With the FCS playoffs finally on the line, Harvard football’s undefeated season comes at the right time
“Getting to hang a banner up is nice, but it doesn’t feel as good when you’re sharing it with two other teams,” quarterback Jaden Craig said after the loss.
The work to right those wrongs began in earnest.
“I think from the jump, from the banquet we had last year after Yale, I knew we had a hungry group,” said Harvard captain Ty Bartrum. “I knew it was a group that’s not going to be satisfied with just sharing titles.”
A year later, the Crimson are on the precipice of a special season, carrying an 8-0 record into their final regular-season games against Penn and, of course, Yale. They’re doing so at the perfect moment, with the Ivy League participating in the FCS playoffs for the first time.
That means Harvard — ranked a program-best No. 7 in the Stats Perform top 25, and 11th in the latest coaches’ poll — could have a chance to chase a national title.
“If we have an opportunity to win a national championship, then that should be one of our goals,” said coach Andrew Aurich. “There’s obviously still work to do, but whoever gets that opportunity [by winning the Ivy League], it’ll be fun to see how we do stack up.”
It helps that the Crimson aren’t just winning; they’re dominating.
In his second year at the helm, Aurich’s team has won those eight games by an average of 28.5 points. Harvard leads the Ivy League in scoring offense (40.1 points per game) and defense (11.6), each by comfortable margins. No team has managed to stay within two touchdowns of the Crimson.
Aurich had a sense that his team might be hitting another gear pretty quickly, after Harvard buried Brown, 41-7, to right one of last season’s wrongs in Week 2.
“Last year, we lost the game to Brown that we should have won,” Aurich said. “Just to see … all three phases execute at the level they did, to me, that was pretty telling that we had a really talented team, despite how much we had to replace, and it kind of took off from there.”
Andrew Aurich is in his second season as Harvard’s coach.Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
What the Crimson had to replace were 13 graduating starters from the 2024 team that went 8-2 (5-2 Ivy). Rather than maintaining its level, Harvard has raised it.
The defense, led by multiple-time first-team All-Ivy selection Bartrum at safety, has made the leap from the league’s second-best defense last season to the stingiest this year.
“It started with just the ability for us to kind of take a jump in the summer. We had a lot more guys up here, a lot more time to get together, study schemes,” Bartrum said. “Once we hit camp, we could kind of tell that we had a lot of guys stepping up.
“There were a lot of question marks. Those question marks, as [defensive end] Josh Fedd said, turned into exclamation points.”
While opponents struggle to crack double digits on the scoreboard, Harvard’s high-octane offense is entrusted to Craig, who will be one of the favorites for Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year.
The senior quarterback already has claimed the school record for touchdown passes, and is within 700 passing yards of snagging that record, too.
With a running back-by-committee approach behind him — Xaviah Bascon, DJ Gordon, and Jordan Harris have combined to rush for 1,127 yards — and no shortage of receiving targets, Craig has led the offense to new heights.
Xaviah Bascon is part of Harvard’s talented rushing attack.Harvard Athletics/Photo courtesy Harvard Athletics
It might be a little easier for Craig to chase more records with the benefit of a potential postseason.
Harvard’s best bet is to claim an automatic bid by winning the Ivy League outright, which it can do by beating Penn (on Saturday) or Yale (Nov. 22).
“We’re definitely worried about the here and now, but I think the playoffs give the Ivy League an avenue to show what we can do at that level, which is great for the league,” Bartrum said. “You kind of feel for the people in the past, the great Harvard 10-0 teams and things like that, but that’s what we’re here for — trying to showcase our history through just being present and winning games and make the alumni proud.”
Before the Crimson can start dreaming of a national title, their focus remains winning the Ivy League title and beating Yale.
The latter — snapping a three-game losing streak to the Bulldogs, the Crimson’s worst run in “The Game” in a quarter-century — would be another feather in the cap for Aurich, whose early success has helped win over the fan base.
Some were vocal when Aurich was appointed in 2024, expressing their support for internal candidates (and Harvard alums) over an outsider from Princeton without a head-coaching job on his résumé. Winning 16 of his first 18 games has helped.
“[The alumni] have been great,” Aurich said. “I completely understand where they were coming from with that, because they have strong feelings, especially when there’s candidates who they played with. To me, it was all about starting to build relationships, getting to know these people, and having them get to know me and understand what I’m about.
“Any time anyone reaches out to me, I let them know, ‘Stop by and see me.’ Any alum that I can meet, have them hear my vision for this program, I know it’s going to benefit me, because you know they are the ones who are supporting this program, allowing us to do the things we want to do.”
Amin Touri can be reached at amin.touri@globe.com.
