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When the Harvard football team faces the University of Pennsylvania Saturday, the Crimson will look to leave the Quakers quaking. Harvard already boasts the best national ranking in program history and the highest ranking the Ivy League has seen in nearly four decades — now the team will try to convert that momentum into yet another win.

In Saturday afternoon’s senior day matchup, the No. 7 ranked Crimson (8-0, 5-0 Ivy) will face off against the Penn Quakers (5-3, 3-2) — the very team who holds the conference record with its No. 6 ranking that it held for three weeks in November of 1986. While that season ended with the Quakers holding an unblemished 10-0 record, this season might hold more in store for Harvard.

If the Crimson wins out against Penn and Yale, it will likely see a first round postseason bye in the first season that the Ivy League is choosing to participate in the FCS Playoffs, a 24-team tournament that goes through December and ends in early January. The top eight seeds in the playoff receive a bye, and Harvard currently ranks seventh—having climbed up the rankings from ninth thanks to losses on Saturday from FCS powerhouses Monmouth and South Dakota State.

For now, though, the focus is the same as it has been since Harvard’s first matchup against Stetson eight weeks ago: going 1-0 every week.

“It’s just the next opponent on the list,” said star senior quarterback Jaden Craig. “I’m really just trying to put out my best product for my last guaranteed home game.”

While the team will try to approach this next matchup like any other on its schedule, it's hard not to think of the last matchup against Penn, a game that saw an untimely injury to then-junior Craig and limited his performance in an ugly season-ending loss to Yale the week after.

“It’s not how I wanted to end, but we got the win,” said Craig. “Really just gonna try to have that same end result, maybe not me getting knocked out, but still want to end with a win.”

This season, the Crimson will hope to avoid such drama as it pushes its multifaceted attack against a Quakers squad that relies heavily on its offensive playmakers to keep itself in games. Quarterback Liam O’Brien acts both as the signal-caller and primary rushing option, and receivers Jared Richardson and Bisi Owens account for 67% of receptions and 74% of receiving yards, forcing the Penn offense to work around just a few key players as it strings together drives on offense.

Harvard likely won’t see this type of bottleneck, with one of the deepest rosters in the nation that helps Craig to spread the love in his offense. So far this season, 16 different offensive players have found the end zone, with even more recording receptions and rushing attempts. This elite depth has helped the Crimson offense test a variety of packages, which allows offensive coordinator Mickey Fein to keep things fresh and make opposing defenses guess on any given playcall.

Defensively, Harvard has maintained extreme focus, ensuring each player on the field is doing what it takes to make the plays that are needed to bring the Crimson to victory.

“If 11 guys do their specific jobs on every single play, then the plays will come, then the turnovers will come,” said captain Ty Bartrum. “If everyone has the same goal, if everyone’s sacrificing for each other, I think you can build some special things, and we’re just trying to keep that going.”

When it comes down to it, Head Coach Andrew Aurich knows that his team has more than adequate preparation against what he thinks is one of the better teams in the league.

“I think we’ve gone about our business the right way, and that’s literally going through the process that we go through every single week to make sure we out-prepare our opponent.”

– Staff writer Connor Castañeda can be reached at connor.castaneda@thecrimson.com.