The Foot-Ball Eleven.

The faults of most of the men who have played in the last three or four games are given below. Harding is slow in getting through the rush line, and if he would start quicker and slow up at the finish, he would do better. He ought to pay more attention to his game and not bother with the rusher opposite him quite so much. He tackles hard and low, and keeps his eyes open. On the whole he is about as good as any man in the rush line. Butler is slow in getting through. He runs hard and follows the ball well; but is apt to lose his head a little. Wood backs up well, and blocks and gets through fairly well, but he fumbles badly and tackles very high. Brooks understands the position of centre-rush, and runs his team well. His chief fault is that he relies too much on his strength, tackling high. Woodman is slow in getting through, and fails to follow the ball as a rule. He does not block well, but runs hard when he gets the ball. Remington breaks through well, and has shown more improvement of late than any man on the team, though he tackles high. Faulkner does not watch his end well; but he is quick in getting through, and tackles low. He follows the ball well, but in so doing leaves his end uncovered. Fletcher has a tendency to pick up the ball instead of dropping on it. He does not pass hard enough, and does not use his head in his own running. He keeps his eyes open, however, and watches his chances well. Porter has shown marked improvement in the last week, but he still fumbles badly. He likes to run when he ought to kick; and he never puts his men on side from a kick. Sears invariably runs into a crowd, and when a man starts to tackle him, he slows up to ward him off instead of keeping right along. He fumbles badly still, and gets rattled in a crisis. Peabody is rather slow in returning a kick; but he generally manages to get it back. He tackles low and very surely, and drops on the ball well.

Substitutes. Boyden is slow and cool. A crowd does not rattle him in the least. He is a fast runner, and dodges well; but he does not tackle in first-class shape. Bancroft is slow in getting through, and very apt to overrun his man when going down the field. He watches his end well, but plays too little as a part of the team, not following the ball enough. He tackles hard, but painfully high.

The team as a whole play with more snap than they did a little while ago, and some of the men follow the ball and back the others up pretty well; but they do not get through the rush line quick enough; and even when they do, they do not seem to know where to get to stop the opposing half-back from kicking the ball back. In the whole of the game against Andover, the Harvard rush line did not stop the halfbacks from kicking one single time after a down, a showing which, as they were playing against a lighter and weaker team, is very poor indeed. When our own half-backs kick the ball and the rush line can get down before the opposing half-back can catch the ball, they keep pretty well together; but when the kick has been a little too long they go straggling down the field at full speed, with the usual result that the other half-back dodges two or three of them and gets pretty well up the field again before he is stopped. Then everybody in the rush line, almost without exception, tackles too high, though there has been some improvement in this of late. The rush line drop on the ball better than they did, and have about got over their favorite trick of three weeks ago, of dropping with great force and style, only to find that the ball was no longer there, a practice which was amusing to the spectators; but rather demoralizing to anything like good work. Still, the one chief thing that the rush line needs to learn is how to tackle. It is a hard thing to learn, one of the hardest things to learn; but it must be learned if we are to make any showing against the other colleges.

The half-backs have a great fondness for letting the ball bounce before they catch it, instead of taking it on the fly, a proceeding which costs them much time and ground. They still fumble a great deal and do not judge a high punt well, especially if there is any wind. They are very leisurely about getting under way when they start to run, and they do not back up each other. None of the backs are remarkable for the accuracy of their drop kicks in a game; though Porter has once kicked a goal from the field. In spite of this pleasant reminiscence the fact still remains that we have no one in college who can kick as Watkinson of Yale can, or as Moffatt of Princeton, used to. Kicking goals from touchdowns is not our great point either, as yet; but that is an evil that time may remedy, and after all it is first necessary to get the touchdowns. The next game that our eleven plays is with Dartmouth, this coming Saturday, and it might prove an interesting experience for every reader of the CRIMSON to come out and see for himself the possible accuracy or inaccuracy of this report.