Football analysis and strategy from Chris B. Brown
New Grantland: June Jones’s Retirement, and the Lasting Influence (and Possible End) of the Run-and-Shoot
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New Grantland: June Jones’s Retirement, and the Lasting Influence (and Possible End) of the Run-and-Shoot
It’s now up over at Grantland: Yet Jones’s most important contribution to football will be his association with the run-and-shoot. It was an offense he first encountered as a record-breaking quarterback at Portland State while playing for Darell “Mouse” Davis. The run-and-shoot was developed by Glenn “Tiger” Ellison.2 Sometime in the mid-1950s, Ellison stopped to watch…
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Louisiana-Monroe’s Two-Quarterback Zone-Read System
It’s not your father’s two-quarterback system. In their wild 47-45 shootout loss to Baylor, ULM brought out a rarely seen wrinkle, a two-quarterback zone-read-esque system. ULM coach Todd Berry put both of his quarterbacks in the game and had his right hander take the snap and flow to the right while his left hander take…
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Run and Shoot in Action: Mouse Davis Passing Game Cut-Ups
The Run and Shoot remains one of the most powerful offenses ever invented, and is well worth studying: The above clips show some of the key concepts in the ‘Shoot, versus various coverages. I have a chapter in The Essential Smart Football on how teams have assimilated run and shoot concepts to today’s game. In…
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Washington State’s Spring Game: The Return of the Pirate
Spring games typically don’t make for very compelling watching, but anytime you have a new coaching staff, the interest is heightened somewhat because it’s the first and often only glimpse at how the new staff’s schemes will mesh with the existing talent. And of course I’ve been looking forward to the return of Mike Leach…
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Noel Mazzone’s Offensive Philosophy and Inside Zone with Built In Quick Screens
Good stuff from former NC State, New York Jets and Arizona State assistant and current UCLA offensive coordinator, Noel Mazzone. Particularly good stuff on practice philosophy and how to have base plays and how to solve problems (i.e. with constraint plays). Says he goes into a game with no more than about 32-35 plays, total.…
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The Most Important Game in the History of the Spread Offense, and its Legacy
The 2000s were undoubtedly the decade of the spread offense. We’re still feeling the reverberations of the tectonic shifts; what began in backwater practice fields, the synthesis of old ideas with new ones, is now omnipresent — overexposed, quite possibly — on most levels of football, and even the NFL is now beginning to adapt.…
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Q&A on Holgorsen’s West Virginia “Airraid”
It’s up over at the great Clemson blog, ShakintheSouthland, in anticipation of the Orange Bowl between Clemson and West Virginia. One clarification: In the Q&A I say I “agree” with Holgorsen’s preference for fullbacks over tight-ends. It should say that I “disagree”:
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Combining quick passes and a shovel pass or shovel screen
I recently discussed the evolution in combined or “packaged” plays, which involve combining quick passes, run plays, and screens to best take advantage of what ever evolving defenses throw at offenses. Since describing the concept, I’ve seen an increasing number of NFL teams use it, including the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets,…
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Quadruple option: Zone read with multiple pass options
Awhile back I talked about the potential for a “quadruple option,” where a zone-read or other spread option run was married with a two man pass concept. The idea was essentially an extension of the traditional base run packaged with a bootleg pass, just combined into one play. There are obviously issues with keeping linemen…
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Run and Shoot “Go” Concept
The Run and Shoot is one of my favorite offenses, and I’ve long believed that it still has a lot to teach us, even if it was supposedly “discredited” or is defunct. It’s foundational play was and remains the “Go” concept, which I’ve previously described: [“Go”] is a “trips” formation play — in the ‘shoot,…