Harvard Football: New Season, New Coach

The winter, spring, and summer of our discontent having concluded, Harvard’s 2024 football season kicks off this Saturday—appropriately enough, the first day of autumn—at noon ET in Harvard Stadium against Stetson. (The game will be streamed on ESPN+, and broadcast on WRCA 1130 AM and 106.1 FM.) This will be the 150th season of Harvard football, and the Crimson, who in 2023 were 8-2 overall and 5-2 in Ivy League play, enter as defending Ivy tri-champions with Dartmouth and Yale. (The title was Harvard’s 18th; the Elis also have 18, as does Penn, and the Big Green tops the league with 21.) In the 2024 preseason Ivy media poll, Harvard was chosen second to Yale, but barely; the Crimson tallied 108 points to the Elis’ 114, but received seven first-place votes, one more than their rivals from New Haven.

Much occurred, some of it seismic, after we went into hibernation last November following the 23-18 defeat at the Yale Bowl. Here are some of the more notable off-season developments. As a preface, we note that the Ivy League neither gained nor lost any members, making it something of an outlier in today’s college-sports landscape.

New coach. After a brilliant 30-year tenure that included 10 Ivy titles, Tim Murphy stepped down in January. His replacement as the Stephenson Family coach for Harvard football is Andrew Aurich, class of ’06 at Princeton, where he was an offensive lineman. He appears to be the first bearded head coach in Crimson football annals. (This instantly wins him props from the facially hirsute set.) Aurich has a brutal act to follow; three acts, really. In the previous 67 years, Harvard had a holy trinity of head coaches: John Yovicsin (1957-71), Joe Restic (1972-83), and Murphy (1994-2023). So…no pressure, Coach. No pressure at all.

The 40-year-old Aurich has never been a head coach. He has served a solid apprenticeship as a top assistant at various schools, including his alma mater and Rutgers. In a Town Hall on Zoom in August, he reiterated the philosophy he espoused when he was introduced last February: his teams will strike first, swarm, and finish—and he will put a premium on ball security. Very pretty, Colonel, very pretty—but can they fight? We may not get a glimmer of the answer until midseason, when the Crimson faces Aurich’s alma mater, to whom Harvard has lost six straight.

New coaches elsewhere. Two other Ivy schools made a change at the helm. Cornell has turned to Dan Swanstrom, former offensive coordinator at Penn. Perhaps of more interest to Harvard fans is the new Columbia coach: Jon Poppe, who had two stints as an assistant under Murphy and who is a special-teams savant. A coup for the Lions.

New depth at quarterback. In comparison to last September, when Harvard started the season lacking a tested signal-caller, this year the Crimson has two, with a third waiting in the wings. Junior Jaden Craig took over as the starter in midseason 2023 and became a top-notch passer, completing 59.8 percent of his tosses with four touchdowns and only two interceptions, which seems to fit Aurich’s ball-security philosophy. Senior Charles DePrima occasionally struggled throwing the ball but he is a dangerous runner who averaged 6.2 yards per carry. Behind them is senior Conor Easthope, largely untried.

Luckily for Aurich, at the skill positions Murphy left the larder well-stocked. Whoever takes the snaps will be able to hand the ball to first-team All-Ivy runner and senior captain Shane McLaughlin (see below), the ’23 Ivy rushing leader with 830 yards. Or the quarterback can flip it to a tested wideout corps that includes seniors Kaedyn Odermann and speedy Scott Woods II, and junior Cooper Barkate. Shifty sophomore running back and kick returner Xaviah Bascon is the resident game-breaker.

New holes to fill. Graduation, as always, cost Harvard some of its best players. Three went the graduate transfer route. First-team All-Ivy tight end Tyler Neville is at Virginia, where in the first three games he has eight receptions, two of which went for touchdowns. Offensive lineman Jacob Rizy is a sometime starter at Florida State. And defensive lineman Thor Griffith is a starter at Louisville, where he has registered his first sack for the Cardinals.

Who are their replacements? Nine tight ends are on the Crimson roster, each aspiring to be the next in line at a Harvard signature position. Successors to the unblockable Griffith and his running mate on the defensive line, Nate Leskovec, will not be easy to locate. Senior Tyler Heunemann, a 285-pounder, could try to fill Griffith’s cleats.

There are stellar returnees on the defense. They include ’23’s leading tackler, junior defensive back Ty Bartrum (second-team All-Ivy, who should have been on the first team), and two fellow defensive backs, senior Gavin Shipman and sophomore Damien Henderson; linebackers Jack Kirkwood, a junior, and Eric Little, a senior; and defensive linemen Alex DeGriek, a junior, and Nick Yagodich, a 245-pound senior. A replacement must be found for graduated placekicker Cali Canaval.

New wrinkles. College football has joined the National Football League by instituting a two-minute timeout at the end of each half. (The NCAA is adamant that it is not a “warning.”) Do we really need this? Hey, we can read the scoreboard clock. No doubt the TV networks are happy to use the time to squeeze in more commercials.

Of perhaps more consequence is the introduction of headset and tablet technology to the gridiron. A coach may now communicate with a player on the field through a headset installed in the latter’s helmet. One player on offense and one on defense will have the helmet, which is designated by a green dot. Communication gets shut off automatically with 15 seconds remaining before the ball must be snapped, or upon the snap, so there’s no yelling into the player’s ear once the play begins. This device could mean the end of a fabled aspect of the game: using hand signals (or any other body signals) to wigwag plays to the quarterback. Moreover, teams are now free to use tablets on the sideline to draw up plays, or defenses to stop them. Since Harvard is the school of Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (members of the class of ’77), this should give the Crimson a home-field advantage, no?

New opponent. Stetson, the aforementioned opening-game foe, and Harvard have never met on the gridiron. The Hatters (get it?) of Deland, Florida, and the Pioneer League already have three games under their belts in ’24 and are 2-1, having lost 48-7 at Furman last Saturday.

2024 HARVARD FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

All times ET
Home games in ALL CAPS
*Ivy game