STRAIGHT CLOWNIN': O’Hagan and That Other Guy

It’s unfair to compare the recently-tested sophomore against the 2005 graduate and current NFLer.

Sophomore quarterback Liam O’Hagan has all of a single game under his belt as a starter for the Crimson, but even after slight playing time, the temptation to start stacking him up against Ryan Fitzpatrick—another athletic scrambler with a Gaelic last name—is already tough to escape.

True, the comparison isn’t necessarily favorable. Against both Brown and Holy Cross, he looked shaky in the first half. Fitzpatrick rarely threw interceptions—six over the entire course of last season. O’Hagan was picked off twice yesterday, both times by Brown senior outside linebacker Tim Cotter. Some of the passes he threw were hard-to-explain tosses into heavy coverage.

“I started off a little slow, made some poor decisions. I was trying to get a feel for the game, a feel for the defense,” O’Hagan said. “I’ve never played an opponent of this ability; they were just flying after me.”

To be fair, O’Hagan didn’t enjoy the same protection against the Brown defensive front that he had against Holy Cross, getting sacked four times and twice by junior linebacker Zac DeOssie. And to be fair, both interceptions testified to a strong secondary rather than poor play calling.

“He obviously has skills,” Murphy said. “He hasn’t made his last mistake, but when the pressure’s on, he did big things.”

That’s why there’s reason for a comparison to be made. Witness O’Hagan running out of the pocket as he did the last two Saturdays, and understand. O’Hagan rushed for 63 yards and a touchdown last week and 66 yards (35 net) this week.

“All I’m going to grade him on is how he fought and how he led,” Murphy said. “He gave us a great effort in terms of toughness. When you’re a sophomore quarterback who didn’t play as a freshman, it’s tough.”

The team didn’t find its feet with sophomore Richard Irvin at the helm in the first quarter of last week’s game against Holy Cross. The position was O’Hagan’s.

“I told him before the game ‘[Even] If you throw 10 interceptions, you’re not coming out,” Murphy said. “The quarterback’s gotta be a leader.”

O’Hagan’s quarterback rating isn’t perfect, but his grace under pressure was hard to ignore. With Harvard down 32-25 late in the fourth quarter, O’Hagan engineered the game-tying drive downfield.

He passed for 35 yards on the drive, but O’Hagan turned heads with his legs as much as his arm.

Harvard faced third-and-one, but a false start penalty pushed them back five yards. After taking the snap on third-and-six, O’Hagan rolled left out of the pocket, and, with no one open downfield, tucked and ran. And ran. The 17-yard rush brought the Crimson to the Brown 24-yard line.

“It’s great play on his part—he’s a good athlete,” said Brown head coach Phil Estes. “He saw the hole and took a chance, because if he gets tackled, that clock keeps running. He knew he had to get a first down to stop that clock.”

A pass to sophomore receiver Joe Murt got them closer, but another O’Hagan scramble—this time for 12 yards—broke within the Brown five-yard line, setting up junior tailback Clifton Dawson for a short smash-mouth touchdown and sophomore kicker Matt Schindel for the game-tying PAT.

And once he shook some game-opening jitters, O’Hagan developed poise, a sensitivity to the defenses he faced that spoke to the instincts that can’t be taught. We’ve seen it before.

In the post-game press conference, O’Hagan was affable, deflecting questions with a grin and passing credit to his teammates, but as he talked, there was a sense of continuity with last season.

Maybe it was that Murphy had just praised his quarterback up and down. Maybe it was the fact that we’d all just seen O’Hagan scramble for big yards to lead Harvard downfield. Maybe it’s that with his helmet off and his uniform caked with dirt and soaked with sweat, O’Hagan bears more than a passing resemblance to his predecessor.

“I watched last year from the sidelines, all the practices, all the games. The way he does that sort of thing baffles me, and I try to do my best up there,” O’Hagan said

He’s taken some cues from Fitzpatrick, and, as premature and as unfair to either player it is to say, it showed on Saturday.

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.