FOOTBALL | Harvard trounces Yale, 45-7

opening8
Photo by Charlie Croom.
By
Staff Reporter
Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Yale football team matched a record for futility on Saturday.

After fighting to a 7–7 stalemate in the opening quarter, an overwhelmed Yale squad watched Harvard (9–1, 7–0 Ivy) blow past it for the rest of the game en route to a 45–7 win. It was Yale’s worst loss to its archrival in 29 years and the second most lopsided defeat at the Crimson’s hands in school history. The Elis have not beaten the Crimson in five consecutive meetings, matching the longest losing streak in Yale history set from 2001 to 2005.

“We got beat by a better football team today,” head coach Tom Williams said. “They looked really good on video, and they looked even better in person.”

Harvard’s offense steamrolled the Bulldogs, piling up 506 total yards — 355 through the air and another 151 on the ground. By comparison, the Elis managed just 302 total yards and turned over the ball four times, including a interception late in the fourth quarter that was returned for a touchdown.

Against the toughest run defense in the Ancient Eight, the Bulldogs managed just 76 yards on 30 carries, their second lowest output this season.

“We saw the same things [on defense] that we saw on film,” captain and linebacker Jordan Haynes ’12 said. “It’s just a case of us not making plays the first half. In the second half, we…just got a little worn down and they capitalized on that.”

After driving the Crimson 65 yards down field, quarterback Collier Winters ended the game’s opening drive prematurely with a lost fumble. Linebacker Will McHale ’13 knocked the ball loose from Winters’ hand at the Yale 3-yard line. The football rolled into the end zone and out of bounds, giving the Bulldogs possession at their own 20.

The Elis struck the first blow of the game three minutes after the forced fumble. Quarterback Patrick Witt ’12 found wide receiver Jackson Liguori ’14 open across the middle. Liguori broke a tackle and strode into the end zone for the 24-yard touchdown reception, his second of the year.

But Yale did not score again and the Crimson offense did not stay silent for long. Winters evened the score with a dive into the endzone from four yards out. Then gave his team the lead for good with a 20-yard touchdown strike an undefended Alex. Sarkisian finished the game with seven receptions for 97 yards.

“The credit for our passing game goes to the offensive line,” Sarkisian said. “When they give [Winter] time, he makes great decisions.”

Yale had chance to narrow the margin on the next drive but a field goal attempt by Philippe Panico ’13 was blocked, allowing Harvard to recover the ball at its 13-yard line.

Special teams went the other way on the ensuing as the Crimson executed a flawless fake field goal attempt. Junior quarterback Colton Chapple took the snap at Yale’s 5-yard line and immediately pitched the ball to kicker David Mothander, who ran down the left side and dove into the end zone.

“We were expecting something in that situation,” Williams said. “They had done it to us two years ago. Our [defender] was trying to make a play, he was just unable to do it with a guy hanging on him.”

Mothander added a 21-yard field goal as time expired in the second quarter to give the Crimson a 24–7 lead heading into halftime.

“Even at halftime, down 17, we still felt we had a shot,” Witt told Yale Athletics after the game.

But the Crimson also intercepted Witt three times in the second half and never allowed the Elis to move past their own 30-yard line.

“In the third quarter we had some chances to punch it in, and we didn’t,” Williams said. “That was a big deal in terms of momentum.”

As Yale sputtered, Winters picked apart its defense. He finished the game with 27 completions on 42 attempts for 355 passing yards. He also ran for 62 yards, best among all Crimson players, and scored three total touchdowns.

“He was the difference in terms of making those plays,” Williams said about Winters. “They converted a lot of third downs. He was able to do a lot of that with his legs. He’s a really good football player, one of the best in our league.”

Winters threw his last touchdown of the game to tight end Kyle Juszczyk, who broke off a tackle and raced 60 yards into the end zone. Juszczyk led all Crimson receivers with seven catches for 107 yards.

The Crimson struck the coup de grace with less than three minutes left in the game.

Linebacker Alex Gedeon intercepted Witt at Yale’s 32-yard line and sprinted untouched downfield into the end zone.

