The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-09-02
IMPROVED FOOTBALL Play
OFFENSIVE TACTICS TO COPE WITH
STRONG DEFENSE WILL
BE TRIED
TEAMS EVENLY BALANCED
Ways, Means and Formations to De-
velOp Attack fas an Offset to
the Strong Resist
ance.

AOP AtCack as an unset to
the Strong Resist
ance.
Confronting the various coaches and
captains of the leading football teams,
and to greater extent than ever the
coming fall, will be the problem of
trying to develop an attack adequate t.
cope with the resistance which will be
encountered. This state of affairs Is the
result of the Improvement in football,
ana to that extent speaks well for the
progress that has been made in the great
autumn pastime. 1t is not so many
years ago, the New York Times says,
that the offensive side Of football was
much stronger relatively than the de-
fensive. Big scores were more frequent
few years ago than now, and among
teams supposed to be fairly evenly
matched it was no infrequent sight to
see a. team retain possession of the ball
for what would now be considered very
long periods.
In other words, a characteristic of the
game few years ago was the superior
1ty of the offensive to the defensive
game. The problem to a large extent
then was to devise ways, means and
formations to stop attack, whereas now
adays coaches are busy devising attack
ing formations strong enough to g5t
through the strong defenses that have
peen developed by the leading teams.
Teams have changed on the gridiron.
A prominent football coach said the
other day that the reason why greater
relative Improvement in defense than Of
fense argued more of an Improvement
in the game than would be were the
reverse the case was because it is harder
to teach team defense than offense If
seems entirely reasonable that this should
be So The team having the ball
conducting the atIack-knows what the
next move Will be, and the defending
team does not. Therefore when teams
get SO that they can stop plays as
successfully as generally is the case
nowadays, it is obvious that the game
has improved The football coach refer
red to, who was Frank Butterwerth. one
Of Yale's best Undertaking backs drew
a comparison between football and war
to illustrate his point.
WAR AND FOOTBALL COMPARED.
Improvement has been made in modes
Of warfare he said, land most of this
Improvement has been made in the de-
fensive side of war. l should say by all
means, that the defensive side of foot
ball has improved more than the often
sive, and the game itself has improved
in proportion
1t argues well for quickwittedness on
the football field that the offensive form
a tons have been stopped as well as they
have been. Some of these formations
have been stopped without damage to
l1c1
which they never were encountered be-
fore. In 1893, at Springfield, the. Harvard
team ''spI aug' flying tandem forma-
ton on Yale, and Yet was unable to cross
Yale's goal line in that game. Yale had
a move somewhat similar, and so may
have had some. experience in preparing
for it on the defensive. But whether or
not either team had an mixing that the
other was to use the formation didn't
amount tosshucks as asserting plaXrzanl
Yale made the only score of he game
by straight stereotypetl line buckin~.
But not all formations for attack have
been stopped so easily. The famous
guards back attack of Pennsylvania was
good for not only one game, but for sew
eral seasons 1t knocked the spots out
of all defense for several seasons, and
probably was the most lucrative point
producing formation ever conceived; yet
1t saw it's finish. The Quakers have e!ung
faithfully to the guards back, but in
the opinion of many students of the game
they chung to it after it had exhausted
its usefulness.
Plenty of other eases can be cited
showing how defense in football has more
than kept pace with the offensive depart
ment of the game. The Yale Princeton
In 1896 Princeton had a revolving play,
with compact interference which fairly
smothered the Yale defense. and was the
means of administering to Yale the worst
beating the Blue ever had cause to
mourn The score was "a to 6. 1t looked
like moral certainty that Prime tor,
with the same array of material that she
had the year before would wallop the
Yale eleven in 1897. The Tigers went, up
to New Haven with the same formidable
attack, and supposedly with it developed
to the same degree OF excellence. The
game was PLAYED, and Princeton never
came close toEaYale's goal line The
Ellis had been laying for the formation
that crushed them the year before. and this
time they stopped 1t in its tracks. Yale
won that game by a score cf 70 O. and
the only material gains that Princeton
made were due largely to the great indi
vidual line-smashiug prowess of, Half
back Kelly.
THE INDIANS WING SHIFT.
Those who saw the wing shift de-
vised by Pop Warner. the coach of the
Carlisle team, and tried for the first time
by the red men against Columbia last
year. wondered how anybody could stop
It The Indians beat Columbia by an
overwhelming score on that occa sion,
making frequent use of the sh TT for.na-
ton. Much comment was made on the
play at the time, buteit wasn't heard of
afterward True. the Indians did not
have much chance to use it after that
FOR their season was nearly over. but
they played the University of California
tes m on Christmas day and failed to cross
Califoraias goal line. They won the
game, but only by a score of . 70 0. the
Westerners making a safety Strong as
was The attacking power Of the Indians
it accomplished practically nothing when
pitted against a team worthy of Carlisle's
steel and not worn out by hard cam
paigning, as was the case with Columbia
1t goes to show that IN football, rs now
played, between two f1rst-class teams
the question has come to be, not how to
keep the other side from gaining ground
but how to gain ground.
1t IS an oper question whether team
ever took the field that had both its Of
Tense and defcnses tuned up to such a y
tent state of efficiency as the Harvard
team of 1898. The Crimson eleven that
year was worked up to a condition of
smooth and powerful excellence that
probably came nearer to the ideal COM
binatfon of attack and repulse than am
eleven ever has Shown. Yet 1t is a cues