As junior wide receiver Corey Mazza pedaled his bicycle back to the Quad during football preseason this fall, he got a more stunning hit from behind than any Ivy cornerback could deliver.

“All of a sudden I got shot out of a cannon. It blew me out of my shoes, blew me about 20 feet, and knocked my head and my right side up. I was unconscious for a couple minutes,” Mazza said. “They said it was probably good I was a football player, because I automatically curled up when I got hit.”

One wayward automobile almost did what no secondary has done but almost assuredly would love to do—neutralize Harvard’s deep threat. But it will take more than bruises, scrapes, and a hairline knee fracture to sideline the receiver.

And for the Crimson offense, that’s a very good thing. When sophomore quarterbacks Richard Irvin or Liam O’Hagan drop back to pass, they’re likely to be gunning for Mazza, the team’s most prolific receiver last year.

“Corey is a key piece of the puzzle this year, and he knows it,” head coach Tim Murphy wrote in an e-mail. “He’s ‘the guy’ at wide receiver, and defenses will respond to that and so will he.”

Opponents could pick their poison last season, covering Mazza or Brian Edwards ’05. Most chose the latter, but when opposing secondaries double- or triple-teamed Edwards, Mazza was left to roam free.

Unhindered, Mazza gave them a lesson in the depth of the Harvard receiver corps, tallying the most yards of any Crimson wideout—totaling 773 yards in the season and averaging a whopping 15.2 yards per reception. Add to those statistics 51 catches (tying Mazza with Edwards for the most on the team) and seven touchdowns, and one starts to see what drives secondaries into conniptions and why Mazza was named second team All-Ivy last season.

With Edwards gone, however, Mazza is the man to cover, although provided senior receiver Rodney Byrnes stays healthy, defenses may face a dilemma like last year’s.

“If a team wanted to put a target on my back, I think they’d be making a mistake—Rodney Byrnes is a very good wide receiver as well,” Mazza said. “I think our group’s better than any other secondary. I think we’re going to be a lot better group than people realize.”

At 6’4 and just shy of 220 lbs., Mazza is a lot for 5’10 defensive backs to cover, and he knows it. Mazza “gets a lot of crap” from his teammates for modeling for Ralph Lauren—“It’s all deserved. He deserves anything he gets,” Byrnes said—but this pretty boy goes deep.

“I get labeled as a possession guy because of my height and weight. I do a good job going up and getting the deep ball,” Mazza said.

After training this summer, Mazza is a bigger target now than ever before, almost 30 lbs. larger than he was as a freshman but not demonstrably slower.

“I’m a better receiver than I was last year,” he said. “I’d like to be better than I was last season, and improve statistically, but you can be a lot better receiver and not have the stats to prove it.”

“Corey’s fine,” Murphy said. “We’ve just got to keep him off the bicycle.”

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.