It was after Rose graduated and Fitzpatrick took the helm as the sole orchestrator of Harvard’s offense that the NFL whispers started. At first, it was almost too tantalizing to be trusted.

“It’s always the dream, especially growing up, a little kid watching it on TV every Sunday,” Fitzpatrick says. “It’s always something I had in the back of my mind. It’s always something that you’re working towards, but I wasn’t sure if I had a realistic shot or not until sometime, I guess junior year, when I started to hear some things.”

In the spring after Fitzpatrick’s injury-marred junior season—which saw the Crimson drop two of the games he didn’t start to low-rung Ivy opponents—Murphy approached his new captain with a proposition.

“I said ‘Fitzy, I want you to go in there, I want you to choose the 30 best plays, run and pass, that you can find, and I’ll let you choose, and we’ll make a highlight, and I really think there’ll be some interest,’” Murphy recalls. “But I said there’s absolutely no guarantees. And all of a sudden, immediately, there was interest.”

Once fall came, the scouts started showing up to practices and games almost every week, both home and away. On top of that, Fitzpatrick has been juggling phone calls from agents and waiting to hear from showcase bowls like the Senior Bowl, the Hula Bowl and the East-West Shrine Game.

All the while leading the Crimson to its 11th Ivy championship and the only undefeated record in I-AA football.

Oh yeah, the Harvard season. In the midst of all the murmurs about what will happen come draft day, Fitzpatrick hasn’t forgotten the team he’s playing with every Saturday. Taking the advice of former Crimson players Carl Morris ’03 and Jamil Soriano ’03—both of whom have toiled on practice squads and in the NFL Europe—Fitzpatrick has endeavored to keep the future distinct from the present. The agents get deferred to his father, while the subject of the NFL has been off-limits between Murphy and Fitzpatrick since day one of this season.

“That’s one of the main things I’ve appreciated about him through the year was, he really kept those two things separate,” Fitzpatrick says of his coach. “During the year, our main focus is winning the football games, but I’m sure after the Yale game we’ll sit down, him, me and my family, and we’ll go over some of the prospects.”

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It’s hard to predict what exactly Fitzpatrick’s prospects in the draft will be. A lot will depend on what senior bowl invites he receives. On top of that, he has to contend with an Ivy bias that has stung would-be draftees in previous years.

“It definitely hurts,” Fitzpatrick says of his Ivy origins. “I think we’ve seen that in the past, at least since I’ve been here we’ve had a couple pro prospects that just for some reason or another—they’ve done great in the Ivy League, and come draft day, they just don’t get the respect that maybe some of them deserve.

“That’s one of the biggest struggles, overcoming that Ivy League bias,” he continues, “where you didn’t play against very good competition, you’re doing well but throw yourself into a high-pressure, high-intensity atmosphere somewhere like Ohio State or Michigan, and supposedly you won’t be able to produce the same way.”

An appearance in the senior bowls, then, would provide Fitzpatrick with the opportunity to make people look past the brands of “Harvard,” “Ivy League” and “I-AA.”

“That’ll be a big thing for me to get some exposure, playing against better competition,” he says, “playing with better players in I-A as opposed to I-AA.”

It’s strange to think that the remarkable things Fitzpatrick has done while he’s been a member of the Crimson are largely unknown to the new sets of eyes that have come to watch him, and that will be watching him over the next few months. Since Harvard is primarily televised on local cable—if at all—many of Fitzpatrick’s legendary performances get replays only in the memories of his teammates, his unfortunate opponents and the fans who wear his No. 14 jersey.