Pushing All the Right Buttons

In any given game, Murphy literally calls all the shots. A former offensive coordinator at Maine in 1980s, Murphy calls all his own plays on offense.

Murphy favors taking that kind of hands-on approach, even if it leaves him vulnerable to criticism when his decisions don’t work out.

The Cornell game last year was particularly stinging in that regard. Even after blowing its 28-0 lead, the Crimson had a chance to win the game on a late-fourth quarter drive. Rose had led Harvard all the way to the Big Red 10-yard line, setting up first-and-goal with 37 seconds left.

But rather than take a couple shots at the endzone, Murphy elected to have Wright go for the field goal. The rookie kicker missed the 27-yard attempt and Harvard lost the game.

“If we make that field goal, Coach looks like a genius,” Staph said. “We as players just needed to learn how to win games. The coaches always gave us every opportunity to win.”

Maybe so. But after the game, Murphy took the high road, accepting full blame for the debacle.

“I take full responsibility,” he said. “When you’re up 28-0 there’s no reason why you should lose, period. I’ve never had this happen before.”

Flash ahead to this year and Murphy has left almost no room for second-guessing. Whether it was a fake punt against Northeastern or an option-pass play against Dartmouth, his calls have more often than not worked to perfection.

Against the Quakers—who boast one of the nation’s best rushing defenses—Murphy made what may have been his boldest call yet. On Harvard’s opening series, the Crimson ran 13 plays. All but four of them were handoffs to senior tailback Josh Staph, who gained the majority of his 54 rushing yards on that drive alone. Harvard didn’t score on the series, but that was not necessarily the point.

“We were going to come out running the football, because nobody in the league had been able to do that against Penn,” Murphy said after the game. “That was a psychological thing, saying, ‘Hey, this is what you do best, but were going to show you right now we can run the ball.’”

It was a brave decision, one that Penn Coach Al Bagnoli called the “key to the game.” With Penn forced to respect the run, Morris found himself in man-on-man coverage the rest of the afternoon. The Crimson offense took full advantage of that mismatch, and Morris finished with 155 receiving yards and two touchdowns.

But even before the call paid off on the scoreboard, it gave Harvard an important mental edge.

“We knew after those first two drives that we were going to win,” Staph says. “We were down 14-0, but we had so much success against their defense, we knew we could do it.”

It was just the second time Murphy had ever topped Penn. More importantly, the win completely erased the lingering memry of last year’s late-game demons.