The Big O’s

Any star football player can identify the moment when he realized football was his destiny. For Josué Ortiz, it was a broken wrist. For Chuks Obi, it was a look in the mirror.

Offensive lines across the Ivy League wish these moments had never happened.

A regional wrestling champion in high school, Ortiz thought he’d compete in both sports for Harvard.

But when a broken wrist kept him off the mat his freshman year, the Florida native decided he’d use his wrestling skills to make him a better football player instead.

“You find a lot of the same principles in wrestling that are in football,” he says. “It really helped me develop as a player my footwork, leverage...and hand-eye [coordination].”

While an injury forced Ortiz to drop his second sport, Obi’s decision to focus on football was the result of the realization that his build was a better fit for the gridiron than the basketball court.

“I joined football late,” Obi explains. “I started playing football my sophomore year in high school...and I made the realization that my size would benefit me more in football than in basketball.”

But it wasn’t enough for the athletes to realize that their skill sets were best suited for the football field. They had to convince college coaches to agree with them, no small task given that neither came from high school football powerhouses.

“I definitely had to go out on my own,” Obi says.

But their football prowess was enough to attract the attention of Harvard.

Once on campus, both Obi and Ortiz went from standouts in small schools to the bottom of the depth chart on an already strong Crimson squad. The broken wrist meant that Ortiz had to sit out his freshman season, and even when healthy the two defensive tackles had to pay their dues on the practice field and in the weight room before they were ready to step up as starters.

But last fall the duo hit its stride, with both earning second-team All-Ivy honors and becoming mainstays on the Harvard defensive line. Obi and Ortiz attribute their success to their adherence to the Crimson’s rigorous conditioning regimen.

“Our offseason program is incredible here,” Ortiz says. “I played behind pretty good guys, and when it was my time to shine, I had these years of weight room, so that’s why I could step up.”

“All my summers were spent here in the Cambridge area working out with the team,” Obi adds. “That’s definitely paid off.”

This year, the two seniors have picked up right where they left off, combining for 78 tackles and 7.5 sacks.

“Josué and Chuks have been a luxury for us on defense,” captain Collin Zych says. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the league who can defend them both.”

Ortiz and Obi’s most obvious asset is their physical strength. Both can bench 400 lbs., and Ortiz “is north of that,” according to Crimson coach Tim Murphy.

Ortiz displayed his power in a game against Columbia when, unable to wrap up Lions quarterback Sean Brackett in a more traditional tackle, Ortiz spun Brackett around like a discus-thrower and tossed the hapless signal caller to the ground.

That physical strength, combined with the Ortiz’s and Obi’s quick hands and strong technique, has stifled opposing running attacks all season. Before giving up 150 rushing yards to first-place Penn last week, the Crimson had allowed an average of just 85.6 yards per game on the ground.

“They’re very hard to control,” Zych says. “This frees up other players...Teams can’t just line up and try to run the ball. Teams have to line up and do things they’re not used to doing to combat Josué and Chuks in the middle.”

The duo’s ability to stop the run makes many of its opponents one-dimensional. But as adept as Ortiz and Obi are at stopping the run, it’s on the pass rush when their speed and athleticism really shine.

“That’s when you kind of get to have a little fun,” Ortiz says. “What’s great about having Chuks as my teammate is generally the center three linemen, two guards and the center, block the two of us. So they can only double team one of us, [and] the other one is single blocked. So that’s when you’ve got to beat your guy and get back there...We’ve done a pretty good job of, if you’re single-blocked, you’ve got to beat the other guy and get pressure on the quarterback.”

Ortiz, in particular, has stood out for his ability to break through offensive lines with ease.

“[In practice] he’s always in our backfield,” Murphy says. “I’m constantly having to say, ‘Will someone please get Josué out of the backfield?’ Thankfully, we’re not the only ones who have that problem.”

In the Crimson’s contest against Dartmouth this fall, Ortiz put on a show, posting two sacks on a Big Green offensive line that hadn’t allowed a sack since the first half of its first game this season. With Obi and sophomore Alex Norman picking up sacks of their own, Harvard put up four times as many sacks as Dartmouth had allowed all year.

While Ortiz’s and Obi’s performance on the field stands on its own, their leadership among their teammates may be equally as valuable. Once quiet players content to let their play do the talking, Obi and Ortiz have emerged as vocal leaders and role models for younger players.

“It starts with leadership in practice,” Ortiz says. “So we kind of took it upon ourselves to teach the young guys.”

“They’re pretty quiet guys,” Zych notes. “In the past, they had never been rah-rah, hyping people up. They used to just show up and do a great job. This year, they have been more vocal. People will feed off their energy.”

This last development marks the completion of the remarkable, parallel journeys of the two impressive tackles. Once small-town football players struggling to get noticed, Obi and Ortiz have emerged as a two-headed force that’s impossible to ignore.

“The linemen who come in here as freshmen are boys, and the linemen who leave here are definitely men,” Murphy says. “And that’s the difference of what you see when you see Josué in a press conference compared to when he was a freshman—he’s a man. Those two guys are grown men.”

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.