TEAM OF THE YEAR: Football

It has been said that the key to perfection is not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. For the 2001 Harvard football team, which completed its first perfect season in 88 years and only the sixth in school history, this adage couldn’t be more fitting.

A year removed from a disappointing 5-5 season marred by blown leads and bad breaks, the Crimson (9-0, 7-0 Ivy) focused on fundamentals and did the ordinary things required to win with extraordinary precision and resolve.

“The 2001 Harvard football team will be remembered not only for what it accomplished, but how it accomplished it,” said Harvard Coach Tim Murphy. “The players’ resiliency, effort and unyielding belief in each other carried this team to a season we will always cherish.”

Though the Crimson posted record-shattering individual and team statistics for the second straight year, the most important statistics of all—and the most important moments of the past season—were often the least conventional.

Consider split end and Ivy League Player of the Year Carl Morris (please see related story, E-1). Though the 6’3 junior established new benchmarks in nearly all Harvard’s receiving categories, including touchdown receptions in a season and a career, his biggest contribution to the undefeated season was a touchdown pass, not a catch.

With senior quarterback Neil Rose injured and Harvard facing a 21-0 halftime deficit to Dartmouth on Oct. 27, the Crimson’s prospects for continuing its march to a perfect season seemed grim. And in that moment of dejection, with perfection on the line, Morris made the play of the season.

On the first drive of the second half, the Crimson had the ball on the 35-yard line. Freshman quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, starting in place of Rose, took the second-down snap and pitched it to Morris, who had rolled to his right and into the backfield. Sensing a run or a reverse, the Dartmouth defense clamped down and pursued the play.

Without drawing attention from the defensive backs, senior flanker Sam Taylor slipped out to the left side of the field and waited patiently for the play to unfold. Morris reached the right sideline and as the Dartmouth defense closed in on him, he wheeled and fired a perfect pass to the wide-open Taylor. The stunned Dartmouth secondary could only watch as Taylor streaked in untouched to score Harvard’s first points of the game.

On the ensuing kickoff after the Morris-to-Taylor hookup, Crimson junior Xavier Goss forced a fumble that was recovered by senior Shawn Parker at the Dartmouth 32. On the next play, Morris made eye contact with Fitzpatrick and signaled to the rookie that he wanted to switch the play and run a fade rather than a crossing route.

Fitzpatrick obliged and lobbed a pass that Morris corralled over the Big Green cornerback for a 32-yard TD. And just like that, in a span of 18 seconds, Morris had played a prominent role in slicing a 21-0 deficit to a 21-14 score. On the next Crimson drive, Morris caught a 40-yard pass over the middle of the field to set up the equalizing score.

The Crimson went on to win the game, 31-21, capping the largest comeback in the 128-year history of the program.

In previous years, Harvard had been on the losing end of dramatic second-half comebacks. But last season, Harvard was perfect both in protecting late leads and making up ground as games wound down.

Though the 21-point Dartmouth comeback was the largest in team history, the Crimson had many other opportunities to showcase its resiliency with gritty comebacks. In fact, Harvard trailed at the half in four of its seven league games yet managed to claw back and win them all with a fundamental focus on ball security and outstanding efforts on both offense and defense.

In the most anticipated game of the season against defending Ivy champion Pennsylvania, Harvard trailed the Quakers 14-0 after one quarter and needed a team effort to pull out the win.

A Nick Palazzo TD scamper cut the lead in half before the end of the second quarter. Then, early in the third, Rose connected on a 20-yard slant to Morris to tie the score at 14. On the ensuing possession, Penn was relentlessly driving down the field until an acrobatic interception by First Team All-Ivy senior cornerback Willie Alford stole the momentum from the Quakers.

Four plays and one minute later, Rose pump-faked to draw in the Penn secondary and launched a deep bomb for Morris, who made an astounding over-the-shoulder catch and raced into the end zone to complete the 62-yard scoring play.

With the lead, Harvard continued to apply pressure to Penn in all facets of the game. On a fourth down play midway through the fourth quarter, Crimson senior Rodney Thomas took advantage of a blown defensive assignment to record Harvard’s first blocked punt in two years.

The Crimson scored two plays later when Rose found senior tailback Josh Staph over the middle for a 30-yard TD. The 28 points were enough for the eventual victory, which clinched Harvard’s first Ivy title in four years and the 10th in school history.

