I don't know if line coaches still refer to offensive lines opening holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through or to players who are built like Mack trucks, but they did in my day.
The offensive line cliche of “opening holes big enough to drive a _____ through” goes back to at least the 1890s and might be worth its own tidbit post if you haven’t done one on that topic before. I spent a little bit of time on that last year and found these two examples.
A November 25, 1899 Minneapolis Tribune article on a local high school football game that said one school’s left tackle “opened up holes…through which a train of cars could have passed.”
After Texas beat Texas A&M on Thanksgiving Day in 1907, the Fort Worth Telegram said that UT’s offensive tackles Bob Ramsdell and L.H. Feldhake “made holes in the [A&M] line thru which wagons could have driven.” I don’t know if Ramsdell ever saw that article but he would have appreciated that line because when he was a teenager his family had moved by wagon from Salado, Texas to the town of Alvin 200 miles away, a trip which took them two weeks. Ramsdell’s brother Fred Ramsdell was a Walter Camp All-American halfback at Penn in 1910.
The offensive line cliche of “opening holes big enough to drive a _____ through” goes back to at least the 1890s and might be worth its own tidbit post if you haven’t done one on that topic before. I spent a little bit of time on that last year and found these two examples.
A November 25, 1899 Minneapolis Tribune article on a local high school football game that said one school’s left tackle “opened up holes…through which a train of cars could have passed.”
After Texas beat Texas A&M on Thanksgiving Day in 1907, the Fort Worth Telegram said that UT’s offensive tackles Bob Ramsdell and L.H. Feldhake “made holes in the [A&M] line thru which wagons could have driven.” I don’t know if Ramsdell ever saw that article but he would have appreciated that line because when he was a teenager his family had moved by wagon from Salado, Texas to the town of Alvin 200 miles away, a trip which took them two weeks. Ramsdell’s brother Fred Ramsdell was a Walter Camp All-American halfback at Penn in 1910.
That's some great stuff, and I need to read to read your Substack. You might enjoy three other articles:
https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/a-word-on-football-three-yards-and
https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/sorry-penn-state-texas-invented-the-whiteout
https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/missouris-unauthorized-trip-to-play-the-first-football-games-in-mexico