THE BOOK OF SAMUELS: All-Around Effort Sets Up Drubbing

Two weeks ago against Lafayette, the Harvard defense carried the team, strangling the Leopard attack to give the Crimson the easy 31-3 win.

Last week against Cornell, it was the offense’s turn to take the wheel, and Colton Chapple and Co. willed Harvard to a 41-31 victory in an ugly defensive game for both squads.

This week, the offense and defense must have forgotten to coordinate, because both sides of the ball dominated all day long—or, more precisely, for 35 minutes, after which the second- and third-stringers hit the field. Harvard didn’t need much time on Saturday to build an unassailable lead.

The latest contest featured the most dominant Crimson performance of the year. In its mid-season tune-up—the last non-conference game of the year—Harvard looked pretty tuned-up.

Junior quarterback Colton Chapple again led the offense on a scoring tear and once more stomped all over the record books. Harvard football’s been around for a while, and only one other time has a quarterback thrown for five touchdowns in a single game. But it took Chapple only a bit more than two quarters to get there. And never before has a Harvard quarterback thrown four touchdowns in two consecutive games.

Chapple fired his five touchdown passes on Saturday with pinpoint accuracy. You couldn’t have placed them any better. The throws fell just out of the defenders’ reach and into the hands of Chapple’s receivers.

Bucknell never got close to intercepting one, but then again, not many teams have. In his three full games behind center, Chapple has 12 touchdown passes under his belt and only two picks.

Keith Wright—the co-captain of the Harvard men’s basketball team—may have said it best in a tweet: “Colton is picking this defense apart in the red zone. If we had scholarships he would definitely be earning his right now.”

The biggest development on the Chapple front—other than his shockingly rapid ascension to the top of the depth chart, replacing the injured incumbent—is that he evolved into a dual threat on Saturday. When the junior couldn’t find the open receiver, he tucked the ball and took off down the field. Sure, the guy’s not going to set any land speed records, but he clearly knows when and where to run. And that’s as important as anything. In total, Chapple’s 71 rushing yards led the team.

But it’s not fair to give the newly-anointed King of the Harvard Offense all the credit for his second consecutive record-breaking day. He knows that, and in the press conference he acknowledged the talented offensive line and wide receiver corps.

But Chapple forgot the guys who were most important in padding his statistics on Saturday: the defense.

In the team’s five touchdown drives, Harvard had to travel 40 yards or less three times. Only once did Chapple have to lead the team 60+ yards for the score. And that was all thanks to the mighty Harvard defense, which was in rare form on Saturday.

Against the vaunted Crimson defensive line—which coach after coach labels as the best they’ve seen in a while—Bucknell had negative-five rushing yards on the day. In addition to five sacks, including one by senior defensive tackle Josue Ortiz, who is still right on pace for 10 sacks this year, the Harvard D-line harassed Bucknell QB Brandon Wesley all game, hurrying and drilling him relentlessly. In this one, the Crimson defenders were the bulls, and Wesley wasn’t the matador—he was the red flag.

Once again, I can’t put it any better than Wright did in another tweet: “bucknells [sic] QB is getting abused out there. I guess they don’t believe in protecting the passer like us. #bucknell problems.”

And the Harvard secondary, which last week struggled against mighty Cornell gunslinger Jeff Mathews, regained its rhythm again. In the first half, when all of the starters were still on the field, the back seven held the Bison passing attack to a grand total of 36 yards.

The Crimson also had four interceptions on the day, one of which proved to be one of the highlights of the afternoon. Early in the second quarter, junior cornerback Brian Owusu stepped in the way of an underthrown Bucknell pass deep in Harvard territory, ending a Bison drive that could have evened the score at 7-7.

Owusu’s interception and his ensuing return set up a Crimson score and gave Harvard a 14-point lead early in the second quarter. And it would never get any closer.

Bison coach Joe Susan pointed to Owusu’s play as the turning point in the game, as the momentum changer. But in a game where Bucknell was the fat kid and Harvard the bully, a turning point was inevitable. Harvard was just the better team.

So what does all of this mean, especially now as the Crimson turns its focus to Ivy League contests from here on out?

Well, at least in my mind, after a couple of poor Yale performances and Penn barely escaping middling Ivy teams two weeks in a row, Harvard has quietly become the favorite to take home the Ancient Eight crown.

—Staff writer Robert S. Samuels can be reached at robertsamuels@college.harvard.edu.