Today's Tidbit... The Flying Wedge and Horse's Neck

Lorin Deland, a Bostonian and student of military tactics, borrowed from military tacticians of the late 1800s by creating football plays using miniature figures set up on a tabletop football field. One output of his tabletop generalship was the Flying Wedge, which remains among the game’s most famous designed plays. Harvard sprung the Flying Wedge on Yale when they kicked off to start the second half of their game in 1892.

Harvard had run many inside wedges from scrimmage during the game’s first half, but the Flying Wedge brought real momentum to the game. At the time, the norm was for teams to retain possession when kicking off. Like today’s soccer teams which open the half with one player kicking the ball to a teammate, football halves of old opened with the kicker dribbling the ball a few inches, picking it up, and tossing it to a teammate who ran with it.

Harvard's Flying Wedge expanded on that approach by aligning two groups of five players behind and to either side of the kicker. On signal, they ran toward the kicker, who dribbled the ball, picked it up, and gave it to a teammate who ran behind the wedge running full speed toward Yale.