The most frustrating moment, for the record, came in last year’s 44-9 loss to Penn when Fitzpatrick was relegated to the sidelines in favor of Neil Rose ’03 and didn’t see any playing time while the game’s outcome was still in question.

Against Dartmouth, though, he got his chance.

The cast encasing Fitzpatrick’s broken right hand hadn’t even been off a week, he had only practiced one day and in his first series he had looked rusty at best. But with perfection in peril and the best quarterback in the Ivy League fidgeting a foot away from him, Murphy finally relented to the overwhelming truth that, for better or worse, his team needs its quarterback.

When Rose—the most prolific quarterback in Harvard history—was hurt last season, Murphy didn’t rush his return. Even when it was a minor injury, a close game and Rose was begging to play, Murphy didn’t budge.

But against Dartmouth he sent in his star, and said with his action what he wouldn’t dare say out loud—that even rusty, hurt and turnover prone, Fitzpatrick was more than just one of 11 guys on the field. He was irreplaceable.

Even the defeat was more of an affirmation than a condemnation of his importance to this team.

“I would have liked to not play him in the Dartmouth game,” Murphy says a week later when Fitzpatrick’s hand was back in a cast after reaggravating the injury during the comeback attempt. “But he said, ‘Coach, believe me. I’m perfect. There’s nothing wrong. I’m ready to go.’ And we needed him.”

* * *

Four years ago when Murphy was recruiting Fitzpatrick—a 17-year old taking snaps for Highland High—he couldn’t have known that he was looking at the future foundation of his team.

Sure, Fitzpatrick had performed well in “a decent spread offense,” throwing the ball 20-25 times a game on his way to setting virtually every school passing record in the book, but for some reason that no one knows, he still wasn’t a big time prospect.

“I was surprised when I watched him on high school video, that he wasn’t [recruited by more high-profile Division I schools],” Murphy says. “I mean it’s not like he’s six feet, one half inches, you know? He’s 6’3”. I was very surprised that teams like Arizona, Arizona State didn’t take a more legitimate shot at him.”

But their loss was Harvard’s gain, even if Harvard didn’t know exactly what it was getting.

“One of the things we’ve always prided ourselves on is our evaluations in general, and our evaluations of quarterbacks in particular,” Murphy says. “We were fortunate to not only be right about Ryan but we [were also lucky]. We just didn’t know how strong a leader he was.”

They also didn’t know the type of competitor he was. Or how eager he was to improve himself. Or how much he loved football.

All of those things combined have created a quarterback that those closest to him insist does not belong in the Ivy League.