BOOK OF SAMUELS: Football Shows Dominance in Rout

In Friday night’s contest against Holy Cross—the last team to beat the Crimson—Harvard did far more than just avenge that early-season loss from a year ago.

The Crimson unequivocally, unceremoniously, ripped apart the Crusaders in the most emphatic first-half performance in the program’s history.

Forty-nine points in 30 minutes isn’t supposed to happen. The math is dizzying. Over a point a minute. On pace for nearly 100.

But in that first half, before the starters were pulled, nothing—not a little (or a lot of) rain, not a Holy Cross defense that seemed to be constantly backpedaling—could slow down the Crimson. Playing the Death Star to Holy Cross’ Alderaan, Harvard found the end zone in all of its first-half drives. Holy Cross, meanwhile, managed only a field goal.

Romps don’t get much bigger than the one at Harvard Stadium on Friday. It was Reagan vs. Mondale, Kevin McAllister vs. Joe Pesci, Burr vs. Hamilton—a duel turned public execution.

And that final scene from Scarface? Yeah, that was the whole first half.

Indeed, the Crimson starters dominated those opening two quarters. Senior quarterback Colton Chapple, who was pulled after the half, threw for 260 yards on just 13 completions and was one passing touchdown away from tying the single-game program record. And at times, it took three or four Crusaders to bring down senior running back Treavor Scales. With giant humans hanging on his limbs, Scales looked like he was merely wading through mud. Those defenders were an inconvenience more than an impediment.

Naturally, the scoring slowed with the Crimson replacements in, and the Harvard attack tallied only three points in the second half. But that didn’t matter in the slightest. In the Crimson’s 52-3 win, the game was over well before halftime.

Sure, Harvard was favored coming into Friday night’s contest against Holy Cross. After all, the Crimson was undefeated, and the Crusaders had yet to win a game.

But it was supposed to be sort of close, right? In its last two games, Holy Cross had let leads slip away in the fourth quarter.

Heading into Friday’s contest, it seemed like this was a Crusaders team which, battling injury, was on the verge of that first ‘W’.

“Regardless of their record, you know, you see it on paper, but [when] you really look into it with the stats…how they lost those two games,” Scales said before Friday’s contest, “you know that you’re expecting a tough team.”

Against the Crimson, Holy Cross was the furthest thing from tough, and Crusaders coach Tom Gilmore knew it.

“52-3 is a hard pill to swallow, and especially when you watch your team make multiple mistakes and just make it easy on then,” Gilmore said. “Dropped passes, fumbled snaps, things like that.”

Yes, the underdog story went all wrong on Friday. As it turned out, the glass slipper was a horrific fit.

Some of the blame clearly goes to a Holy Cross squad that was outwitted and outmatched. But certainly, the Crimson deserves much of the credit. You don’t score 49 points or limit the other team to three in the first half by accident.

“It was a combination of us just getting completely in sync in the first half and playing against, quite frankly, a very banged-up Holy Cross squad,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said.

In the game’s opening minutes, a ruthless, Genghis-Khanesque blowout didn’t seem in the cards. While the Crimson marched seemingly unopposed downfield for the score in the team’s opening drive, the Crusaders responded with a possession that was similarly dominant, though it culminated in a field goal.

Harvard scored again, blocked the subsequent Holy Cross punt, and returned it for a touchdown.

But for the Crusaders, the second quarter was even uglier, when things went downhill faster than a freshman with a bottle of Rubinoff.

It became a dismal game of ping pong for Holy Cross. Harvard touchdown, Holy Cross punt. Harvard touchdown, Holy Cross punt—you get the idea. When the 15-minute onslaught came to a close, the Crimson had put 28 points on the board. By that point, the fat lady had already run through her operatic repertoire and was moving on to showtunes, and the rest of the game was just running out the clock.

Of course, it’s still early in the season, too early to fully extrapolate trends. But after this win, accomplished with a ruthlessness that would make ol’ John Rockefeller smile, I’ll harken back to a quote Murphy made before the start of the year.

“I don’t know if we’re any good, I really don’t,” Murphy said before the team’s first game. “I know you guys think that’s being ‘whatever,’ but we haven’t played anyone. It’s such a work in progress when you’ve got so many new faces and moving parts and schedule and so forth.”

Now, with the team sitting at 3-0, this much is clear: Harvard’s not just good. Harvard may be downright dominant.

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

—Follow him on Twitter @bobbysamuels.