“They’re definitely a tempo offense as well,” captain linebacker Alex Gedeon said. “Once they get going, they’re no huddle, so it’s really important against them to get stops, to get three-and-outs to stop the tempo, and we didn’t do that in the third quarter.”
With 13 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Princeton scored again, and another two-point play brought Princeton all the way back to field-goal range.
The Tigers took advantage of a weakened defense playing without senior defensive tackle Josue Ortiz, who left mid-game with a minor concussion, and senior defensive back Matthew Hanson, who hurt his knee in the third. Hanson came back in the fourth quarter.
Winters led a touchdown drive on the next series, capped by a one-yard run from junior Treavor Scales. Princeton didn’t score again in the game, and the Crimson would tack on seven more to seal the win.
“We didn’t tackle well at all today,” Murphy said. “We gave a lot of extra yards we left out on the field. That’s obviously a credit to their offensive line and their backs, but we didn’t tackle.”
REWRITING THE RECORD BOOKS
For a 138-year-old program, football’s record book has been awfully fluid lately.
Against Cornell, Chapple became the third Harvard quarterback to throw for 400 yards in a game.
In the matchup against Bucknell, he became the second to throw five touchdowns.
Against Princeton on Saturday, Winters became the fourth and third quarterbacks to do those exact same things.
In the past three games, the two Harvard quarterbacks have thrown for 14 touchdowns, also a record.
But the individual accomplishments are only part of the story.
The Crimson has scored 40 or more points in three straight games, the first time the team has done that since 1932, when it beat Buffalo, New Hampshire, and Penn State.
The two teams combined for 95 points on Saturday, the most in any game Harvard has played since it beat Wesleyan by the comfortable margin of 124-0 back in 1891. The only modern game that comes close was a 52-37 win over Brown in 1990.
“I’ve never seen anything like [this game],” Murphy said. “Last time I was involved in a game like that was down at the University of Delaware my first year as a head coach in 1987 at Maine. We had to win to go the playoffs, and I think we won 56-53, something like that.”.
—Staff writer E. Benjamin Samuels can be reached at samuels@college.harvard.edu.