PHILADELPHIA—In the game that would decide the fate of its season, Harvard didn’t look like a team fighting for a title. It looked like a team that just got beat.

All season long, Penn has felt like it had something to prove. After going undefeated in the Ivy League last year, the Quakers were not picked to repeat despite returning the majority of their starters. Combine that chip with the emotional drive to win another title in honor of Owen Thomas, Penn’s captain-elect who passed away in April, and it was clear that the Quakers would be a force to be reckoned with on Senior Day at Franklin Field.

So perhaps the more surprising thing is that through a quarter and a half, the matchup actually looked like a game that was going to be contested.

Harvard’s had its own share of adversity to overcome this season, most of it coming in the form of injuries to key players. It, like Penn, had built its team around a dominating defense. And in the opening drives, the Crimson was the offense in the better rhythm.

As the game wore on, though, the Quakers’ dominating defense and physical offensive line simply shut Harvard down. But Harvard’s confidence was lost long before halftime—and it was because it shot itself in the foot.

Penn looked solid but was far from masterful in the first half, and Crimson penalties—like an illegal motion call that nullified a 28-yard reception—and miscues—like a fumbled punt that gave Penn the ball on the Crimson nine-yard line—kept Harvard from taking advantage of that open door.

“You know that you’re not going to score a lot of points against these guys historically,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said, “so you have to minimize turnovers, you have to play great field-position football with special teams, and you have to stop them. And we couldn’t do consistently really any of the three today against a very good football team.”

A lot of credit must go to Penn, which clearly asserted itself as the best team in the Ivy League. By the middle of the third quarter, the Quakers made even the dominant Harvard defense look like a scout team. For the first time all season, we sat in the press box and wished that the clock would tick faster, that the massacre would end.

The final stats tell the story of the game all too well. The Crimson managed to outgain Penn by over 100 yards and had twice as many first downs as the Quakers, but it also gave up three interceptions and 63 penalty yards. Simply put, Penn was able to dominate not because it made big, flashy plays, but because its players did the little things well, nearly every time.

“The thing about this team is that they’re so simplistic,” Murphy said. “It’s really old-time football, and it’s impressive.”

Against the bulk of the teams on its schedule, Harvard’s play on Saturday would have been enough to win the game. But what was missing was that extra spark that a team needs to pull off a real upset.

The Quakers found that spark in the memory of Owen Thomas, and you could see it in the way they played. Penn was a team that was going to stop at nothing to get the title, and the Crimson just didn’t play with that kind of energy.

For the second straight year, Harvard heads into the final week of the season knowing that an Ivy title isn’t in the cards. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to play for. For the seniors, who are 3-0 against Yale in their careers thus far, there’s still an awful lot of pride on the line.

As a writer and a fan, I hope the Crimson can find that spark somewhere in the chorus of vuvuzelas in a packed Harvard Stadium this weekend.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.