Going into the matchup, Cornell knew where its bread and butter would be. The first play from scrimmage attacked the Crimson defensive front and the Big Red never stopped battering its way forward with the run. It took almost two quarters before the defense finally gave way.

Cornell was successful pounded the ball for the majority of the second half, nearly quadrupling Harvard’s rushing yards with 233 to 62. That dominance came on over double the number of attempts the Crimson put forth on the ground with the Big Red handing the ball off 59 times and Harvard trusting its backs 29. In fact, the Crimson had less plays from scrimmage, 44, than Cornell had run plays.

Missing from the Harvard defensive line was junior DJ Bailey and senior Stone Hart. Their absence was apparent.

“When a team is running the ball at you every single play, most of the time, we’ve always been able to stop the run,” senior safety Tanner Lee said. “That’s what we pride our defense in. They did a great job today running it right at us and being consistent and running straight downhill. We have to make sure that we come out next week and fix that because I’m sure other teams will do that down the stretch.”

The number of yards wasn’t so big of a factor, most drives amounted to a punt, but the time the rushes bled off the clock. The Big Red held onto the ball for over 36 minutes while the Crimson had it for just over 23. The divide became clearest in the fourth quarter as Harvard handed Cornell the lead. With six minutes remaining in the game, the Big Red took the ball and essentially just held onto it for five and half minutes, during which the Crimson spent all three of its timeouts. When Harvard received the resulting punt, they had 30 seconds to try and make something happen. Nothing did.

“Our players made plays when the game was on the line,” Archer said. “It just feels awesome, you can't put a price on this one you know what I mean. For as low as you feel when you lose, this is like, I'm floating guys.”

—Staff writer Cade Palmer can be reached at cade.palmer@thecrimson.com.