The biggest questions regarding the Columbia football team’s matchup against Harvard on Saturday revolve around the quarterback position. It is uncertain whether injured senior starter Millicent Olawale will be able to play, freshman Sean Brackett will make his second straight start, or sophomore Jerry Bell will see the field for the second time this season. Head coach Norries Wilson believes that all three are viable options as the Light Blue takes on the Crimson, one of the two teams that remains unbeaten in Ivy play.
On Saturday against Yale, Wilson pulled a surprise move by leapfrogging Brackett past Bell on the depth chart and starting him in place of the injured Olawale. Brackett—the first freshman to start at quarterback for the Light Blue since Gene Rossides in 1945—threw three touchdown passes, but committed two fourth-quarter turnovers in the Lions’ 23-22 loss to Yale. While Brackett rose to the challenge, Wilson mentioned that it was a tough decision to start the freshman over Bell, since both have performed well at practice.
“Over the past few weeks Sean had been practicing a little bit better and it was not an easy decision to make,” Wilson said. “Jerry’s actually been moving pretty good with some of the read zone and the read option stuff and he’s been doing a pretty good job with it.”
One of Brackett’s greatest strengths is that he, like Olawale, can make plays with his legs. Against the Bulldogs, the freshman ran for 68 yards on 15 carries, which put his rushing total second only to fellow first-time starter, junior running back Leon Ivery, who ran for 127 yards. No matter who is at quarterback, Wilson has said that the offense won’t change. That means that the Lions’ quarterback will be expected to run with the ball and make decisions on reads and options, something Harvard is preparing itself for.
“Against running quarterbacks, you have to play more assignment football, you’ve got to be very conscious on each play with which player has the pitch, the play action, and the QB,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “Columbia has a couple of outstanding runners. M.A. Olawale is the Ivy League equivalent of Tim Tebow, so you have to be assignment-oriented. We know they can throw the ball but we’ve got to stop the run.”
The Crimson isn’t the only team that is going to key on the run, as the Lions will need to focus on stopping Harvard’s two-headed running attack of junior Gino Gordon and freshman Treavor Scales. Last week the duo put up 239 rushing yards—120 for Scales, 119 for Gordon—along with a combined five touchdowns in Harvard’s 42-21 win over Dartmouth.
In preparing for the league’s highest-scoring offense, Wilson’s first thought is that the Crimson are going to run. While Harvard is likely to try to establish the run, it’s not one-dimensional, as junior quarterback Collier Winters has shown that he can hurt teams in the air, too.
“You look at Harvard and it’s like they’re different each week,” Wilson said. “They line and play Dartmouth and they run the ball 40 times for 300-something yards. Then they line up and play Lehigh and it’s pass, pass, pass and put a run in there just to keep you honest ... We’re going to have to prepare for the things that they do and just see how they’re going to come out and attack us.”
On Saturday, Harvard will be trying to remain unbeaten in the league en route to its third consecutive Ivy League championship, which means Columbia has a chance to go out and play spoiler, although that has not been a point of emphasis for Wilson and his coaching staff.
“We haven’t talked about it,” Wilson said. “We’ve talked about going out and playing a complete 60 minutes. We felt as if we played a pretty good 52 minutes on Saturday and in the last eight minutes we didn’t play as well, we didn’t execute as well, in the last eight minutes as we had in the previous 52.”
Kickoff is set for 12:30 p.m. at Robert K. Kraft Field.
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