In the fourth quarter of The Game on November 23 at the Stadium, the Harvard football team found itself in what has become a familiar spot: in desperate straits against Yale. After having trailed for much of the contest, the Crimson had clawed to within eight points of the Elis. With 5:33 left to play, Harvard took over the ball on its own 34, needing a touchdown and a two-point conversion to forge a tie. It didn’t happen. When a fourth-down pass from quarterback Jaden Craig to tight end Seamus Gilmartin failed, Yale took over and worked the ball close enough to the Harvard goal to kick a field goal. The Crimson scored with 18 seconds left, but when the Elis recovered an onside kick, it was all over except for the shouting from New Haven: Yale 34, Harvard 29. For the third year in a row, the Elis had prevailed by five points.
The result, which snapped a seven-game Crimson winning streak, put a blotch on an otherwise superb season—a championship season. A victory in The Game would have given Harvard the outright Ivy League title. Instead, the defeat dropped the Crimson into a three-way tie with Dartmouth and upstart Columbia (see Final Standings, below), the second consecutive such championship deadlock for the Crimson and the Big Green, Yale having been the other participant in 2023.
While the ending was bitter, the overall result was a rousing success for Andrew Aurich in his first season as Stephenson Family head coach for Harvard football. Acknowledging that his team had not been at its best in The Game, he said, “I told the guys in the locker room, [I was] really proud of how hard they fought to the end. That’s a sign of the right type of culture in the program. These guys worked their butts off all season, and I was not surprised that they were fighting to the end.”
The championship—Harvard’s nineteenth outright or shared, which trails only Dartmouth’s 22—was a personal vindication for Aurich in his rookie season as a head coach. When he was hired last February to replace the retiring and iconic Tim Murphy, Aurich, a former Princeton offensive lineman and assistant coach, had to deal with grumbling within the Crimson football community that Harvard had stooped to hire someone not only with no experience as a head coach, but who also came from the despised Tigers. The grousing grew louder after the Crimson dropped its first Ivy game of the season, to eventual last-place finisher Brown (see “Learning Curve,” November-December 2024, page 19). Such are the vagaries of Ivy League football.
But the critics were muted when Harvard reeled off seven straight victories. Aurich appeared to maintain the tight-knit culture fostered by Murphy. “I was a little unsure about how I would be received,” he admitted, “but everyone was great from day one. They wanted the same thing that I wanted.”
Aurich and his assistants also made good use of a squad full of Murphy holdovers. “The coaching staff did a great job of adjusting our personnel,” said Aurich. Game in and game out there were many heroes, but three stood out: quarterback Jaden Craig, wide receiver Cooper Barkate, and defensive back Ty Bartrum. These three are among the best at their positions in Harvard football annals—and better yet, as juniors, they have another season remaining at Soldiers Field. Assuming, that is, they are not scooped up in the transfer portal by big-time football schools with unlimited “name, image, likeness” lucre. (See “The End of the Ivy League?” November-December, page 32.) In late November, Barkate indicated that he would at least explore that avenue when he entered the portal.
Craig threw 23 touchdown passes—only one behind the single-season record set in 2012 by Colton Chapple ’13—and might have had more had he not been injured early in the Penn game. For much of the season he was among the leaders in various passing statistics in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS); as it was, he finished seventh in yards per completion (14.38). “Before I came to Harvard, I saw the talent on tape,” said Aurich. “He has a legit arm. This season he made huge strides in his ability to see the whole field, read the coverage, and make decisions in a timely fashion.”
Though Craig spread the ball to an array of talented targets, his favorite was Barkate (the two are roommates), who had 63 receptions, second in the Ivy League, and led the conference in touchdown receptions (11) and receiving yards per game (108.4). “He is a special, special talent,” said Aurich. “He’s as good a receiver as I’ve been around. His ability to win versus man-to-man coverage, his ability to track the ball in the air, and his ability to run after the catch make him a different type of player.”
Bartrum is among the hardest-hitting defensive backs the Crimson has ever had. In Ivy play, he was tied for second in tackles, with 59 in seven games—an unusually high number for a deep back. (He also had 1.5 quarterback sacks.) “He is the epitome of the Harvard defensive player,” said Aurich. “He understands the scheme so well that it allows him to play very fast. His reaction times are so fast that he’s always where the ball is. And he’s also really, really violent. He’s a violent football player! He’s not trying to hurt anyone but he’s really aggressive.”
