COMEBACK OF THE YEAR: Late-Game Rally Brings Win over Yale

In a still-filling Yale Bowl, the Harvard football team was in trouble. Though it had come into the 126th playing of The Game as the heavy favorite—boasting a 5-1 Ivy record and an outside chance at a share of the conference title—the Crimson had gotten off to a sluggish start in the first quarter and found itself staring at the wrong end of a 10-0 score.

The Bulldogs, trying to salvage a disappointing season in front of their home crowd, got on the scoreboard on their first two drives. Alex Barnes’ 26-yard field goal made it 3-0 after six minutes of play, and after junior quarterback Collier Winters coughed up the ball at the Yale 43-yard line, the Bulldogs marched to the endzone, where Rodney Reynolds capped the drive with his first career touchdown.

As the game wore on, nothing was going right for Harvard. It reached the red zone twice in the first half, only to turn the ball over on downs—once on an incomplete pass and once on a trick field goal gone wrong.

“We got outcoached in the first half, no question about it,” Crimson coach Tim Murphy admitted after the game. “[Yale] did a great job. We made some adjustments at halftime, had a little bit of a character check.”

The tides started to turn for Harvard at the start of the third quarter. The Crimson finally got its formidable run game going, with Winters, junior Gino Gordon, and freshman Treavor Scales rushing for a combined 71 yards on the half’s opening drive. But on the one rush that really counted, Gordon was ruled down inches shy of the goal line—even though video replay showed the ball crossing the plane.

“The first spark, even though we came away with zero, was just the great drive,” Murphy said. “We came out, we really executed a great drive at the beginning of the second half...We just had to finish. And in the end, we finally did.”

With the stadium now full, it was Yale’s turn to falter. The Bulldogs’ only trip across midfield in the second half resulted in a missed 27-yard field goal. The door was open for Harvard—it was just a matter of taking advantage.

Just over seven minutes remained in the game when Murphy decided to take another gamble. The Crimson was looking at fourth and four at its own 30-yard line, and if a comeback was going to happen, time was running out.

So rather than putting the punt unit on the field, Murphy left his offense out there, and Winters handed the ball to Gordon.

The junior tailback cut up the left side, spun out of a tackle, and found open grass. He made it past the first-down marker and kept running, carrying the ball to the Harvard 49. And just like that, the Crimson was in control.

“Collier correctly checked to the draw play, and it looked like it was throttled out,” Murphy said. “Just kind of bounced outside, and all of a sudden we had new life.”

Winters hit sophomore Adam Chrissis for a first down, and on the next play, Winters launched a 41-yard pass to senior Matt Luft in the endzone.

“He was running a dig route, he just saw the safety byline and just took it up,” Winters said after the game. “I saw the same thing, just threw it up to him, got it in the endzone. That just set us off.”

Yale took the biggest gamble of the game on the next drive, calling for a fake punt play on fourth and 22 that was stopped seven yards shy of a first down. With the ball back on the Bulldog 40, it took just 53 seconds for Harvard to take the lead for good.

A quick pass to Luft and a two-yard rush from Gordon brought the ball to the 32, and another bomb from the hand of Winters—this one to junior Chris Lorditch—put the Crimson up, 14-10.

“It was crazy, playing at Yale,” sophomore Matt Hanson said. “The whole game we had this down feeling like we couldn’t get anything going, and then just coming back like that was ridiculous.”

Senior Jon Takamura sealed the win with an interception, and though the Harvard seniors didn’t get their third Ivy title, they did get the satisfaction of leaving the field with a third consecutive big-Game victory.

“It’s still setting in,” captain Carl Ehrlich said after the triumph. “Ending the year with a win, especially in that fashion—it’s unbelievable.”

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.