One Thing Left To Prove

They’ve been coming all season, huddled in pairs in the press box or watching silently at practice. They come from Oakland, from Pittsburgh, from Indianapolis, drawn by a highlight reel and a rumor. They come because somehow or other they’ve heard that tucked away in the dusty corner of the football world that is the Ivy League, a future NFL quarterback is waiting to be discovered.

They’ve been coming to watch someone who received exactly one scholarship offer out of high school—from Division I-AA Eastern Washington. They’ve been coming to check out someone who plays in a league that doesn’t allow athletic scholarships and bars its champion from the playoffs.

But still they’ve been coming. They’ve been coming because despite it all, this player has been ranked as one of the top NFL quarterback prospects in the country, ahead of guys from Miami and Auburn. They’ve been coming because they think that the 6’3, 220-lb. kid from Gilbert, Ariz., just might repeat the same success that he’s had in four years with Harvard on a professional level.

They’ve been coming to see Ryan Fitzpatrick.

And so far, they like what they see.

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Fitzpatrick has gone from being a high school senior without a single I-A offer to a reportedly fourth-round—or higher—draft prospect, with pit-stops in the Harvard record books in between.

It’s an astonishing change of fortune, and one that’s hard to account for with a year-by-year charting of progress and statistics.

That’s because, according to Harvard coach Tim Murphy, Fitzpatrick has something unquantifiable.

“The thing that has helped Ryan develop into a great college quarterback are intangibles,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy says. “Because we knew he could throw, we knew he was athletic, a big kid. What you don’t know, and what I didn’t know when I visited him at his house in Gilbert, Ariz., was how tough he was. Mentally and physically. How much he thrives on pressure and competition.

“Those are things you never really know until you spend a lot of time in critical situations around an athlete,” Murphy continues. “And that has helped Ryan transform from a very solid college quarterback in terms of physical skills into a great college quarterback, who is a legitimate professional prospect.”

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Of course, it’s not all guts and instinct. Fitzpatrick has gotten physically bigger since he’s been at Harvard, packing on muscle particularly after the 2003 season. On the field, he credits his development as a player to the position coaches he’s spent time with in his past four years, particularly former offensive coordinator Jay Mills and current assistant coach Dave Cecchini.

As for players, Fitzpatrick looks to the man he split time during with his first two years.

“I know one of the biggest things was Neil Rose [’03], who I had the privilege of spending two years watching play,” Fitzpatrick says. “He’s such a student of the game—very smart, great instincts out there in the field, great leader. I think that’s one of my biggest things, was I was able to sit and learn from him.”

It was after Rose graduated and Fitzpatrick took the helm as the sole orchestrator of Harvard’s offense that the NFL whispers started. At first, it was almost too tantalizing to be trusted.

“It’s always the dream, especially growing up, a little kid watching it on TV every Sunday,” Fitzpatrick says. “It’s always something I had in the back of my mind. It’s always something that you’re working towards, but I wasn’t sure if I had a realistic shot or not until sometime, I guess junior year, when I started to hear some things.”

In the spring after Fitzpatrick’s injury-marred junior season—which saw the Crimson drop two of the games he didn’t start to low-rung Ivy opponents—Murphy approached his new captain with a proposition.

“I said ‘Fitzy, I want you to go in there, I want you to choose the 30 best plays, run and pass, that you can find, and I’ll let you choose, and we’ll make a highlight, and I really think there’ll be some interest,’” Murphy recalls. “But I said there’s absolutely no guarantees. And all of a sudden, immediately, there was interest.”

Once fall came, the scouts started showing up to practices and games almost every week, both home and away. On top of that, Fitzpatrick has been juggling phone calls from agents and waiting to hear from showcase bowls like the Senior Bowl, the Hula Bowl and the East-West Shrine Game.

All the while leading the Crimson to its 11th Ivy championship and the only undefeated record in I-AA football.

Oh yeah, the Harvard season. In the midst of all the murmurs about what will happen come draft day, Fitzpatrick hasn’t forgotten the team he’s playing with every Saturday. Taking the advice of former Crimson players Carl Morris ’03 and Jamil Soriano ’03—both of whom have toiled on practice squads and in the NFL Europe—Fitzpatrick has endeavored to keep the future distinct from the present. The agents get deferred to his father, while the subject of the NFL has been off-limits between Murphy and Fitzpatrick since day one of this season.

