A Lesson In Football

During the course of his daily post-practice discussion with the press, Art Valpey took time out to give a brief demonstration of the tremendous variety in results which can grow out of a single operation.

The guinea pig he used was a single play of the Dartmouth football team. The movements of the backs are given in the black-bordered portion of the diagram below, and it may be noted that their actions in the five variations of the play are identical in each case for the major part of the play.

They All Start the Same

In the basic pattern, the right halfback plunges into the center of the line, the fullback and the left half sweep wide to the left, and the T quarterback runs almost straight back for seven or eight yards.

On variation one (upper left) the quarterback hands the ball off directly to the right half, and then fakes to the fullback (the black line indicates the path of the ball). On variation two, he fakes to the right half and actually gives to the fullback circling left.

On variation three (lower left) he fakes to both the right half and the fullback, continues veering back and to the left and finally whirls-around to throw a pass. The last two plays everybody should remember. Quarterback Clayton faked again to both backs, clapped the ball on his hip and galloped around end on a bootleg play, provided the defensive halfbacks didn't rush.

If they did rush, he adopted variation number five, a pass to the receivers the halfbacks had to leave in order to rush the passer. Which just goes to show why coaches get gray, and why grandstand quarterbacks are so often wrong.