yard touchdown strike from senior quarterback Brian Hall to Adam Martin, closing Harvard’s lead to 14-7 with 6:42 to play in the half.

Harvard, though, responded the way it had to—a methodical, 14-play, 78-yard march down the field that consumed 5:29 and included a gutsy 4th down attempt on the Crimson’s own 32-yard line—a huge show of confidence in the offensive line on the part of Murphy.

The drive culminated with Rose’s third TD pass of the half, a 5-yarder to sophomore receiver Rodney Byrnes, who caught six passes in the game—just three less than he had during all of last season.

That gave the Crimson’s a 21-7 lead heading into halftime.

After Harvard couldn’t make much of its first possession of the second half, Holy Cross senior Andrew Simons made a huge special teams play, breaking through the interior of the Harvard line and blocking Adam Kingston’s punt. The ball rolled to the Harvard 5-yard line, where the Crusaders took possession with 13:21 to go in the third quarter.

The Crimson defense held strong, though, stopping Hall on two running plays and batting away his 3rd down pass. Vella did make a 21-yard field goal, however, to make it 21-10 Harvard.

Later in the quarter, the Crimson used trickery to add to its lead. On first down from the Holy Cross 34, Byrnes went in motion and took a pitch from Rose. But instead of heading upfield, Byrnes—a former high school quarterback—set up just outside of the tackle box and heaved a pass toward Morris, who was well behind the Crusader defensive backs.

“I can’t throw with my [receiving] gloves on,” Byrnes said at the postgame press conference. “So I just threw it as hard as I could.”

“And as wobbly as I could,” he added, laughing.

Spiral or not, Morris hauled it in for his second score of the day, giving the Crimson a 28-10 lead with six minutes to play in the third.

Holy Cross began the ensuing drive with great field position, as the dynamic Ari Confesor took Kingston’s kickoff all the way down to the Harvard 23-yard line. The Crusaders came away empty-handed, though, when—after losing five yards on 2nd down—Vella’s 45-yard field goal sailed wide right.

Allen pointed to his team’s missed opportunities—the second-quarter fumble at the Harvard 23, the Crimson’s goal line stand that resulted in Vella’s 21-yarder and Vella’s missed 45-yarder—as the key points in the game.

Harvard got a scare on its ensuing possession when Rose was hit hard on a quarterback keeper up the middle. He stayed down on the field for about two minutes before walking off under his own power.

When he reached the sideline, he sought out Murphy and gestured to his head. Rose, who had back problems in the weeks leading up to the game, did not return for the rest of the game.

“I felt fine out there,” Rose said. “I just took a couple shots to the head, then that third one rung my bell and the doctors were a little conservative and wanted to keep me out.”

“The doctor stole my helmet from me and hid it in a bag,” Rose said with a smile.

The Crimson turned to the running game a bit more with sophomore Ryan Fitzpatrick filling in for Rose, but wasn’t able to get another touchdown to put the game away.

—Staff writer Jon P. Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.