“You’re dead right,” agreed Sid Creel. “They’ve got it all over us on team-play. They move like a regular machine. Those end-runs of theirs are the slickest things I’ve seen in an age, and if we don’t find some way of stopping them we’ll get licked as sure as shooting!”
“There’s just one way to stop them,” said Toby. “That’s to play our ends further out and bring a back into the line.”
“Then they’d cut inside the end,” said Sid. “That’s old-stuff, sonny. Pull the opposing end out and then shoot the plays inside him.”
“But with a half-back there——”
“The trouble is,” said Beech, “you can’t guess when they’re coming. Half a dozen times I doped it out that they were going to smash the line and they just fooled me. There’s nothing to give you a hint. I could see Tom Fanning getting goggle-eyed trying to size up what was coming. Usually there’s something to give the snap away: a back drops a foot or two further back or to one side, or he faces a bit the way the play’s going without meaning to, or you get a hint from the signal. But these chaps are foxy.”
“I don’t believe they’ve got anything on us as far as their line goes,” said Sid.
“The only thing they’ve got on us is smoother playing,” declared Beech. “They’re playing end-of-season football and we’re playing what we’ve learned and no more.”
“Well, how do they get that way?” growled Sid.
“They go at it harder, I guess. They tell me that that coach of theirs gets ten thousand a year.”
“Ten thousand dollars!” ejaculated Toby.