Following the season, Fielding Yost conducted a study that narrowed the death total to thirty -one player who had been reported dead was surprised to learn of his dire state- but with thirty football deaths, some things had to go, and the wedge was among them.Īlong with other safety-related rule changes, the 1932 rules indirectly limited the wedge by requiring return teams to position at least five players between ten and fifteen yards from the spot of the kick. In 1931, however, the nation's newspaper reported that the number of football deaths that year had spiked to fifty, including a West Point player who died from an injury suffered in kick coverage. Return teams still positioned players close to the returners to form a wall of blockers without interlocked arms. While the 1910 rule eliminated interlocked arms everywhere on the field, it did not stop blockers from forming a wedge or phalanx on kick returns. This version of the flying wedge also led to many injuries, so when the rule-makers passed several safety-oriented rules in 1910, they banned players on the team possessing that ball from pushing or pulling the runner or interlocking arms. Post-kick, they gathered2 in front of the return man, linked arms, and ran forward in a wedge.
Those rules ended the kicking team’s use of the flying wedge, but receiving teams began using the wedge by positioning blockers near the 20- or 30-yard lines. One required the kicker to send the ball at least ten yards downfield, and the other made it illegal for more than three players on the team possessing the ball to mass more than five yards behind where the ball was put in play. Since the flying wedge led to more injuries than even 1890s footballers could justify, it led to two rule changes in 1894. ('Supreme Football Strategies, Discussed by Master Coaches,' Kansas City Star, November 22, 1924.) The illustration of the flying wedge is based on an interview with Percy Haughton, whose face accompanies the illustration.
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