Harvard Is 6-0 and the Only Unbeaten Team Left in the Ivy League After Smothering Princeton 35-7
Charlie Smith threw for 230 yards, 103 more than Princeton's entire passing total, and Dorsey Benefield scored Harvard's first defensive touchdown of the year. The No. 17/15 Crimson head to Dartmouth on Friday.
Princeton came into Harvard Stadium on Saturday giving up 10.2 points a game, receiving votes in both top-25 polls and sitting at 4-1. Harvard put 35 on them. The Crimson won 35-7, moved to 6-0 overall and 3-0 in the Ivy League, and are now the only team in the conference without a loss of any kind, according to Harvard Athletics.
Harvard set the tone on the first drive. Eighteen plays, 74 yards, 10 minutes and 2 seconds off the clock, capped by a 24-yard Kieran Corr field goal. DJ Gordon, making his season debut, ripped off a 21-yard run on that drive and finished with a game-high 67 rushing yards on nine carries. Ten minutes of the other team watching. That's a statement.
Princeton kept going for it on fourth down and kept coming up empty. Two turnovers on downs in the first half, and Harvard cashed both. After the first, Charlie Smith hit three straight chunk plays, 17 yards to Tafari Moe, 26 to Logan Reaska and 26 more to Henry Shoemaker for a touchdown. After the second, Harvard drove 61 yards in 14 plays for a 32-yard Corr field goal. 13-0 at the half.
Smith was surgical: 22 of 28 for 230 yards and his fourth multi-touchdown game of the season. Harvard's notes point out his 230 passing yards were 103 more than Princeton's entire passing output, 127. Then came a trick two-point play. With Harvard up 19-0 after quarterback Kise Flannerty found Teigan Pelletier for an 18-yard touchdown, wideout Nathan Bailey snapped the ball to Smith, who flipped it right back to Bailey for the two points. Somebody in that coaching room is having fun.
Pelletier had a game-high 53 receiving yards and has caught a touchdown in four of five games. Moe matched his career high with three catches for 53 yards, including an 18-yard touchdown that made it 28-7. Shoemaker has scored in three straight games.
And the defense finished it. Xaden Benson got after quarterback Ty Ciongoli and forced a fumble, the first forced fumble and first sack of his career. Dorsey Benefield scooped it up and went 32 yards for the score. Benefield also led the team with eight tackles. It was Harvard's first defensive touchdown of 2026. Princeton's only score came on an eight-yard Wyatt Becker pass to Aidan Besselman late in the third.
Harvard has now held two straight opponents to single digits, three times this season, and four teams to 10 points or fewer. Harvard Athletics lists the Crimson as one of three unbeaten teams in the FCS, with Stephen F. Austin and Tarleton State, and one of seven in all of Division I.
Next up is Dartmouth in Hanover on Friday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. on ESPNU.
My read: the Ivy title runs through Cambridge now, and Friday night in Hanover is where people find out if that's real. Dartmouth will be the best defense Smith has seen. If Harvard controls the clock like it did Saturday, I like the Crimson's chances.
