page_title: Blocking (American football)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Blocking (American football) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The flying wedge, from "Football - The American Intercollegiate Game", written by Parke H. Davis in 1911.
context_page_description: In American football, blocking or interference involves legal movements in which one player obstructs another player's path with their body. The purpose of blocking is to prevent defensive players from tackling the ball carrier, or to protect a quarterback who is attempting to pass, hand off or run the ball. Offensive linemen and fullbacks tend to do the most blocking, although wide receivers are often asked to help block on running plays and halfbacks may be asked to help block on passing plays, while tight ends perform pass blocking and run blocking if they are not running routes to receive passes. Overall, blocking is a skill that virtually every football player may be required to do at some point, even defensive players in the event of a turnover.
  Essentially, blocking is pushing, with certain restrictions; in blocking one may not grasp another player or do any sort of pulling, and the hands must not extend beyond the line of each armpit; otherwise a holding penalty will be assessed. Blocking is also not permitted beyond five yards from the line of scrimmage until the quarterback has handed off the ball to a runner or a receiver has touched the ball after it has been passed.
context_section_description: Interference remains strictly illegal in both rugby codes. The prohibition of interference in the rugby game stems from the game's strict enforcement of its offside rule, which prohibited any player on the team with possession of the ball to loiter between the ball and the goal. At first, American players would find creative ways of aiding the runner by pretending to accidentally knock into defenders trying to tackle the runner. Interference developed out of a practice called "guarding"; run by Princeton, wherein a player ran at each side of the runner, but not in advance.
  When Walter Camp witnessed this tactic being employed during a game he refereed between Harvard and Princeton in 1879, he was at first appalled, but the next year he had adopted the blocking tactics for his own team at Yale. During the 1880s and 1890s, teams developed increasingly complex blocking tactics including the interlocking interference technique known as the Flying wedge or "V-trick formation", which was first employed by Richard Hodge at Princeton in 1884 in a game against Penn, however, Princeton put the tactic aside for the next 4 years, only to revive it again in 1888 to combat the three-time All-American Yale guard Pudge Heffelfinger. Heffelfinger soon figured out how to break up the formation by leaping high in the air with his legs tucked under him, striking the V like a human cannonball.
  In 1892, during a game against Yale, Harvard fan and student Lorin F. Deland first introduced the flying wedge as a kickoff play. Two five man squads would line up about 25 yards behind the kicker, only to converge in a perfect flying wedge running downfield, where Harvard was able to trap the ball and hand it off to the speedy All-American Charley Brewer inside the wedge. Despite their effectiveness, the flying wedge, "V-trick formation" and other tactics which involved interlocking interference, were outlawed in 1905 through the efforts of the rule committee led by Parke H. Davis, because of its contribution to serious injury.  Non-interlocking interference remains a basic element of modern American football, with many complex schemes being developed and implemented over the years, including zone blocking and pass blocking.
  The current body block technique has been attributed to one of football history's greatest head coaches: Pop Warner. Prior to his early 1900s coaching at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, blocking was done using one's shoulders. It was Warner who implemented the technique of blocking being done by hands rather than shoulders.
caption: The flying wedge
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