“That’s perfection,” Harvard head coach Tim Murphy said about the pick-six. “Alex Gedeon is a really special guy, as humble as they come, selfless, a great player. He is, in my humble opinion, the best linebacker in this league.”

For the Bulldogs, who began the season with aspiration for the Ivy title, Saturday’s thrashing marked the end to a disappointing season that included losses to Penn and Brown.

The Elis will now go into their offseason, hoping that next year will finally bring the them an Ancient Eight crown and a win over the Crimson.

“It came down to us not executing against a good football team,” captain and linebacker Jordan Haynes ’12 said. “Ending my career this way it is definitely a low point for me in my 12 years of playing football. All I can hope for is…that the guy in the coming years can make things happen.”

The Bulldogs will finish the season in a four-way tie for second place in the Ivy League. Brown, Penn and Dartmouth also finished with 4–3 league record.

The worst Yale loss to the Crimson came in 1915, when the Bulldogs were blanked 41–0.

Comments

  • thenomad14

    As a Yalie, I’ve come to accept the fact that our football team isn’t the strongest. But what I can’t understand is why so many of the players are cocky. I mean, just look at the statistics.

  • bulldog13

    President Levin’s lack of appreciation for athletics plays a major role in this repeated embarrassment. Intellectual and athletic excellence (on a personal and institutional level) are not mutually exclusive; just look at the success of Stanford in both arenas. Harvard has clearly done a better job of appealing to football players of Ivy League academic caliber. Yale is seriously lacking in team spirit, and the administration needs to do its part in giving us something to cheer about.

  • alum2001

    It’s one thing to lose; most of us expected that. But it’s quite another to be completely dominated. This Game has become an annual humiliation of Yale, courtesy of our football team.

    It’s worth noting that Columbia played Harvard much tougher than we did, losing 35-21. What gives?

    I would have no problem never seeing Tom Williams on the Yale sideline again.

  • ashe12

    Even with this loss, Yale is 9-2 (I believe) against Harvard this fall (the other loss was women’s soccer i think?). Just because the football team is terrible doesn’t mean our other sports are, although I do agree with the fact that for a team that essentially has done nothing over the past 5 years, the football team commands way too much of a presence on campus.

  • ycollege14

    Stop pouring bunches of money into this useless football team and increase access to financial aid instead. Or subsidize a summer for all Yale students (not just those receiving aid)!

  • Boogs

    I agree that Levin’s tenure at Yale has been corrosive to so many of the school’s traditions. He disparages the humanities (why should Yale enjoy all these treasures of Western culture if we’re not going to put them to use). He’s trying to recruit a type of student who has very little concept of or interest in perpetuating the institutions that make up the wonderful extracurricular life at Yale. His dream is to turn Yale into the McIvy, and he’s succeeding. From a business and financial perspective (which is the only perspective Levin has), it makes sense, but from a cultural and educational perspective, it’s going to be precipitously disastrous in the coming half generation.

  • alum2001

    Oh for God’s sake, stop hating on Levin, who has been, without question, the most effective president in Yale history. He has renovated the whole campus, internationalized the Yale brand, and has overseen incredible fundraising drives.

    I am as angry as anyone about the Game, but blaming Levin is totally misguided.

  • bulldogs1960

    As a proud 1983 graduate and lifelong Yale football fan, I’m saddened to see a once
    proud program fall apart and sink to the depths it has. The lack of interest in Yale football
    has increased year after year. Tom Williams has to be the worst coach ever, on any level.
    Couple that with misrepresenting himself as a Rhodes candidate and the choice is clear: WILLIAMS MUST GO!! I hope the powers that be recognize this and take corrective action.
    That is, if they even care. If the administration however has no interest in rejuvenating the
    program, then terminate it, just as Northeastern did a few years back. Why waste the time
    and money on something that CLEARLY generates such a lack of interest. I personally would prefer no football than one as disappointing as this. Pull the plug and call it a day. Tear down
    the bowl and build something more beneficial to the university there. Sad, very sad!

