“If you could have told me we would have won this game being on the minus side of the turnover margin…I would have said that would have been tough to do,” Murphy said.

Eventually the Crimson offense broke out in the second half, but when it did, the Bulldogs hung with it. The two teams traded score for score, as quarterback Hank Furman threw for 135 yards and a touchdown in the second half. Yale also ran the ball for 77 yards in the final two periods on the second-stingiest rush defense in the FCS after accumulating 43 yards in the first half.

“[Yale] running back [Tyler Varga] is a great player, we will see him for a couple more years,” freshman linebacker Jacob Lindsey said. “And then the play action fakes—they threw the ball down the field a few times, and that’s what got us.”

ALL YOU NEED IS YALE

Penn wrapped up sole possession of the Ivy title with a 35-28 victory over Cornell while Harvard was sealing its victory, but that didn’t spoil the Crimson’s postgame mood.

“We are going to enjoy this,” Murphy said. “This game really validates what I think of our football players and our senior class."

At the outset of the season, the Crimson was predicted to win a second-straight Ivy title. Halfway through the year, the team appeared well on its way with five double-digit victories under its belt. But it slipped twice down the stretch, going 3-2 over the back half of the season. But a sixth-straight win over Yale to end the careers of team leaders Chapple, Scales, and others was enough to redeem the year.

“As soon as you commit to Harvard, you know at the end of the day it’s about beating your rival,” Scales said. “If it so happens that it works out that we are Ivy champions, then that’s a beautiful thing—it’s wonderful—but what we can control, we will control, and that’s how we went out—with that mindset.”

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu.

—Follow him at @jacobfeldman4.