Football Still Far from Perfect

With a 23-7 win over Columbia in the books, the Harvard football team is in a place many skeptics thought it wouldn’t reach after its embarrassing 29-14 Ivy-opening loss at Brown. Though the Crimson hasn’t always been brilliant, it has found a way to grind out four straight Ivy wins, and heading into the last two weeks of the season, it’s in control of its own destiny.

Harvard has proved all season that it can adapt its offense to almost any opponent, rolling out a balanced attack that has leaned one way or the other depending on what’s working. In the middle of the season, the tailback tandem of senior Gino Gordon and sophomore Treavor Scales picked up the slack when injuries had decimated the aerial attack. Now that junior Collier Winters is back under center, the Crimson’s passing game has become more and more proficient.

And its defense has been getting stronger by the game—particularly in the red zone. Though Harvard gave up nearly 400 yards of offense on Saturday, the Crimson defense held Columbia to just seven points, its lowest scoring output of the season.

But as its matchup with Penn looms, Harvard is facing a dangerous opponent—one that, at least on paper, appears to be beating the Crimson at its own game.

In both total offense and defense, Harvard and the Quakers stand ahead of the rest of the league. The Crimson’s got the edge on offense, averaging 409.4 yards and 28.9 points per game to Penn’s 401.2 and 28.1, although the Quakers have slipped ahead in the rushing stats.

But the Penn defense has outperformed Harvard’s thus far, giving up just 15.5 points and 265.2 yards per game compared with the Crimson’s 16.5 and 309.2. And the Quakers’ rushing defense? The best in the FCS.

Throw in Penn’s home-field advantage and tougher schedule to date—its one loss came at the hands of No. 3 Villanova, while Harvard has lost to Brown and Lehigh—and the Quakers’ perceived advantage grows bigger.

And lest we forget, even if the Crimson can get the job done at Franklin Field next week, that doesn’t guarantee an Ivy crown. Harvard still has to beat Yale—now 4-1 in Ivy play after edging Brown on Saturday—to have a legitimate shot at the title.

The Crimson’s moving down the right path to take down Penn. It has figured out a way to win in a variety of situations, and it seems to have learned something from its pair of losses.

But if the Quakers are going to fall, it’s going to take a perfect storm. Freshman placekicker David Mothander needs to return to form, the defense needs to play as well outside the red zone as it has inside it, and Winters, Gordon, and the receiving corps need to step up the intensity a notch.

If it takes the Crimson nearly a half to settle into a rhythm at Franklin Field, you can bet Penn’s going to seize that opportunity.

There are no more gimme games, there is no more margin for error. The last time Harvard played an opponent this talented, it underperformed (to say the least). The Crimson is a more mature, cohesive team now than it was at the end of September, but it’s still a team missing two of its top receivers.

Though Harvard coach Tim Murphy and his team may ascribe to the one-game-at-a-time mentality, next weekend’s game is bigger than any other thus far on their schedule. And Harvard’s going to have to play better than it has all season if it intends to win it.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.