“When I got there, him and his brother and his dad took all my measurements—my wing span, my height, my weight—so that they could compare them to everyone else’s,” Edwards says. “They had to see who was the tallest, who had the highest bench max, who had the highest vert and all of that.”

He grins and shakes his head. “So yeah, Ryan’s probably the most competitive person I’ve ever met, but his whole family is kind of like that.”

Unlike most über-competitive athletes, though, Fitzpatrick insists he doesn’t have a temper, something others confirm.

He is always confident and in control, often cracking up teammates with a single word or gesture, injecting levity into even the most serious situations. But never, ever does he lose his temper.

It sounds too good to be true. Fitzpatrick always wants to win so badly, that he must erupt sometimes when he loses. Right?

“Well, he hasn’t lost very much,” Edwards says matter-of-factly. “So I really haven’t been around him that often when he loses, but he’s never gotten mad that I’ve ever seen.”

* * *

If there was ever a time to get mad, it was this year’s Dartmouth game.

Harvard was 6-0 and ranked 16th in the country, and with Fitzpatrick set to return against Columbia the following week the theme of the game was simply survival. Though Fitzpatrick had practiced well that Thursday—the only time he had thrown the ball in weeks—he was only supposed to see a couple of series at most.

But as the offense lurched its way through the first quarter, Fitzpatrick’s body language on the sidelines began to change. With every incomplete pass, he would fidget and lick his fingers. With every failed third-down conversion, he would move a step closer to Murphy, chin strap fastened.

Finally, with the score knotted at 6-6 and the Crimson deep in Dartmouth territory, Murphy gave in. He pulled backup junior quarterback Garrett Schires mid-drive with Harvard in the red zone and inserted Fitzpatrick for the first play of the second quarter.

Fitzpatrick threw only one pass that series—a wobbly duck that was probably the worst of his career—and the Crimson had to settle for a field goal. On the next drive, Schires was back at quarterback and Fitzpatrick was back on the sidelines.

But as Dartmouth pulled out to a two-touchdown lead in the third quarter, Murphy couldn’t help himself, and reinserted his star.

If he hadn’t, Fitzpatrick probably would have never forgiven him.

“It would have been more frustrating if I didn’t get to play at all,” Fitzpatrick says several days after his three second-half turnovers helped give Harvard its first loss of the season. “The most frustrated I’ve ever been—well, probably the second most frustrated I’ve been since I’ve been here—was when I didn’t start in the second half, when he put Garrett back in.”