Injuries Plague Football's Ivy Title Hopes

It was the hardest hit Ryan Fitzpatrick would take all season—and the only one he couldn’t walk away from. And it wasn’t even delivered by an opposing defender.

With Harvard up 27-0 at Cornell’s Schoellkopf Field, Fitzpatrick and the nation’s top offense were just mopping up yet another blowout win, minutes away from improving to a flawless 4-0 start.

“I know exactly what play it was,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “It was a scramble and he just got tossed around. His hand smacked the rock-hard astroturf, and that’s what did it.”

The Crimson’s spry quarterback hustled to the sidelines, cautiously guarding his injured throwing hand, before uttering words which, to that point in his career, would have been unthinkable.

“I can remember it very vividly right now,” Murphy said. “[I said,] ‘You OK?’ ‘I think I did something to my hand.’ For Fitzy to say something like that, I knew something was wrong. So I said, ‘Can you play?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t think I can take a snap, but I can go shotgun.’ And right then I knew.”

Fitzpatrick was done for the game and, as it turned out, Harvard was done for the season. Less than a month prior, under the sweltering afternoon sun outside Holy Cross’ Fitton Field, meeting such an inglorious end was the last thing anyone expected.

Silencing disbelievers who dared to think that the offense would lose its luster without Harvard’s all-time leading passer, Neil Rose ’02-’03 and receiver, Carl Morris ’03, Fitzpatrick turned in the single finest game in Crimson history, racking up 471 yards of total offense and three touchdowns.

“I haven’t really heard any of these number things,” Fitzpatrick said after the 43-23 win. “But that wasn’t our best game on offense and that’s what is so exciting about this...there are a lot of things we need to shape up and I think we’re going to be a very, unbelievably good offense this year.”

Junior Brian Edwards emerged from obscurity as an untouchable threat out wide, reeling in seven catches for one touchdown and 152 yards, though he easily ran twice as far toying with Crusader defenders by leading them from sideline to sideline, while counterpart Rodney Byrnes nearly crossed the century mark as well. Running backs Ryan Tyler and Clifton Dawson combined for 161 yards and three touchdowns on 35 carries.

No, this team wouldn’t be lacking for offense.

Punishing opposing defenses with its versatility, Harvard posted 150 points in the first four games of the season, propelling Fitzpatrick and Edwards to top quarterback and receiver statistics in the nation.

Through each of the first four contests, the Crimson defenders were nothing short of stifling, holding every opponent below 23 points and then crowning their achievement by shutting out the Big Red.

Captain Dante Balestracci assumed the same menacing form that had terrorized opponents for three years, junior Bobby Everett blossomed alongside him and senior Chris Raftery seamlessly eased into his role at safety.

Even after Fitzpatrick went down to injury, it at first seemed as though Harvard would be able to successfully weather the loss of yet another star player. Junior Garrett Schires filled in admirably, leading the Crimson to comeback victories against Lafayette and Princeton—with a most deserved assist from Dawson, who scored seven touchdowns in the two games on 66 carries for 401 yards.

“We’d come from behind to beat two teams without a really outstanding quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick,” Murphy said. “That’s why the next couple of games were such a mystery.”

In the 30-16 loss to Dartmouth, everything fell apart as the Big Green’s receivers snared pass after impossible pass. Schires gave way to a still-injured Fitzpatrick with the offense woefully underperforming in the second half, but not even he could resurrect the stagnant unit from its lifelessness. In the process, Fitzpatrick reinjured the hand that had kept him sidelined, forcing him out of the huddle for another week.

“Fitzy was dying to play,” Murphy said. “He was chomping at the bit. He was saying he was 100 percent fine. I was hoping to buy another week, but with the Ivy title on the line, you can’t leave your best horse in the barn.”

One week later, the title was definitively off the table. Columbia effectively shut down the Harvard running game in the second half and, under pressure, Schires performed disastrously against the Lions’ mediocre secondary. Still, with less than four minutes to go, the Crimson had the ball and a four-point lead.

But, unable to run out the clock, Schires threw a third-down interception, setting up the game-winning score and all but eliminating Harvard from title contention before Penn linebacker Steve Lhotak planted senior tight end Matt Fratto at the six-yard line as time expired the next weekend, preserving the Quakers’ 32-24 win—and Harvard’s third-straight loss.

And so for the first time in a while, The Game wasn’t about a long shot at the Ivy title or a perfect season, but merely staying above .500 while maybe recapturing some of the lost promise lost along the way.

Fitzpatrick did just that, completing 13 of 22 passes for four touchdowns, while Dawson racked up 176 yards on the ground on 32 carries.

Balestracci recorded eight tackles and nimbly slipped through the Yale offensive line in the Crimson’s 37-19 victory to end a disappointing season on a bittersweet note.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.