NEW HAVEN — And so we come around to where this “annus horribilis” started for Yale’s football team a year ago with what was the worst loss to Harvard in New Haven since these ancient rivals first had at each other in 1875.

Since then, coach Tom Williams resigned under pressure after falsely claiming that he’d been a Rhodes Scholar candidate. Will McHale had his captaincy revoked after a May altercation with a fellow student in a campus bar. Chris Smith and Deon Randall, the two best receivers, were unavailable. Three quarterbacks were hurt against Penn in the program’s most Pyrrhic victory in memory. Tyler Varga, a Canadian transfer who’d essentially become a one-man offense, had to sit out the Dartmouth game while his eligibility was being confirmed, and he missed last week’s Princeton game with a bruised knee.