Young Secondary Tested Early

As Pee Wee football coaches everywhere like to remind their teams, the best offense is a good defense. Luckily for head coach Tim Murphy, he’s blessed with both.

Coming off of an Ivy League championship season, the Crimson has a lot of depth in a lot of places. Quarterbacks Chris Pizzotti and Liam O’Hagan are back in Cambridge for their fifth years. There are three running backs—juniors Ben Jenkins and Cheng Ho and sophomore Gino Gordon—competing for the top spot, and a front seven that is best in the Ivies. But having lost cornerback Steven Williams ’08—and his league-leading eight picks last season—to graduation, the secondary remains the one question mark on an otherwise solid squad.

“You can’t just replace the guys that we have to replace, Steven Williams as a starting point,” Murphy says. “The question mark and the concern is not going to be quality, I think it’s going to be depth. The depth is precarious at that position until some of the younger guys prove otherwise.”

Anchoring that young secondary will be senior preseason All-American cornerback Andrew Berry, who Murphy calls “legitimately the best defensive back in America in our division.”

The other corner, junior Derrick Barker, routinely came in against three- and four-receiver sets last season. But, as last Friday night’s game against Holy Cross showed, Barker has yet to prove himself in the one-on-one slot. Twice he was beaten, resulting once in a pass interference call and once in a touchdown.

“They were picking on him a little bit early, and we certainly knew that going into the game, but we just sort of wanted to see if we could get a bigger body over there against that receiver,” Berry says of Barker. “Derrick’s an excellent corner, and we expect him to be a strong contributor for us for the rest of the season.”

Sophomore Collin Zych will also see increased playing time in the secondary for the first time in his career. Zych got off to a fine start Friday with a crucial third-quarter interception in the end zone, shutting down a Crusader threat and shifting the momentum in Harvard’s direction.

“The kid that’s really come along and played really, really well is Collin Zych,” Murphy says. “We’re not even concerned, he can really play.”

While the free safety spot has been the biggest concern for Murphy, senior Ryan Barnes looks to have the ability to fill the hole.

“He’s a senior, he knows the system, he’s a good athlete,” Murphy says. “I think it’s just a little bit of experience, but as a senior we expect him to be able to handle that role very well.”

Against Harvard’s precarious secondary, opponents are likely to take their offensive attack to the air, especially in the first two weeks, which feature two of the best passing offenses the Crimson will likely face.

And before Friday’s game, Murphy reminded his team of Holy Cross’s pass offense that plagued them last year.

“I’m sure they’re sick of hearing me say ‘Hey, last year, we not only didn’t stop them, we didn’t even slow them down,’” Murphy says of 2007’s 31-28 loss to the Crusaders. “500 plus yards, 30 plus first downs, 30 plus points, those are statistics you don’t normally attribute to a Harvard defense.”

And as Friday’s game showed, those statistics certainly will not be attributed to the 2008 Harvard defense. The Crimson held Holy Cross preseason All-American quarterback Dominic Randolph to just 239 yards and one touchdown, paling in comparison to last year’s 339 yards and four touchdowns.

And with Brown coming up tomorrow, the secondary will again be tested by quarterback Michael Dougherty, who led the Ivy League in completions, completion percentage, passing yards, and touchdown passes last season.

“You know, I think we did well against Holy Cross on Friday, and we expect improvement as we play Brown next Saturday, and we just want to take these great game experiences into the rest of the season,” Berry says. “The biggest hope for our young secondary is sort of to grow up fast this year.”

If Harvard has any hopes of an Ivy title repeat, the secondary will need to use the experience against these early-season, pass-heavy offenses to round out what is otherwise the most seasoned defense in the Ivy League.

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.