The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1916-10-18
TUFTS TEAM WINS
TACTICAL SUPREMACY
Description of Two Plays Worked to
Good Advantage This Season, Pass
ing Play and Whelan Shift.

Colgate brought its remarkable
spread formation to West Point last
October and whipped the Army, says
Daniel in the New York Sun. Two
weeks later it took the spread along to
New Haven and trounced Yale That
creation of Larry Bankarts was the
biggest football play of the year and
forced the mystifying shift that Har-
ward flashed in the final moments of
the Princeton game to take second
place. Colgate's play has already
made its presence felt this season
much to the discontinue of Illinois last
Saturday.
Now comes Tufts with a couple of
plays with which it has earned the
tactical supremacy so far this season.
One of the plays is established on
sound principles and may well be cop
led by the bigger elevens. The other
is somewhat Eighty and risky play
that may work only once in 20 tries.
However, it did work against Harvard
and anything that can accomplish a
victory such as Tufts scored over the
Crimson bears looking into.
One of the Tufts masterpieces is a
shift patterned very much after the
Minnesota variety imported into New
Haven by the late Tom Shevlin. The
other is combination forward and
lateral or backward pass. It was that
pass which whipped Harvard Tufts
tried it against Princeton but it failed
to give satisfaction. It is Of interest
to note that the Tufts plays are the
creations of DIR. c. f. Whelan, who,
like Bankart, was star at Dartmouth.
The Whelan shift is rather compli-
Gated affair, founded on the guards and
tackles back principle. The eleven
lines up with the ends and the center
on the line of scrimmage and the
guards and tackles about ward behind.
About four yards outside and back of
the ends are the halfbacks They stand
parallel with the side lines and face
each other. The quarterback shifts
about behind the pivot man and some
thing like ten yards behind the center
is the fullback.
Then the play gets into motion. just
as the ball is about to be snapped the
guards and tackles hop up, the half
/ backs cross over and the quarterhack
sort of gets lost in the shuttle, making
splendid cover for the ball. The adj
vantages of the play are manifest
that IS if it works 1t is pretty sure
to 90 at least twice before the other
fellows get the hang of the shift
The best part of the play is the fast
charge the rush line gets. The forwards
are very likely to travel right through
the enemy. which is too taken up in
the diagnosis of the play, to pay proper
attention to the physical side of the
defence. The shift made Harvard look
foolish on more than one occasion. 1t
may sound complicated, but it s a hum
mer.
The passing play is Of the very haz-
ardous variety. 1t calls for combina-
ton of two distinct plays each of
which in itself is difficult enough to
make some teams use il only as a last
resort. The play is started with a reg
ulation forward pasS-either the long
pass out to the ends or the short pass
over the line. The man catching the
pass does not run. All he has to do is
! to make a lateral or backward pass TO
the other side OF the line Very simple.
that, ism t it,