After the Brown debacle, Harvard returned home for a Friday night game against New Hampshire. A raucous crowd witnessed a come-from-behind 28-23 win. This contest featured an effective new wrinkle, with erstwhile senior starting quarterback Charles DePrima playing in the backfield, sometimes with Craig, sometimes without. The maneuver paid off on the Crimson’s final touchdown, when DePrima took the snap, rolled to his left, made a nifty cut upfield, and accelerated into the end zone.
The next week it was on the road again and back to Ivy competition, against Cornell. The Big Red had the upper hand early, but 21 Harvard second-quarter points proved insurmountable in the Crimson’s 38-20 win. Craig finished with 20 completions in 27 attempts, for 316 yards and four touchdowns. He even punted once, for 36 yards.
Another Stadium night game followed, this one against longtime non-conference rival Holy Cross. It was a back-and-forth thriller finally won by the Crimson 35-34. Bartrum scored the first Harvard points with an 88-yard scoop-and-score. Craig and Barkate combined for the final touchdown, an 18-yard pass with 45 seconds left. On the game’s last play, the Crusaders scored a touchdown, but their ensuing two-point conversion attempt failed when Harvard sophomore defensive back Damien Henderson broke up the pass in the end zone.
Aurich was particularly proud of his team’s ability to make comebacks. “We had a group of guys who got put in adverse situations and they had ability to focus on one play at a time and because of that we could win those games,” he said. “That is a trained skill that players can get better at.”
From there it would be all Ivy, all the time. Princeton came into the Stadium boasting a six-game win streak against the Crimson. It was snapped emphatically by a 45-13 Harvard victory. The Crimson outgained the Tigers 492 yards to 223. All but flawless, Craig finished with 25 completions in 32 attempts for 306 yards and three touchdowns (with one interception). Diminutive senior wideout/return man Scott Woods II led with 10 receptions. Two of Craig’s scoring passes went to Barkate. On the other side of the ball, Bartrum was tops with nine tackles, and Harvard sacked Princeton quarterback Blaine Hipa five times.
A showdown with unbeaten Dartmouth at Hanover, New Hampshire, yielded another down-to-the-wire thriller. Twice the Crimson trailed by 10 points, the second time in the fourth quarter. With 3:59 remaining and Harvard trailing by three, Craig led a 73-yard touchdown drive, with DePrima scoring from the nine. The Big Green had one last gasp—a Hail Mary from the Harvard 32. The same play had worked five years before, but this time the Crimson defenders played textbook defense, with all but one on the ground glued to his assigned man while the “jumper,” sophomore defensive back Jack Donahue, tracked the ball and batted it down (see the photo on page 13). “The way our guys played that play was a thing of beauty,” said Aurich. “I wanted to send a tape of that to every coach I know.” The 31-27 victory left Harvard and Dartmouth tied for first with three games to play.
Back in Cambridge the Crimson dispatched Columbia in businesslike fashion, 26-6. Woods ignited Harvard with a 43-yard punt return, and DePrima scored two touchdowns, the second on a 52-yard jaunt. This day, though, was one for the defense, with freshman defensive back Austin-Charles Guillory picking off two Lion passes, and ferocious senior linebacker Mitchell Gonser (later a first-team All-Ivy selection) amassing 13 tackles that included a sack and two tackles for loss of yardage.
The win over Columbia proved a breather between two nail-biters. Catastrophe occurred early in the following week’s game at Penn. In the first quarter, Craig scrambled for a first down, only to be met by Quaker linebacker John Lista. The resulting collision knocked Craig out of the game. De-Prima’s hour had rung, and he responded magnificently, rushing for 122 yards, passing for 169, and showing a sure hand at the tiller. (DePrima would be rewarded with a second-team All-Ivy selection with the all-purpose nomenclature “athlete.”) Harvard dug itself a 21-7 third-period hole, only to climb out thanks to two touchdowns by sophomore running back Xaviah Bascon. The first came on a 23-yard toss from De-Prima; the second, on a nine-yard bolt. Penn reassumed the lead, but DePrima got the Crimson even with a nine-yard run. When the Quakers missed a field goal, Harvard got the ball with a chance to win the game. DePrima found Barkate twice, for a total of 27 yards; then he wended his way through a half-dozen would-be tacklers to get the ball to the Quaker 14. Five plays later, Dylan Fingersh, an untried freshman kicker, booted the game-winning field goal: Harvard 31, Penn 28. Coupled with news of Cornell’s upset of Dartmouth, the Crimson now were guaranteed no less than a tie for the Ivy title.
