Word: fullback
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Winning touchdown of his argument is an amazing parallel between Montgomery's victory at El Alamein and a "fullback counter" run from Shaughnessy's T formation (see cut). The tactics are almost identical...
...Korps faced each other as on a line of scrimmage. Montgomery had the ball. His right halfback (44th Division) started the play by faking to the left and drawing off the defense. His left half (50th Division) took a fake from the quarterback, then plunged through center. Meanwhile, the fullback (United Kingdom's armored division) had started to the left. Quickly he doubled back, took the ball from the quarterback (51st Highlanders) and sliced through the right side of his line, between the defensive left and tackle. His guard (9th Australians) blocked the defensive halfback and a historic advance...
...fullback is the key man in this system, handling the ball more than any other player. On most plays from this hybrid T, the pigskin comes first to him, since he is the middle man in the line-up of backs, whereupon he turns and fakes or passes the ball to someone before going about his business, whatever it may happen...
Harvard's offense generally looks like straight stuff--ordinary power plays from a slightly different formation, with very little razzle-dazzle. That takes too much practice, and it used to take a fullback a good three years to become a master of the faking on which the deception depends. But aside from this, there is at-least one trick that looks pretty spectacular even without much practice...
...team lines up in, say, a single wing to the right with line unbalanced to the right. Then people start wandering all over the place, with the fullback spinning just to make it a little more complicated, and to and behold, there is a single-wing to the left, with line likewise. In the meantime, the chances are 100 to 1 that one of the defensive linemen has crossed the line of scrimmage and then comes the horn and five yards. It never misses, although people swear up and down that it's not intended to draw offsides. Just happens...