Dartmouth Picks Off Charlie Smith Five Times, Hands No. 13 Harvard First Loss 24-14

Harvard outgained Dartmouth by 133 yards on Friday night. Harvard's best defender set a program record that had stood since 1947. Harvard still lost by 10, because five of Charlie Smith's passes ended up in the hands of players wearing green.

Dartmouth beat nationally ranked Harvard 24-14 on Oct. 30 at Memorial Field in Hanover, handing the Crimson their first loss of the season and pulling into a tie for first place in the Ivy League. The Big Green, now 4-3 and 3-1 in the league, also own the head-to-head tiebreaker. Harvard, which came in at 6-0 and ranked No. 13 in the Stats Perform FCS Top 25, fell to 6-1 and 3-1.

Dartmouth did it with a quarterback who threw for 42 yards. Grayson Saunier completed 5 of 12 passes, but two of those completions were touchdowns, and Saunier ran 20 times for 109 yards and another score. The Big Green ran 56 times for 229 yards and let the defense handle the rest.

A first play that set the tone

Harvard arrived in Hanover off a 35-7 dismantling of Princeton that looked like a coronation. It took one snap for that feeling to evaporate. On the Crimson's first offensive play, Smith threw toward Nate Bailey and Cameron Best-Alston picked it off. Saunier finished the short field on a quarterback sneak, and Dartmouth led 7-0 in the first quarter.

Harvard's second series ended the same way. A tipped pass bounced off the hands of Tafari Moe and into the arms of sophomore linebacker Matthew Boydell, who returned it 36 yards. Early in the second quarter, Dartmouth faced fourth down at the 2, and Saunier flipped a shovel pass to Dylan Elder, who fell across the goal line for a 14-0 lead.

Benson keeps Harvard alive

If Harvard had a hero, it was Xaden Benson. The sophomore defensive back read a Saunier throw perfectly and returned it to the Dartmouth 35, and Smith cashed it in with a 13-yard touchdown pass to Bailey to make it 14-7.

Dartmouth answered with the kind of drive that defined its night. The Big Green went 11 plays and leaned heavily on Saunier's legs, and Saunier found Nick Lemon for a 9-yard touchdown with 1:47 left in the half. Saunier had 13 carries in the first half alone, more than in any full game this season, according to The Harvard Crimson. Harvard responded quickly when Smith hit Ryan Tattersall for a 38-yard touchdown with about a minute left, and the Crimson went to the locker room down only 21-14 despite two turnovers.

The turning point: a third quarter full of nothing

Here is where Harvard lost the game. The third quarter was scoreless, and it was not for lack of chances. Benson picked off Saunier at the Harvard 2 to tie the program's single-season record with an eighth interception, then grabbed a tipped short pass for No. 9, breaking a mark that had stood since 1947. Nine interceptions is also the most in the FCS this season, per the AP.

Harvard turned those gifts into exactly zero points. Kieran Corr missed a 32-yard field goal, ending a run of seven straight makes. Best-Alston picked off a tipped ball over the middle for a second interception. And on fourth-and-goal from the 5, Smith lobbed one toward the end zone and junior defensive back No'Koi Maddox came down with it.

That is the whole game in one quarter. Dartmouth's offense did almost nothing in the third quarter, and it did not matter, because Harvard kept finding new ways to come up empty in scoring range. The Crimson finished 1 of 4 in the red zone and 1 of 9 on third down.

Dartmouth closes it the old-fashioned way

The fourth quarter belonged to the Big Green's ground game. With 11:39 left, Harvard tried freshman quarterback Kise Flannery on fourth-and-1 at the Dartmouth 29, and the Big Green stopped Flannery for no gain. Dartmouth then went 13 straight plays, chewed 7:17 off the clock and got a 30-yard field goal from Owen Zalc with 4:22 remaining to make it 24-14.

Harvard had one last push, and it ended on the fifth interception. Smith threw behind tight end Teigan Pelletier and Sean Chester picked it off with 3:56 left. Dartmouth, playing without injured star running back Myles Craddock, ran out the rest.

The absence of Craddock made the rushing total even more impressive. With the sophomore sidelined, Dartmouth spread the work around: Jacob Henry carried 14 times for 53 yards, Elder added 46 yards on 18 carries, and Saunier handled the rest as the de facto feature back. Saunier's 39-yard run was the only real chunk play, but the Big Green kept falling forward, and over 56 carries that adds up to a game plan Harvard never solved.

The numbers that matter

On paper, Harvard won almost everything. The Crimson outgained Dartmouth 404 to 271 and threw for 277 yards. Smith completed 23 of 37 passes with two touchdowns, and Tattersall had a breakout night with six catches for 94 yards. Bailey also caught six passes, and DJ Gordon ran 14 times for 77 yards in a second game back from injury. Sean Line led the Harvard defense with 12 tackles.

None of it mattered against the turnover math. Dartmouth intercepted five passes, while Saunier's three interceptions all went to Benson. Best-Alston finished with two interceptions and eight tackles, Steve Simpkins Jr. also had eight stops, and Roman Sosnovyy recorded Dartmouth's lone sack. Remarkably, all 10 of Dartmouth's interceptions this season have come in its last three games, per the AP, including three in the fourth quarter of last week's 38-18 win at Columbia.

Harvard head coach Andrew Aurich did not hide from the result. "It's my job to make sure they come out here ready to play," Aurich said, per The Harvard Crimson, "and if they aren't, there's only one person to look at, and that's right in the mirror."

On Smith's night, Aurich said, "I gotta watch the tape to see what happened on each one," and noted that some of the picks "weren't necessarily bad decisions," calling them balls "that were freakishly tipped up and ended up in their hands." Aurich also backed Smith. "I know Charlie; he's going to bounce back," Aurich said.

What it means

The Ivy League race just got a lot more crowded at the top. Dartmouth and Harvard sit at 3-1, with Princeton one game back at 2-1, and Dartmouth now holds the tiebreaker over the Crimson. For a Big Green program that had lost four straight to Harvard, this was only its fourth win in the last 23 meetings, per the AP, and it was the kind of win that changes how the final three weeks look.

Harvard still controls plenty of its own fate, but the margin for error is gone. The Crimson host Columbia at Harvard Stadium on Nov. 7 for Senior Day. Dartmouth heads to Princeton the same day in a game that now carries real title weight. The full stat line is in the ESPN box score (opens in a new tab), and Dartmouth's account is in the Big Green's official recap (opens in a new tab).

The last word

Aurich summed up the night as a team that did not make plays in the moments that decide championships. "If you wanna be a championship team, you gotta make those plays in those critical situations," Aurich said, "and we didn't."

Dartmouth did. The Big Green completed five passes all night and still won comfortably, because they made the ball theirs five times and never gave Harvard the one break it needed. Benson's record will be the line Harvard fans remember fondly from this one. Everything else, they will want to forget.

Sources: ESPN box score, The Associated Press, The Harvard Crimson, The Boston Globe and Dartmouth Athletics. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Kane5187/Wikimedia Commons.