NOTEBOOK: Winters Follows in Chapple’s Footsteps

The forward pass has been around in college football for about 105 years now. In a little over a century, only one Harvard quarterback had ever thrown for five touchdowns in a game—as of two weeks ago, that is.

In the two weeks since, it’s happened twice.

No Crimson quarterback had five passing touchdowns in the same game since the early 1950s, until sophomore Colton Chapple did it last week. And just when it looked like the brewing quarterback controversy was resolved, Harvard coach Tim Murphy mixed everything up once again.

Senior Collier Winters, who had been out due to injury since the first game of the season, made his second start of the year count. Winters threw five touchdowns and ran for a sixth, passing for 403 yards along the way. His 34 completions were the second-most ever in a game for a Crimson quarterback.

“[Winters] deserved to be our starting quarterback on merit, but also on some of the personal factors, being a fifth-year senior,” Murphy said.

Coming into the game, it was widely assumed that Chapple would get the start. He was listed at the top of the depth chart, and even the stadium’s public announcer broadcasted before Harvard’s first possession that the junior would start.

In the post-game press conference, Murphy said that Winters would be the team’s starter going forward. But after both Chapple and Winters put up back-to-back performances that are among the best single-game efforts in program history, a lot can change in a short period of time.

“I’m not sure we knew that we’d be this solid at quarterback in terms of depth,” Murphy said. “As someone said at the beginning of the season, the most valuable player on your team, or the second-most valuable player on your team, might be your second-string quarterback.”

AIN’T NO STOPPING US NOW

For three quarters, Harvard dominated. But with a huge third period and a touchdown at the beginning of the fourth, Princeton made Saturday’s game a contest.

Harvard took a 35-9 lead four minutes into the second half, and it looked like the team would cruise to another easy victory like the win last week against Bucknell.

But with a flurry of touchdowns, the Tigers almost came all the way back, closing the gap to 42-39 two minutes into the fourth quarter. It’s as close as Princeton would get, but the team certainly put a scare into the Crimson.

“I don’t even know what the difference was [between the first and second halves],” Tigers quarterback Tommy Wornham said. “Once the ball started rolling, it didn’t stop. It was one of those things where momentum kept carrying us through.”

It took Princeton just five plays to score its first touchdown of the half to get to 16 points. Still trailing by 26, the Tigers attempted a surprise onside kick halfway through the third quarter—and it worked.

Princeton recovered and scored 87 seconds later, and a successful two-point conversion made it an 11-point game.

“They’re definitely a tempo offense as well,” captain linebacker Alex Gedeon said. “Once they get going, they’re no huddle, so it’s really important against them to get stops, to get three-and-outs to stop the tempo, and we didn’t do that in the third quarter.”

With 13 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Princeton scored again, and another two-point play brought Princeton all the way back to field-goal range.

The Tigers took advantage of a weakened defense playing without senior defensive tackle Josue Ortiz, who left mid-game with a minor concussion, and senior defensive back Matthew Hanson, who hurt his knee in the third. Hanson came back in the fourth quarter.

Winters led a touchdown drive on the next series, capped by a one-yard run from junior Treavor Scales. Princeton didn’t score again in the game, and the Crimson would tack on seven more to seal the win.

“We didn’t tackle well at all today,” Murphy said. “We gave a lot of extra yards we left out on the field. That’s obviously a credit to their offensive line and their backs, but we didn’t tackle.”

REWRITING THE RECORD BOOKS

For a 138-year-old program, football’s record book has been awfully fluid lately.

Against Cornell, Chapple became the third Harvard quarterback to throw for 400 yards in a game.

In the matchup against Bucknell, he became the second to throw five touchdowns.

Against Princeton on Saturday, Winters became the fourth and third quarterbacks to do those exact same things.

In the past three games, the two Harvard quarterbacks have thrown for 14 touchdowns, also a record.

But the individual accomplishments are only part of the story.

The Crimson has scored 40 or more points in three straight games, the first time the team has done that since 1932, when it beat Buffalo, New Hampshire, and Penn State.

The two teams combined for 95 points on Saturday, the most in any game Harvard has played since it beat Wesleyan by the comfortable margin of 124-0 back in 1891. The only modern game that comes close was a 52-37 win over Brown in 1990.

“I’ve never seen anything like [this game],” Murphy said. “Last time I was involved in a game like that was down at the University of Delaware my first year as a head coach in 1987 at Maine. We had to win to go the playoffs, and I think we won 56-53, something like that.”.

—Staff writer E. Benjamin Samuels can be reached at samuels@college.harvard.edu.