The Harvard football team enters the 2026 season with the most difficult question any eleven can face: how do they replace the best quarterback in their 152-season history? First-team All-Ivy signal caller Jaden Craig ’26 has graduated and decamped for Texas Christian University to play a postgraduate year. His likely replacement, senior Dante Torres, threw a total of 14 passes during two seasons as Craig’s backup. Seven other All-Ivy selections are gone, including five on the offensive line.
So, is there anywhere for the Crimson to go but down? For the past three seasons—the first under longtime coach Tim Murphy, the last two under Stephenson family coach Andrew Aurich—the Crimson have been Ivy League co-champions. In 2025, Harvard finished 9-1 and was at one time ranked as high as seventh in the Football Championship Subdivision. (The Crimson ultimately finished No. 20.) Taking advantage of new Ivy rules, the team even went to the FCS playoffs, though the luster of the Crimson’s first postseason appearance since 1920 was dulled by a 52-7 shellacking by Villanova and a 45-28 drubbing by the Elis in The Game.
One player who does not see the cupboard as bare is Xaviah Bascon. The senior running back and kick returner is the 152nd captain in Harvard football history. Bascon—first name pronounced “ex-ah-VAY-ah”—was the Crimson’s leading rusher and a second-team All-Ivy selection in 2025. His field of concentration is psychology, and as he awaited the season’s kickoff on September 19 at the University of New Hampshire, Bascon was putting what he has learned to good use in psyching himself and his teammates up.
“We definitely have the guys,” he said in a Zoom conversation. “It starts up front in the offensive line, where we have seniors Spencer Doan and Thomas O’Brien coming back for their third season as starters.” In 2025, both were All-Ivy first-team selections.
“The receiving room looks great. [Junior] Brady Blackburn”—the Crimson’s leading receiver in 2025, with 38 catches, five touchdowns, and a superb 19.26 yards per reception—“will be even better this year. So will [sophomore] Ryan Tattersall, who showed off last year at the end.”
Bascon could have added massive senior tight end Sean Gilmartin, an honorable mention All-Ivy and a go-to guy in the red zone. “And the running back room is super-deep. We have five, six guys who can all play,” Bascon added. Expect a quantum leap, he said, from junior D.J. Gordon, Harvard’s second-leading rusher last year and an honorable mention All-Ivy.
On the other side of the ball? “Our defense looks scary,” said Bascon. “[Senior cornerback] Damien Henderson is probably the best defensive player in the Ivy League. And he has a complementary player at the other corner with [senior] Austin-Jake Guillory. You have three of the best linebackers in the league with [seniors] Jack Donahoe and Sean Line and [junior] Dorsey Benefield. And the D-line looks scary as well. I scrimmage against them, so I know what they’re like.”
Bascon modestly omitted himself. He is a self-described blue-collar kid out of nearby Swampscott High School. (He also spent a postgraduate year at Phillips Exeter.) Growing up, “I never visited Harvard,” he said. “Going here was kind of far-fetched.” At five-foot-nine and 200 pounds, Bascon is a sparkplug with shifty moves and startling acceleration; he has run a sizzling 4.39 in the 40-yard dash. These abilities have served him especially well when returning kickoffs, a category in which he enters 2026 fifth on the Harvard career list with a 24.5-yard average.
From scrimmage, Bascon displays surprising thump. He was Harvard’s leading ground-gainer last year, with 626 yards and a stellar 5.0-yard average. In three seasons, he has run for the you-can’t-make-it-up total of 1,234 yards. If Bascon amasses 655 in 2026, he will crack the Crimson career top 10 in rushing.
While not overlooking the rest of the schedule in a very balanced Ivy League, Bascon said this year’s main focus is: Beat Yale. The 142nd Playing of The Game will take place on November 21, with Harvard the home team. But the contest will not be at Harvard Stadium. Instead, it will return to Fenway Park, hallowed home of the Boston Red Sox, where it was held in 2018. “As a Boston sports fan, I’m super excited,” said Bascon. (This year the Elis have a new face on the sidelines, as former Lehigh coach Kevin Cahill has replaced Tony Reno, who stepped down for health reasons.)
Of course, Bascon wouldn’t mind getting another shot at the postseason. The Crimson is bidding for its fourth straight Ivy League Championship—Penn is the only team to accomplish that feat, from 1982 to 1986—and the Ivy champion is guaranteed a berth in the FCS playoffs. “I think people are going to hold last year’s playoff result against us,” he admitted. “I guess it’s reasonable from their perspective, but I know personally, deep down, that wasn’t us at all, and I know we have a lot more that we can really show to everyone.”
Fine. But first: Beat Yale.
