Running a sweep after faking a dive into a wedge may not seem ingenious nowadays, but it was a novel idea then. Instead, it was in the hands of the left tackle (2), Upton, who swept around the right end for a 23-yard gain. Frank Hinkey, Yale's aggressive four-time All-American end, flew inside to stop the wedge, only to find the fullback did not have the ball. On second down, Harvard lined up in the same formation and faked to the fullback running into the wedge once again. Harvard lined up as shown on first down, snapped the ball to the QB (8), who tossed it to the fullback (10), who ran into the wedge over the right tackle (6), gaining five yards. Ignore the movement of the left tackle (2) for now because he stayed in the line and blocked in the version of the series they ran on first down. ('Sports Of The Season,' Hartford Courant, October 16, 1893) 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. Harvard's Flying Wedge expanded on that approach by aligning two groups of five players behind and to either side of the kicker. 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. At the time, the norm was for teams to retain possession when kicking off. Harvard had run many inside wedges from scrimmage during the game’s first half, but the Flying Wedge brought real momentum to the game. Harvard sprung the Flying Wedge on Yale when they kicked off to start the second half of their game in 1892. One output of his tabletop generalship was the Flying Wedge, which remains among the game’s most famous designed plays. 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.
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