Harvard completed the comeback when Dawson took an option pitch from Fitzpatrick and ran for a one-yard touchdown. The Crimson had a 35-31 lead.

Brown would add a field goal to pull within one, but would miss a crucial last-minute field-goal attempt to seal the Harvard victory.

“That game was gut-check time for us,” Williamson said, “on the verge of a loss and for us surmounting the unthinkable and coming back.”

Dawson finished the game with 142 yards and three touchdowns, and further established himself as the preeminent back in the Ivy League—if not all of Division I-AA.

Fitzpatrick followed his “best sports moment of all time” with perhaps his best performance of all time. His 263 yards passing don’t measure up to some of his more prodigious passing games, but the leadership he provided in the second half can hardly be quantified.

“Although it was really early in the season, [the Brown game] probably was the biggest turning point in the year,” Fitzpatrick said. “If we would’ve lost that game a lot would have changed.”

Instead, Fitzpatrick and the Crimson pulled out a victory that propelled them on to a perfect season.

The defensive secondary that had been torched by the Bears’ passing attack found a swagger in the second half that it wouldn’t lose for the rest of year, and the offense proved that it could perform under the highest-pressure situations.

After the game, an emotionally exhausted coach Tim Murphy summed up the remarkable comeback: “We have one adage we live by, and as corny as some people think it is, it’s, ‘Never, ever give up.’”

—Staff writer David H. Stearns can be reached at stearns@fas.harvard.edu.