Last spring, then-sophomore Collier Winters was faced with a daunting challenge—step into the shoes of Chris Pizzotti ’08-’09, who had just signed an NFL contract, and take the helm of the offense of the two-time defending Ivy League champion football team.

Piece of cake, right? But before Winters could even think about beating Holy Cross in the season opener, he had to beat out a few teammates for the starting role.

Winters won the job in preseason, edging out classmate Matt Simpson for the top spot on the depth chart. He went on to lead the Crimson to a 7-3 record, including a second-place finish in the Ancient Eight.

Though he had a lot of things going for him—including an experienced corps of receivers as targets, the Ivy League’s leading rusher in the backfield, and a talented offensive line to protect him—Winters made the most of his opportunities. His 57.4 pass-completion percentage, 15 touchdown passes, and three touchdown runs were good enough for second-team All-Ivy honors, and his ability to orchestrate a pair of late scoring drives in a comeback win in The Game proved that he could perform in the clutch.

So looking to 2010, with most of the receiver and tailback corps intact, shouldn’t Winters be a shoo-in to reprise his role as Harvard’s primary signal caller?

Well, not so fast, because junior Andrew Hatch is back on the team after a four-year absence that took him from Chile to LSU and finally back to Cambridge last fall.

Though Hatch re-enrolled at Harvard last spring, NCAA regulations made the signal caller ineligible to play for the Crimson in 2009 (and, in fact, he hasn’t yet been officially cleared for 2010—though Harvard coach Tim Murphy is optimistic that he will be).

Hatch is now back taking snaps at Harvard Stadium, just two years removed from earning the starting role out of preseason for LSU—the then-defending national champions—in 2008.

Suddenly, Winters’s job doesn’t seem quite so safe anymore.

Each of the two quarterbacks brings different strengths to the table, but each still has things to prove. Winters will have to rely more on his pass game this season, as a young and inexperienced offensive line may not allow for as much success on the ground as the Crimson enjoyed last year. Hatch, meanwhile, has to relearn the Harvard system and adjust to Murphy’s pro-style offense.

But for the Crimson, a little competition may be just what is needed to push the offense to the next level.

“We need one of those guys to really jump out and improve to be a championship-caliber offense,” Murphy said after Saturday’s spring game. “You take a quarterback position that has no competition, and you’re never going to reach your full potential if you’re not competing.”

Though the competition under center will be fierce, whoever wins the starting job will still have a daunting task ahead of him.

The unsung heroes of the 2009 season were the offensive linemen—seniors James Williams, Alex Spisak, John Paris, and Ben Sessions, along with junior Brent Osborne—making it possible for Harvard’s offense to thrive last season with a new face at quarterback.

The linemen gave Winters time in the pocket and created gaping holes for junior Gino Gordon and freshman Treavor Scales to run through. Though Gordon and Scales have a great deal of athleticism and will likely still be near the top of the Ancient Eight in rushing this season, it will be hard for the Crimson to replicate last season’s outstanding rushing effort, in which it ran for an average of 178.7 yards per game, 20 more than second-ranking Columbia.

In short, Harvard’s got its work cut out for it. Although it has the benefit of returning a strong group of rising seniors on offense, including Gordon and fellow All-Ivy honorees Chris Lorditch, Brent Osborne, and Nicolai Schwarzkopf, and is bringing back plenty of starters on defense, the other top Ivy squads are coming back as strong as ever.

Like the Crimson, Brown and Penn have graduated several key players. The Bears’ fearsome wide receiver duo of Bobby Sewall and Buddy Farnham is gone, as is the Quakers’ formidable linebacker, Jake Lewko.

All three signed NFL contracts on Monday (as did James Williams, who inked a deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers).

But both Brown and Penn are bringing back their quarterbacks. Kyle Newhall-Caballero separated himself from the pack of Ivy signal-callers last season, earning first-team All-Ivy honors for the Bears, and if Quaker Keiffer Garton can stay healthy, he has the potential to be one of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the league.

Princeton and Cornell have new coaches at the helm as they look to climb the Ivy ladder. Yale coach Tom Williams will be hell-bent on proving that he belongs in New Haven after a risky gamble cost the Bulldogs The Game last season. Dartmouth’s young team—including Nick Schweiger, a first-team All-Ivy running back—will benefit from an added year of experience, and Columbia is bringing back a trio of All-Ivy athletes.

As of now, it’s anybody’s title.

Football fans will have to wait until September to see how it all shakes out. But for Winters, Hatch, and the rest of the Harvard football team, the battle has already begun.

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