After many battles, senior defensive end Zach Hodges and junior tackle Cole Toner’s face-offs are largely mental.

Defensive end Zach Hodges shifts his foot slightly.

No fan would notice it. Hodges’ unique blend of size and speed is easier to focus on. His team-record numbers are far more noticeable too, as is the pile of awards he has already racked up heading into his senior season.

But junior tackle Cole Toner notices. He has to.

For the last month, the two have re-engaged in their raw competition. Theirs is the type of battle at the soul of football, but also the kind you might easily miss.

Hodges’ job is to get to the quarterback. Toner’s job is to stop him. Want to know what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Watch.

“That’s a tremendous matchup every time,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “It’s one guy wins one play, one guy wins the next.”

It was not always that way, though.

Toner said that coming in as a freshman, facing Hodges and then-fifth-year senior John Lyon was intimidating. The 295-pound tackle admitted he once appreciated plays in which he did not have to block the tenacious ends, but not anymore.

Now, he is upset Hodges is getting more snaps at linebacker because it means fewer battles. Each snap he now gets against Hodges is that much more intense.

Typical is thrown out of the picture when the two line up against each other. Normally, defensive linemen do not attempt to shed their blocks—grabbing the offensive linemen and pulling them into the defender’s ‘hip pocket’—during preseason practice, but Hodges said “to heck with that” at the beginning of this training camp.

Hodges gained an edge on Toner with the aggressive tactic, but the offensive lineman quickly adjusted, Hodges said, slightly changing his technique to regain the upper hand.

Hodges responded by shifting his feet and aligning differently, and the two have gone back and forth and back and forth, pushing and pulling, ever since.

“It gets really deep down into AP-level stuff, as me and my coach call it,” Hodges said. “It’s more mental now with me and Tone.... I flip my foot a certain way in the way I lock him out, and it may trip him up for a week and then he figures something out to do against it and then I’m figuring some other wrench to throw his way.”

“It’s become a fun mind game of just dueling,” he added.

Toner said their competition puts a lot of stress on their relationship, especially on days when the players cannot wear pads as protection. Recognizing their value to the team, Hodges and Toner now remind each other each day that they need to stay healthy—that they don’t want to hurt each other.