  • eli1143770312

    Rick Levin has been an effective president – he just doesn’t care about football, at least not enough to compete with its ancient rival. Yale’s 6-13 record under Levin is unprecedented. Yale’s rivalry with Princeton still hasn’t recovered from the 14 year streak of Yale wins from 1967 to 1980 (not that I complained at the time). Yale-Harvard may be headed in that direction.

    Here’s the record, by century and, for the 20th century, decade. Note how competitive the two schools were for almost all of the 20th century.
    Period Harvard Yale Tie
    1800s 3 14 3
    1900s 42 49 5
    2000s 10 2 0
    Here’s the breakdown of the 1900s, by decade:
    Period Harvard Yale Tie
    ’00s 2 8 0
    ’10s 5 1 2
    ’20s 5 4 1
    ’30s 4 6 0
    ’40s 3 5 0
    ’50s 4 5 1
    ’60s 5 4 1
    ’70s 5 5 0
    ’80s 5 5 0
    ’90s 4 6 0

  • jerrysmith

    The Game was very disappointing. Tom Williams was completely outcoached by Tim Murphy. If Yale is so EXCELLENT, then why not football? Do you think Stanford is regretting not hiring Tom Williams to replace Jim Harbaugh? Tom is definitely not an EXCELLENT coach. Maybe it is time for him to move on to Amherst or the University of New Haven. Yale needs a coach that can compete with Tim Murphy or Al Bagnoli at Penn. Army is coming to the Yale Bowl in 2014. Will that game be another embarassment?

    Harvard has an EXCELLENT young team that will probably dominate the Ivy League for years to come. Is it too much to expect Yale to at least be competitive? EXCELLENCE starts with the coach!

    Jerry Smith, 1961

  • yalie13

    This sucks for everyone. Even the cantabs are getting bored of winning. We’re losing so much that there’s no more competitiveness to ignite passion.

  • robert99

    The Yale bowl was built for another era of Yale football and would never be built today with this administration’s attitudes towatds athletic accomplishment. And there was an era of atavistic pride in the warriors that battled every fall there. I don’t think that it was an accident that then the administrations knew what traditions and customs would remain in the memories of alumni and that the first half of the last century appeared to see more pride in extracurriculars than exists today. How many of us remember years later how many Rhodes scholars or Nobel professors Yale has? I remember the 1961 Yale team that drubbed Harvard in the Stadium and others talk of the Brian Dowling-Calvin Hill era with fondness. Or excellence in other sports. such as when Clark, Schollander et al were leading the dominating Yale swimming teams. How, in any way has “detuning” athletics to the point where we are often also-rans even in the Ivy league helped? Granted the school is only marginally for alumni, but we all become an alumnus/a. And we remember what we are exposed to. And it doesn’t have to be this way. Someone else mentioned Stanford. Not a bad model to emulate

  • Goldie08

    Schollander. Hear hear

  • joey00

    It would help to be placed into a different NCAA bracket,a new league like
    http://youtu.be/LCGXl4bvcFA

    • connman250

      Maybe Pop Warner????

      • ClassofChaaaa

        Booooooooooooooooo

  • connman250

    Let’s face it, many of the students that go to Yale wouldn’t be caught dead in most area towns because of the snutiness and the attitide of Yalies. They don’t want to be seen in a Wal-Mart where the unwashed go because they are too proud. This is why there is not too much support for the Yale sports program in this area.

    • Yale12

      I’m curious, you seem pretty obsessed with Yale’s comment boards. How many Yalies have you actually had a sustained conversation with?

      • connman250

        There is a lot of amunition here for good debate. Yalies are insulated from the real world, where those with much less seem to get by each day and have a decent life.

        • Yale12

          You didn’t answer my question. How many Yalies have you actually had a sustained conversation with?

    • ashe12

      No, we don’t want to be seen at Wal-Mart because it’s a terrible establishment that destroys local producers.

      • connman250

        This is why they surround you with thick walls!!!

        I wonder how many Yalies own stock in Wal-Mart?

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