An occasionally overlooked but crucial key to Harvard’s success in that game—as well as in its perfect season in general—was the team’s ability to limit turnovers. The 2000 squad was plagued by turnover problems that cost the team wins over Cornell and Yale and thus a shot at the Ivy title. In 2001, the commitment to ball security paid off as Harvard allowed the fewest turnovers of any team in the nation.

Of the season’s nine games, the Crimson went without a turnover in four and only once had more than one turnover in a game (at Yale). In the season opener against Brown, Harvard was able to erase a halftime deficit and won 27-20 largely by forcing two costly Bear interceptions while not giving up any of its own.

Against Columbia, the Crimson again took care of the ball and avoided any turnovers en route to a 45-33 win. And despite various injuries to key players, Harvard capitalized on five Leopard turnovers in rolling over Lafayette 38-14 in the second week of the season.

“When you can play...and not turn the ball over once, you give yourself a great opportunity to win the game,” observed Penn Coach Al Bagnoli after Harvard’s zero-turnover effort to take the Ivy title from the Quakers.

The impressive ball security aside, Harvard could not have completed the undefeated, untied season without some surprising contributions from unsung heroes and some fortunate breaks.

In the season opener, the Crimson powered past Brown thanks to the stellar running of Staph. The fifth-year senior, who had entered the game with a grand total of 14 carries in his entire career, rushed 28 times for 152 yards and three touchdowns. Though injuries later would sideline Staph, his Herculean single-game effort got Harvard’s season off on the right foot.

Fitzpatrick was also instrumental to preserving Harvard’s perfect season when team leader and offensive orchestrator Rose went down with a concussion in the Princeton game. Taking over for Rose, Fitzpatrick went 5-for-6 on a drive that gave Harvard a 28-20 lead late in the game.

After a Tiger touchdown pulled Princeton within a score, another unsung hero, senior linebacker Eric LaHaie, tackled running back Cameron Atkinson in the backfield and forced the potential game-winning field goal attempt back a few yards. The 49-yard attempt from Tiger kicker Taylor Northrup sailed just wide left as Harvard won 28-26, dodging another bullet on its march to a perfect season.

Unsung heroes also contributed greatly to one of the best Crimson defensive units in history. In the second week of the season, senior defensive lineman Marc Laborsky stepped up his intensity in the absence of injured sophomore linebacker Dante Balestracci and finished the day with five tackles, one sack, a fumble recovery and an interception. Laborsky, along with Balestracci and Alford, were later unanimous First Team All-Ivy selections.

In a 35-20 victory over crosstown rival Northeastern on Oct. 6 at the Stadium, Harvard’s defense accounted for two scores as junior linebacker John Perry and sophomore lineman Brendan McCafferty returned fumbles for touchdowns of 85 and 19 yards, respectively. Both fumbles were caused by bone-jarring hits from Harvard’s other First Team All-Ivy player, senior safety Andy Fried.

At Cornell the following week, the entire Crimson defense shut down the high-powered Big Red offense and held it to a lone touchdown in the game’s waning moments. After the total domination exhibited that day, Murphy deemed the defensive effort the best one he had witnessed since arriving on the scene eight years ago.

With everything considered—the ball security, the solid plays on both sides of the ball, the unsung heroes—no memorable Harvard season would be complete without a sound thrashing of archrival Yale. Fortunately for fans of Harvard football, the Crimson did not disappoint.

Heading into the 118th playing of The Game, the Crimson had lost its last three meetings with the Elis. With some retribution in mind and with a game-breaking 36-yard fake punt by Balestracci and sophomore punter Adam Kingston, Harvard ripped Yale 35-23 to cap its perfect season.

Though Harvard missed a chance to be the first 10-0 team in school history because the first game of its season was cancelled due to the Sept. 11 attacks, there should be little doubt that this squad of 11 All-Ivy players and innovative coaches could have handily defeated Holy Cross.

Then again, as history has shown, a perfect season is a fragile and very rare feat. Harvard football has finished with an undefeated record 14 times in its 128-year history, but only six of those seasons were unblemished.

It could very well be another 88 years before the next perfect season, but until then The Crimson commends the 2001 Harvard football team for its historic accomplishment. It is the Team of the Year for having done all of the ordinary things so extraordinarily well and for achieving a perfection rarely matched and perhaps never to be surpassed.