Backup QB Too Much To Bear

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Ryan Fitzpatrick is getting awfully good at this “hero” thing.

Harvard’s sophomore quarterback, replacing injured starter Neil Rose for the second time this season, took the field in the second quarter and led the Crimson to three straight scores for a come-from-behind victory, 26-24, against Brown in Providence Saturday afternoon.

Fitzpatrick completed 10-of-16 pass attempts for 113 yards and two touchdowns, but his real impact came in the running game. He ran 22 times and led all players with 131 yards on the ground, including a drive-saving 30-yard scramble in the third quarter.

“He’s got a little bit of colt in him,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “He’s not a running quarterback—he’s a guy who can run or throw.”

The win was the Crimson’s 11th in a row dating back to last season.

Harvard (2-0, 1-0 Ivy) held on to its slim lead late in the game in both dramatic and controversial style. After senior kicker Anders Blewett missed a 23-yard field goal wide left late in the fourth quarter, the Bears’ offense pushed its way down the field methodically.

Brown fullback Brent Grinna advanced the ball into Harvard territory, but the Bears (0-2, 0-1) got stuck at the Harvard 23 facing a fourth-and-four.

Quarterback Kyle Slager threw an underneath pass to star wideout Chas Gessner, who ran all the way to the 3-yard line. The immediate celebration by the Bears was tempered quickly when they realized there was a flag on the play—a 15-yard penalty for offensive pass interference called on an illegal “pick” before the pass.

Brown coach Phil Estes was furious, but the play was called back and the Bears could not convert the longer fourth down and turned the ball over.

The Crimson stalled on offense with only two minutes left to play and were forced to punt, giving the Bears one last chance. Brown started from its own 2, and Slager dropped back in the end zone to pass. Crimson senior defensive end Mike Armstrong got to Slager, and as the quarterback was going down, he flipped the ball a few yards in front of him.

Instead of intentional grounding, which would have resulted in a safety, the officials ruled Slager’s toss an incomplete pass.

“No, I didn’t see a receiver,” junior defensive end Brian Garcia, who also got to Slager, said. “It was a questionable call. But I really don’t know, there were three guys around me.”

Estes admitted at a post-game press conference that the ruling “probably should have been a safety” and been the end of Brown’s chances.

In any case, the Crimson defense bore down and stopped Brown on the next two plays to end the game and leave Brown Stadium with the win.

Despite expectations of a much higher-scoring game filed with deep passes to each team’s star wide receivers, both coaches used the run early to keep each others’ offenses off the field.

Brown got the ball to start the game and scored on its first three possessions. The Bears used a controlled passing attack and running back Joe Rackley to move down the field on its first possession, chewing up eight minutes on the drive, which was punctuated by a three-yard touchdown scamper by tailback Tristan Murray.

A similar drive took shape in the beginning of the second quarter, when the Bears moved the ball 94 yards in seven minutes.

Gessner, who had been limited to short catches up until that point, ran an out-and-up on the right side to blow by the coverage and catch a 27-yard touchdown pass from Slager in the end zone. However, Brown kicker Paul Christian missed his second extra point of the day and the Bears were limited to a 12-0 lead.

This time Harvard had a response. Rose, who finished a perfect 5-for-5 before leaving the game, completed two 20-yard passes, including one to senior wideout Carl Morris that moved Harvard into Brown territory.

Several plays later, senior tailback Nick Palazzo, who finished with 82 yards rushing and two touchdowns, took Rose’s handoff to the right sideline. He then barreled 25 yards to the end zone for the Crimson’s first score to cut the deficit to 12-7.

Harvard’s defense was outdone once again on Brown’s next drive, which only took three plays. On third down from his own 40-yard line, Slager managed to find Gessner on a short cross route and the All-American did the rest, scoring his second touchdown of the day.

“We knew the offense was keeping us in the game,” Garcia said. “It was just a matter of us making plays—it was just that [Brown] was outplaying us for most of the game.”

A missed two-point conversion meant Brown had a 18-7 lead, and it was after this score that Murphy rode his “colt” to victory.

Rose, who had been suffering from back problems since preseason, injured himself on the bus ride down to Providence. In the second quarter, Rose took a hit on a scramble that aggravated a sciatic nerve condition that affected his legs, and he left the field on crutches while Harvard played defense.

Fitzpatrick provided an immediate boost to the offense with his scrambling abilities. He single-handedly ran for 64 yards on his first drive, and put the Crimson into position for Palazzo’s second rushing touchdown, a one-yard burst late in the second quarter. Harvard failed on the two-point conversion, however, and Brown maintained a 18-13 lead.

The end of the action-packed first half featured a well-planned Harvard one-minute drive.

This time, Fitzpatrick showed off his arm. He connected with sophomore wideout Rodney Byrnes for 32 yards, and then an 18-yarder to Morris to cover half the field as time winded down. Finally, on the Brown 19, Fitzpatrick rolled out ro his right, before throwing a perfect cross-field pass off his back foot into the end zone, where Morris hauled in his third touchdown catch of the season.

“I’d rather throw the ball anyway,” the quarterback said.

Harvard ran into the locker room with its first lead of the day, 19-18, and that would be all it needed.

The Crimson picked up where it left off to start the second half, with Fitzpatrick and a running back—this time senior Rodney Thomas—keeping the Bears’ defense off balance.

Harvard ran nine straight times to get to the Brown 8-yard line before Fitzpatrick tossed a fade to junior Kyle Cremarosa, who made a nice jumping catch in the endzone.

The Bears scored one more time to cut the lead to 26-24 before the final few minutes’ flurry of activity.

“We’ve got a pretty poised team,” Murphy said about his team’s come-from-behind victory.

—Staff writer Rahul Rohatgi can be reached at rohatgi@fas.harvard.edu.