Thinking of the Cowboys' final play....
In 8th grade we ran basically this same thing with our stud running back who was 6-foot with a mustache and ran over all the 98-pound kids on the other team. He'd move to center, we'd put linemen out wide, a receiver to my left. We scored three times off it. Usually he'd snap it to me out of shotgun and I'd toss it to him and he'd score. I did one time hit our receiver on a little post pattern (not bad for someone known as a game manager). We ran it in a road game and an opposing parent started screaming at us and then stormed off.
That was a fun, if odd season. In another game an opposing linebacker kept taking late hits on our guys. He wore a red sweatshirt under his jersey and on the final play of the game a running back came in with a play call from the coach that included the line "get Red Man." I got the snap and handed it off to another RB. Meanwhile our giant back and another absolute monster, along with seven other guys, took off after the cheap-shot artist. They chased him for like 15 yards and our two maniacs then picked him up, bodyslammed him and the other kids jumped on top to get their blows in. They all got up hootin' and a hollerin' while the kid moaned and writhed in pain and parents from the other team stormed the field. The kid deserved a little frontier justice. On the team bus afterward the coach told us that if anyone asked, he didn't make that call. Very noble and Nixonian.
Anyway, thought of our center-eligible adventures the other day and when I saw the Cowboys in that formation I was absolutely delighted and said to myself, my god, this is going to work! It's gonna work! I, along with McCarthy, apparently forgot that NFL athletes and coaches are better prepared to stop a play than 13-year-old kids in rural Minnesota.
