The Harvard football team unleashed one of its most dominant performances in program history in 2011, rolling unscathed through league play en route to an Ivy League title. In the process, the Crimson scored 374 points, tops for any Harvard team in the modern era.

Unsurprisingly, the Crimson enters the   2012 season as the heavy favorite to repeat. And that begs the question: Will 2012 be an encore performance?

“Every team is different,” senior quarterback Colton Chapple says. “Coach Murphy reminds us of that every year at the first team meeting: ‘The team of 2011 is dead and gone. Those seniors have graduated. What are you guys going to do?’”

Some of those departed seniors played critical roles in last year’s Ivy title run. The team must grapple with losses of All-Ivy players such as quarterback Collier Winters ’11, linebacker Alex Gedeon ‘12, and Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year Josue Ortiz ’11.

Players on the team have also said that the Crimson is expecting to lose at least one projected major contributor who was implicated in the Government 1310 cheating scandal.

But Harvard returns many pieces from its championship team a season ago, and Crimson coach Tim Murphy told the Boston Herald that “all 24 projected starters coming out of spring ball are in good academic standing, healthy, and ready to go on Saturday.”

Chapple will lead the offense in 2012 after filling in much of last season following Winters’ injury in the first week. In his time behind center in 2011, the relatively unheralded Chapple led the Crimson to four straight wins and reeled off perhaps the best two-game stretch of any Harvard quarterback in history.

And as he did last season, Chapple will have two weapons at his disposal at tight end: senior Kyle Juszczyk, a preseason All-American, and junior Cam Brate. Opposing defenses struggled all season to handle the duo, which combined for 14 touchdown catches.

“They’re as good as we’re going to get at this level,” Murphy says. “I think they’re both legitimate NFL prospects.”

In the backfield, Chapple will be joined by a familiar face in senior running back Treavor Scales, who ran for a team-best 816 yards a season ago. Senior Rich Zajeski and freshman Paul Stanton are also expected to see time at the position. According to Murphy, sophomore Zach Boden is out with a short-term injury.

At wide receiver, juniors Andrew Berg and Ricky Zorn—neither of whom started a year ago—fill in following the graduation of Chris Lorditch ’11, Adam Chrissis ’12, and Alex Sarkisian ’12. But according to teammates, neither Berg nor Zorn has missed a beat.

“Some might critique them that they’re not the prototypical 6’3”, 6’4” wide receivers that we’ve had in the past, but for them, it doesn’t matter,” Chapple says. “They’ll go get any ball. They both are extremely athletic, and they’re not afraid to go across the middle, which is something I love [in] wide receivers.”

According to Murphy, junior Matt Brown  has a shoulder injury and therefore will not be a factor for most of this season. In the spring, Murphy had expected Brown—who is also a member of the men’s basketball team—to play a key role offensively.

On the defensive side, senior Nnamdi Obukwelu and fifth-year senior John Lyon—both of whom received preseason All-Ivy nods—led a defensive line that dominated the Ivy League a season ago. In 2011, the Crimson allowed just 89.7 rushing yards per game, nearly 25 percent less than the second-best squad.

The biggest question marks defensively arise in the secondary. Perhaps the team’s biggest liability in the 2011 season, this year’s defensive backs lack much game-day experience.

“Because so few of them have played in varsity games, other than let’s say three guys, we’ll see,” Murphy says. “We’ll be tested early.”

One source for optimism, though, is sophomore Norman Hayes, who shores up the thin cornerback position.

“He’s the natural,” Murphy says of Hayes. “Tough, physical, instinctive, fast—faster than we thought.  And the kid can really play right now. He’s pushing [seniors Brian Owusu and D.J. Monroe] for a starting position.”

No Ivy League player has the ability to exploit the secondary’s potential vulnerabilities more than Cornell junior quarterback Jeff Mathews. Last year’s Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year, the Big Red gunslinger threw for 3,412 yards, including over 500 yards in each of the season’s final two contests.

“If he stays on the arc that he’s on, he’s not only going to get drafted, he’s going to go in the first three rounds,” Murphy says. “He’s special…a once-every-20-year quarterback in this league.”

Despite a decade of relative futility, the Mathews-led Cornell squad appears to be Harvard’s biggest threat to its campaign to repeat as Ivy champs. A year ago, the Big Red came closer than any of its Ancient Eight counterparts to knocking off the Crimson, and Harvard escaped Ithaca, N.Y., with a narrow 41-31 victory.

Before the Crimson and Cornell square off at Harvard Stadium on Oct. 6, the Crimson’s first league test will come on Sept. 22 in a tough contest at Brown. In that rivalry, the home team has won the last five times.

“That night game down in Providence, I know they get really jacked up whenever we play them, and they’re a really physical [team],” senior center Jack Holuba says.

After taking on Cornell, the Crimson plays the weakest portion of its Ivy schedule: at Princeton, which is pegged to finish last in most Ivy League polls, at Dartmouth, and against Columbia on Nov. 3 at home.

The Crimson heads to Philadelphia to meet Penn on Nov. 10, a matchup that could potentially decide what figures to be a three-team race for the Ivy crown between Harvard, Cornell, and the Quakers. Plagued by inexperience and youth a year ago, Penn returns a tougher team in 2012, led for the third straight campaign by senior quarterback Billy Ragone.

But for many players, the season’s biggest contest comes a week later against Yale. This year’s matchup has meaning beyond the history of The Game, which Harvard won in a 45-7 rout in 2011. The flight to Yale of four Crimson coaches following last season, including current Bulldogs head coach Tony Reno, amplifies the emotions surrounding one of the most storied rivalries in college football.

“It’s not only The Game now,” Chapple says. “It’s a little personal.... Ever since we heard that [the coaches were leaving for Yale] in January, we’ve had that game circled.”

“[We’re] hearing from some of the Yale players that it’s like night and day for their program...which should be good,” Holuba adds. “It was a little boring last year in New Haven.”

—Staff writer Robert S. Samuels can be reached at robertsamuels@college.harvard.edu.