It was the first time in a long, long time that the Harvard defense had failed to hang on to a fourth-quarter lead, especially one of that size. It wasn’t the Ivy title defense of a year ago by any stretch of the imagination.

So what exactly is the problem with this year’s defensive unit? Well, far be it from me to individually rake players over the coals, so let me speak in broad brush strokes—Harvard can’t stop the pass and it can’t stop the run. And as funny as that sounds, it’s what the numbers tell us.

The Harvard secondary, the Achilles’ heel of many a Crimson team, has played erratically this season. Saturday was no exception as the Crimson defensive backs combined for two dropped interceptions and four pass interference penalties and gave up a slew of third-and-long conversions that kept Big Red drives moving. They also gave up three touchdown passes, two of which were jump balls thrown to the smallest receiver on the field (Cornell senior Keith Ferguson, who checks in at 5’9).

But, to be honest, the secondary isn’t playing that much worse than the one on last year’s championship squad. Through four games, Harvard is giving up 249 yards through the air, which is only slightly higher than the 245 aerial yards given up a year ago.

The big problem with this Crimson defense isn’t the much-maligned secondary. Nope, the biggest weakness on this year’s team is sadly what was the biggest strength of defenses past—stopping the run.

Two years ago, the Crimson defense ranked nationally in run defense, holding opponents to less than 90 yards a game. Last year, the veteran defensive line held the other team to an average of 129 yards per game.

And what are the run defense numbers for this year’s squad? An embarrassing 184 yards per game, about twice as much as prior Harvard teams had allowed and a full 50 percent more yards than last year’s title team.

The Crimson’s inability to stop the run has allowed other teams to control the clock, mount sustained drives and keep Harvard’s explosive offensive weapons on the sideline.

Last Saturday, Cornell took a page from Brown’s playbook and ran the ball at the Crimson in the first quarter, eating up more than 12 of the period’s 15 minutes. All four of the Big Red scoring drives on the day took more than 10 plays, went for more than 60 yards and consumed an average of six minutes each.

Luckily for the Crimson, the offense was able to work with what little time was left and make the most of it. But a ten-minute deficit in time of possession in a game won by 29 points is a little curious. And that didn’t get past Murphy.

“The limited amount of time we had the ball in the first half offensively leaves very little margin for error,” Murphy said.

Harvard cannot continue to operate within that margin of error and expect to win games against Ivy teams much better than Cornell. The de facto captain of the defense, Balestracci, knows as much.

“The biggest thing [for our defense] is making plays to get our offense back on the field,” Balestracci said after the game.

But that has really yet to happen on a consistent basis this season. It’s clear that the defense needs to step up, stop the run and make the big plays it was accustomed to making in years past.

And if the defense doesn’t start to make plays to get the offense back on the field more regularly—if the defense plays the way it did on Saturday against the likes of Princeton and Penn (on the road, no less)—then I’ll be perfectly blunt: the forecast for another Ivy title will be about as cloudy as your typical October day in Cambridge.

—Staff writer Daniel E. Fernandez can be reached at dfernand@fas.harvard.edu.