“That’s one of the main things I’ve appreciated about him through the year was, he really kept those two things separate,” Fitzpatrick says of his coach. “During the year, our main focus is winning the football games, but I’m sure after the Yale game we’ll sit down, him, me and my family, and we’ll go over some of the prospects.”

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It’s hard to predict what exactly Fitzpatrick’s prospects in the draft will be. A lot will depend on what senior bowl invites he receives. On top of that, he has to contend with an Ivy bias that has stung would-be draftees in previous years.

“It definitely hurts,” Fitzpatrick says of his Ivy origins. “I think we’ve seen that in the past, at least since I’ve been here we’ve had a couple pro prospects that just for some reason or another—they’ve done great in the Ivy League, and come draft day, they just don’t get the respect that maybe some of them deserve.

“That’s one of the biggest struggles, overcoming that Ivy League bias,” he continues, “where you didn’t play against very good competition, you’re doing well but throw yourself into a high-pressure, high-intensity atmosphere somewhere like Ohio State or Michigan, and supposedly you won’t be able to produce the same way.”

An appearance in the senior bowls, then, would provide Fitzpatrick with the opportunity to make people look past the brands of “Harvard,” “Ivy League” and “I-AA.”

“That’ll be a big thing for me to get some exposure, playing against better competition,” he says, “playing with better players in I-A as opposed to I-AA.”

It’s strange to think that the remarkable things Fitzpatrick has done while he’s been a member of the Crimson are largely unknown to the new sets of eyes that have come to watch him, and that will be watching him over the next few months. Since Harvard is primarily televised on local cable—if at all—many of Fitzpatrick’s legendary performances get replays only in the memories of his teammates, his unfortunate opponents and the fans who wear his No. 14 jersey.

There’s his penchant for leading historic comebacks, like he did as a freshman against Dartmouth in the first start of his career when he reversed a 21-0 halftime deficit. Fitzpatrick repeated that feat against Brown earlier this season, when he helped Harvard rebound from a similar three-touchdown hole to keep the Crimson’s undefeated Ivy campaign on track. He holds the school record for single-game total offense and has the second-most career passing yards in Harvard history.

But the scouts aren’t really focusing on things like that.

They’re looking instead at fundamentals like smarts, mobility and strength—all attributes that Fitzpatrick believes he has.

“I think that intelligence is probably one of the biggest ones, as far as coming from a school like Harvard,” he admits. “Other than that, mobility, escapability, agility, those kinds of things I think I’ve showed since I’ve been here. And that’s something that’s becoming more of a focus for quarterbacks in the NFL these days.

“One of my other strengths would probably be arm strength,” he adds. “I’m not gonna throw a Ryan Leaf bullet, but I’ve got a good enough arm, where I think it’ll turn some heads and keep them interested.”

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They’re interested now, certainly. Those scouts from the 49ers, the Giants and the Vikings aren’t trekking out to Cambridge for the pleasant weather. But it’s too early to see how it will all pan out—if Fitzpatrick will be a Jay Fiedler or a Gavin Hoffman.

And if Saturday against Yale is, somehow, the last time Fitzpatrick picks up a football in a game that matters, don’t think for a second that the kid who grew up going to every Arizona State home game will let football slip away that easily.

“I don’t see myself being able to stay away from football,” Fitzpatrick says. “If they’re not going to allow me to play the game anymore, then I’ll probably get involved some other way…Whether it’s me working and then down the line becoming a coach, or maybe getting involved in some sports management deal with an NFL team, any type of sport—basketball, football, anything.”

For now, though, the focus is on Yale, and on securing Harvard’s first 10-win season in over 100 years. Afterward, Fitzpatrick will finally turn his full attention to the agents ringing the phone off the hook. He’ll wait for the calls from the senior bowls that will give him national exposure.

And he’ll confirm for those ever-watchful scouts that coming to see him, week after week, was well worth their time.

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.