The Big Green Blues

Lured away by the prospect of seeing an epic gridiron struggle and by a desire to find out what the Yale team looks like under fire, Time Out took a journey to New Haven on Saturday. The epic struggle was there alright and Yale with littler Albie Both in the Starring role looked pretty fine under fire; so the trip was a success.

The game was a fight from beginning to end with either team lucky to come out on top. Marsters had what have properly been called five of football's greatest minutes and the "alert atom" of the New Haven outfit put on such an exhibition of clever running as has rarely been seen. The little Eli star is the niftiest player you ever hope to see on a football field. When tackled he lands as lightly as a feather, and quite as often as not he would skip over the sidelines just in time to leave a big Indian defender foolishly sprawling on the turf. Harvard can well star preparing to meet Al bio before it is too late!

Power on the Ground

The Yale scheme of offense is based on powerful line play pure and simple. There is very little attempt at deception and the overhead department is the customary Eli flop. But the line play is plenty good enough to make the straight running attack dangerous any where and any time.

The regular running formation is an unbalanced line, usually leaving only one man on the short side, with the quarterback back in receiving position. On practically every play he actually receives the ball, though on a great many he does not rush. One of the favorite plays from this position found one of the interfering halfbacks receiving the ball from the quarterback on a simple crossbuck and diving into the strong side of the line. The play wasn't as a rule very effective against Dartmouth but it affords a contrast to the usual straight run and might be a real weapon if used at less frequent intervals. With Booth at quarterback, however, the chief ground gaining plays found him doing the carrying behind a devastating line drive. Time and again he would fake the crossbuck and then turning ahead march through large openings in the Dartmouth forward wall before meeting the slightly flatfooted secondary. Or again he would waltz of tackle and gingerly dodge his way to open or near open territory.

The center of the Eli line was doing a beautiful job all afternoon just where the Harvard line had failed most conspicuously. It will be a sad story for the Crimson on the afternoon of November 23 if the line doesn't stiffen up, for getting Booth in an open field is some different from stopping him on the line of scrimmage.

On the defense the Blue was using an eight man line a great part of the time and it proved to be an effective method of checking the Marsters runs. Poor Al only shook himself loose on about three occasions all afternoon. But this form of defense proved to be pretty poor protection against a careful forward passing attack as put on by Marsters and company in the third period. If Harvard can continue to improve overhead it certainly should have enough opportunity to capitalize on its skill. TIME OUT