This film is in remarkably good shape and in color too!
One of the things I like about this film is that you can see the evolution of football before your eyses. Buffalo plays out of the T formation while the Yankees use the Single Wing. Both defenses use the five man line.
At about the 1:25 mark #76 Buddy Young (who was part of a discussion in Defenderdawg's Tuesday Reading thread yesterday) busts a long TD run after taking a lateral.
Yankees at Bills 1948 AAFC - (
New Window )
Noting that "guard" and "center" are now used to describe O-line positions, and even when there's an odd number of D-linemen, with a nose tackle over the ball, that player is never called a "center." Though according to at least one Wikipedia article he is sometimes called a "middle guard" or a "nose guard." By whom? Dunno.
Noting that "guard" and "center" are now used to describe O-line positions, and even when there's an odd number of D-linemen, with a nose tackle over the ball, that player is never called a "center." Though according to at least one Wikipedia article he is sometimes called a "middle guard" or a "nose guard." By whom? Dunno.
Middle guard, 2 tackles, 2 ends was the parlance of the times. :-)
Great as usual, Larry
The "center" was actually knows as the "pivot", and is lined up inside the tackle (either left or right depending on which side of the field the ball is set, the strenght of the formation was usually toward the middle of the field.
The two guards were then lined up off the pivot. The guard next to the pivot was the "inside guard" and the guard between him and the other tackle was the "outside guard."
Even in the early use of the T-formation with the balanced line, the center was still refered to as the pivot. It was probabl yin the mid 1950s when the t0Formation was used universally that the position became known as the center.
Randomly, two names in those earlier years pop into my head as regards the term, “Flanker.” Gifford and Pete Retzlaff.
The Browns just seem to be a step faster than the Yeankees on every snap of the ball, and Cleveland's defense was fantastic.
Schematically, the Browns were 25 years ahead of everybody else. Brown went way beyond the Halas T-formation in just 5 years and preceded what Bill Walsh would do by 2 generations (in football time, of course).
The men in motion, timing patterns, coordinated route concepts, center screens to the fullback (Motley was a terror on those) and Otto Graham was the perfect triggerman for this offense. Graham played both ways in the AAFC, but played offense only after the merger in 1950.
Brown also pioneered the middle lineback position with Bill Willis the middle guard, who he often had set up in a two-point stance over the center. Willis didn't set at full MLB depth so he wasn't a true MLB, but this is where it started. Halas caught on and did similar things with Bill George. In 1956 Tom Landry and Sam Huff perfected the idea and the 4-3 remains the base defense for most teams in pro ball over 60 years later.
Browns at Yankees 1947 AAFC Championship - ( New Window )
Wasn't the "Flanker" also called the "Wingback" and the
formation called the"Winged T", and in later years called the "Pro Set", at least by the announcers on the Radio and TV?
I remember watching that game on TV. Otto Graham passed the Yankees dizzy, throwing to Mac Speedie and Dante Lavelli.
The Browns just seem to be a step faster than the Yeankees on every snap of the ball, and Cleveland's defense was fantastic.
Schematically, the Browns were 25 years ahead of everybody else. Brown went way beyond the Halas T-formation in just 5 years and preceded what Bill Walsh would do by 2 generations (in football time, of course).
The men in motion, timing patterns, coordinated route concepts, center screens to the fullback (Motley was a terror on those) and Otto Graham was the perfect triggerman for this offense. Graham played both ways in the AAFC, but played offense only after the merger in 1950.
Brown also pioneered the middle lineback position with Bill Willis the middle guard, who he often had set up in a two-point stance over the center. Willis didn't set at full MLB depth so he wasn't a true MLB, but this is where it started. Halas caught on and did similar things with Bill George. In 1956 Tom Landry and Sam Huff perfected the idea and the 4-3 remains the base defense for most teams in pro ball over 60 years later. Browns at Yankees 1947 AAFC Championship - ( New Window )
Wasn't the "Flanker" also called the "Wingback" and the
formation called the"Winged T", and in later years called the "Pro Set", at least by the announcers on the Radio and TV?
No, they weren't he same. The wingback lined up right off the hip of the end. The double wing - where Sammy Baugh excelled with Washington - had one on each side.
Its true, if you split the wingback out he lines up esentially how the flanker does, but that's not how the evolution occurred. The flanker was one of the two halfbacks in the T-Formation.
Yes, the Wing-T was something of a hybrid of the two. The QB was under center and had a HB and FB behind him, and a wingback off the hip of the TE. In modern times, you could envision the H-Back as being analgous to the wingback in some sets.