That’s what they had to settle for after a flat performance in The Game. On a raw, gray day that matched Crimson fans’ mood, a crowd of 27,105 witnessed Yale push Harvard all over the Stadium turf, with the Elis outgaining the Crimson 503 yards to 349. The Eli quarterback, Grant Jordan, proved a wizard at buying time; meantime, Craig was harassed, hurried, and sacked five times. Yale scored first, but in the second period a nifty 23-yard Woods punt return ignited the Harvard offense. Two plays later Craig found Barkate behind the Eli defense for a 44-yard touchdown. Harvard 7, Yale 7.
But the next 17 points belonged to the Elis. The most unforgivable Yale scoring play came on Craig’s worst throw of the year: an attempted screen pass that hung in the air like a balloon. Eli defensive back Abu Kamara plucked it and took it to the house to make it Yale 21, Harvard 7. Later Nick Conforti tacked on a field goal.
It looked like it was all over, but the Crimson was not about to quit. Again striking quickly, Craig found Barkate for 48 yards, with the receiver coming back to catch the ball. On the first play of the fourth quarter, Craig took the snap, rolled to his left, then threw to the right to Woods in the end zone. A successful two-point conversion made it Yale 24, Harvard 15.
The Elis ruthlessly got back seven points when, from the Harvard 39, Jordan flipped a pass in the left flat to Josh Pitsenberger, who took it all the way into the end zone. Yale 31, Harvard 15.
The Crimson riposted, going 75 yards in eight plays. Two of them were Craig-to-Barkate hookups, the first for 35 yards, the last a perfectly thrown ball to the back right of the end zone. (Barkate finished with eight receptions for 169 yards and two touchdowns, all game highs.) Given the score, it again was time to go for two points, and Craig obliged, flipping to Woods in the end zone. Yale 31, Harvard 23. With 8:58 to play, a one-score game.
More than three of those minutes were chewed up by the next Eli drive, which moved to the Crimson 34. Harvard made a stand, took to the offense, and tried to mount a drive, but Yale forced the fourth-down incompletion by Craig intended for Gilmartin, then moved into position for a Conforti field goal. Yale 34, Harvard 23, with 2:07 left. The Crimson scored again, on a five-yard Bascon scamper, but only 18 seconds remained on the clock. Yale recovered the ensuing onside kick. Finis. “The mistakes that we had at different points on both sides of the ball [made] it very hard to win a game like that,” said Aurich.
In the end, it was a very good year, even if it was mission not quite accomplished. “The standard that was set, we have to make sure there’s no drop-off,” said Aurich, looking to 2025. Do we hear three-peat?
FINAL STANDINGS
Ivy Games /Overall
HARVARD 5-2 /8-2
Dartmouth 5-2/ 8-2
Columbia 5-2 /7-3
Yale 4-3 /7-3
Cornell 3-4 /4-6
Princeton 2-5 /3-7
Penn 2-5/ 4-6
Brown 2-5 /3-7
TIDBITS. Yale now leads the overall series 71-61-8….Ty Bartrum ’26—a defensive back from Pomeroy, Ohio, a resident of Dudley House, and an economics concentrator—was elected the 151st captain of Harvard football….Seventeen Harvard players—most of any school—received All-Ivy honors. Named to the first team were wide receiver Cooper Barkate, defensive back Ty Bartrum, offensive lineman Mike Entwistle, linebacker Mitchell Gonser (unanimous selection), defensive lineman Jacob Psyk, and return specialist Scott Woods.
THE 2024 SEASON: Dick Friedman’s weekly dispatches.
Football: Harvard 26-Columbia 6
Football: Harvard 31-Dartmouth 27
Football: Harvard 45-Princeton 13
Football: Harvard 35-Holy Cross 34
Football: Harvard 38-Cornell 20
Football: Harvard 28-New Hampshire 23
Football: Harvard 35-Stetson 0
Pre-season:
