Performance of the Year: Ryan Fitzpatrick, The Game

In football, there are plays that make you rub your eyes in astonishment. Plays like an off-balance one-handed catch, a pulverizing hit, or an impossible evasion of a would-be tackler—the kind of plays that make you gasp, “Did you see that?”

In the 2003 edition of The Game, junior quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick didn’t have one unbelievable play.

He had one unbelievable entire game.

Hobbled by a torn meniscus and sprained ankle sustained in the previous week’s game against Penn, Fitzpatrick limped onto the field at the beginning of the game like a bad joke about a one-legged quarterback. He had missed several games with a broken finger, and his shoulder had given him trouble as well.

“Mobile” was the last word you would have used to describe him, hardly an optimistic observation for the player at the helm of an already-sputtering Crimson offense.

And he wasn’t hefting merely the weight of his injuries and dubious playing condition. This was a Harvard squad that had lost three straight for the first time since 1999. A loss would have meant a sub-.500 Ivy record, something nobody on the team had ever experienced.

But come hell or high water or gimpy left leg, Fitzpatrick was not about to go out there and lose.

Somehow the battered Crimson quarterback—who had practiced fewer than four times in the previous five weeks—gathered himself and his tender limbs together and led Harvard to a 37-19 win over the Bulldogs, preserving Game-day glory, salvaging Ivy dignity and ending a disappointing season on a positive note.

“We’d lost three straight and were in a slide, nobody really knew how to deal with it—we were able to then rebound to go 7-3 instead of 6-4,” Fitzpatrick said of what made The Game so satisfying.

For Fitzpatrick, his body was a small sacrifice to help make his senior teammates’ last game a win.

“It’s always great for the seniors to leave with a great taste in their mouths,” Fitzpatrick said. “My biggest thrill was to see their faces after the victory. They were so happy.”

He can play down his injuries like he played through them. But the fact remains that it wasn’t until almost three months after that heroic performance that he began, slowly, to start running again.

This wasn’t a game that could be understood through the numbers, though they were decent—13 of 22 for 230 yards. But four of those 13 passes were for touchdowns, showing how efficient and precise Fitzpatrick had to be to make what little he had to work with count.

A more telling statistic was his rushing total: negative yards rushing for the first time in his career.

It’s not surprising, considering that he could barely walk on and off the field. The plays that the coaches drew up had to be primarily based on the legs of freshman running back Clifton Dawson or on a trust in Fitzpatrick’s ability to sit back in the pocket and find that open receiver.

Yet even with his aching feet securely planted behind the line of scrimmage, Fitzpatrick defied logic time and again.

A 79-yard game-capping touchdown pass to junior wide receiver Brian Edwards on a mistaken play, for example. Or the fact that on top of the injuries he entered the game with, Fitzpatrick was also sacked three times. You could almost feel the crowd wincing with every hit.

And still somehow, miraculously, he got back up again.

The pregame decision to take that field with the help of some tape and a brace remained unyielding. Fitzpatrick was a man with a mission that day, and no mere corporal hindrance was going to keep him from going out there.

Above all, he had a very special crowd to please.

“I had struggled through the last half of the season—broken hand, shoulder, ankle, knee,” Fitzpatrick acknowledged, “but what was more of a thrill was to have my family all there to watch, all together.”

His younger brother was seeing him play in college for the first time, and that along with his duty to the seniors and the rest of his teammates was more than enough to trump a simple thing like logic.

Harvard fans couldn’t believe their eyes.

But they could believe in their quarterback when he said, simply, “There was no way I wasn’t gonna be on the field that day.”

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.