Love It Or Leave It: Fitzpatrick Should Not Have Played

Harvard football coach Tim Murphy took the fate of the game into his hands last Saturday when he played junior quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick against Dartmouth.

Murphy made the wrong call.

Sure, it is easy to say in hindsight that he shouldn’t have put Fitzpatrick in for one series at the start of the second quarter and then in the middle of the third. Fitzpatrick had three turnovers—one fumble and two interceptions —in the fourth quarter alone as the Crimson stumbled to a costly 30-16 loss.

But plenty of evidence advised against using Fitzpatrick at all, so maybe Murphy needed a hand interpreting it. Or maybe Murphy just needed Fitzpatrick’s hand to be healthy.

Fitzpatrick broke his throwing hand four weeks ago against Cornell. He has practiced all of one day in the past three weeks, while junior backup quarterback Garrett Schires has taken three straight weeks of snaps. That’s a whole lot of rust that Fitzpatrick had to knock off when he came in cold in the second quarter.

Regardless of the rust, the status of Fitzpatrick’s health was dubious at best. He had the cast removed less than a week before the game, and the risk of reinjury should have been more carefully considered even though he was medically cleared to play.

Fitzpatrick is the Crimson’s best player. He is the spark that drives the offense—witness his one-man wrecking crew performance against Brown: six touchdowns, 410 yards—and clearly the first choice between himself and Schires if both are healthy.

But Fitzpatrick, despite his post-game comments to the contrary, was not at 100 percent.

As reported on Monday, Fitzpatrick’s hand is back in a cast, leaving his availability for the rest of the season in doubt. Murphy gambled that Fitzpatrick’s hand was ready, and now he faces long-term consequences for his decision with three games left in the season.

The worst thing that could have happened if Schires had stayed in was the Crimson would lose.

Well, they did. And now Fitzpatrick is likely out again, and Harvard is praying that Penn loses to keep its shot at sole possession of the Ivy title alive.

The Crimson is lucky that it has an able backup in Schires, who won both games in Fitzpatrick’s absence. Too bad that Murphy rattled him unnecessarily by yanking him—temporarily, at that—after a slow first quarter against the Big Green.

Schires started slowly in the two games before that but recovered both times to finish those games out strong. So what was the point in trotting out Fitzpatrick for a single series in the second quarter? All that accomplished was making Schires look over his shoulder for the rest of the game. It didn’t help matters when Fitzpatrick started warming up again on the sidelines in the third.

Murphy said after the game that he inserted Fitzpatrick in the second because he was the Crimson’s best chance to score in the red zone. Well, if that were true, Fitzpatrick should have started the game. Clearly the uncertainty surrounding his health was enough to prevent that from happening, and he was to be used in emergency situations only.

But with a 6-6 score after one quarter, it is hardly time to start worrying, let alone risk losing your star quarterback with the most important games of the season to come. Schires just needed time to settle down and knowledge that the coaches had confidence in him.

But putting Fitzpatrick in likely erased any confidence Schires had built up during the time he admirably filled in at quarterback. Once he returned to the game in the second, he appeared to be pressing and threw an interception to kill a drive that went inside Dartmouth’s 10-yard line at the end of the first half.

After Murphy used his hook the final time in the third, Fitzpatrick did show flashes of his usual offensive brilliance. But switching quarterbacks threw the offense off its usual rhythm, and Fitzpatrick failed to live up to his reputation as the comeback kid.

Fitzpatrick couldn’t do it all on his own, as he admitted later to trying, in less than top condition, and Harvard’s undefeated season came to an end. The Crimson would have been minimally better at best had Murphy’s strategy worked—now it’s much worse off.

Next time, Murphy needs to realize the hand that’s currently feeding him is Schires—and keep his own hands away from the hook.

—Staff writer Brenda E. Lee can be reached at belee@fas.harvard.edu.