This ain’t your Mouse’s Run and Shoot

I’d like to take this opportunity to take a look at a lesser known variation of the run and shoot.

Hemlock, another contributor on this site, has fantastic insight into the Mouse/Jenkins/Jones version of the Run and Shoot that found it’s way into the NFL level in the early 90’s. The origins of that version of Run and Shoot, however, not only looked different in terms of plays and philosophy of attack, but also had a lesser known evolutionary branch that was basically limited to the Midwest United States, especially Indiana.

Glenn “Tiger” Ellison’s book should be required reading for all coaches, if for nothing else then the beginnings of the book where he talks about how he came to develop (truly create) an offense. More importantly, it details how his “coaching epiphany” allowed him to break out of the monotony of the generic offense and football philosophy which surrounded him.

(For the purists, forgive my shortened paraphrase)

Ellison was a coach at Middletown High School in Ohio, and it 1958 he found himself staring down a 1-4 record. Like Ohio State, under the guidance of Woody Hayes at the time, most high school teams relied on the “3 yards and a cloud of dust” approach. When things weren’t working, the players and coaches simply had to try harder. As Ellison noted, the idea was if the coaching staff and the 11 offensive players poured every ounce of themselves into the play, they could WILL themselves to at least 3 yards. This is a great thought. However, when you fail (and in competitive sport, there is always a loser), your failure is attributed to either your laziness, your inability to motivate, or both.

Ellison, like many football coaches, found himself putting more pressure on his staff, who put more pressure on the players, who in turn saw their execution and confidence falter.

It was during a trip to the park, probably to wonder about his job security, that Ellison had his epiphany. There, a group of kids were playing a pickup game of 2-hand touch football. Ellison watched as the QB, throwing on the run, would release the football to a receiver breaking toward grass. There was no diagram, no play call to follow, just “run out there and get open”.

I’d like to take a timeout to talk about Bob Gibson. Yeah, I know, way out of left field (no pun intended), but please bear with me.

In 1968, Bob Gibson had an ERA of 1.12, which is a record for the live ball era, and was just off the MLB record of .96 set during the dead ball era. Gibson was so dominant that after the 1968 season, MLB lowered the pitcher’s mound from 15 to 10 inches to give hitters a fighting chance.

During one game in the 68’ season, Bob gave up a single to the opposing pitcher, who was a notoriously bad batter. When asked by a reporter how he managed a hit off baseball’s most dominant hurler, the pitcher replied: “I closed my eyes, and I swung like hell!”

That, is exactly what Ellison started to do with his team at Middletown.

From the micro-managing, ultra-conservative, fist pounding coach came this new philosophy:

1.) Go reckless!

2.) Stay loose!

3.) Score now!

Practices became laid back. If it wasn’t fun, why were we doing it? Instead of detailing the quarterback’s mechanics and the receiver’s route stem and break, the coaching point became “you run out there, he’ll get open, and you throw it”.

Ellison spent the rest of that year operating out of the lonesome polecat, winning his remaining games. The following season, he add a little more systemization and developed a double wide, double slot set that is so recognizable as “Run and Shoot” today. It is important to realize that while he did add some structure to his offense, he now approached his problems from a pragmatic point of view, rather than a tacit, “this is the way we’ve always done it”/”everyone else does it this way” approach. The greatest minds in any field think this way. Anyway, he went on to be wildly successful, and even became an assistant for Woody Hayes at Ohio State.

Another quick aside: One of Ellison’s most prolific passing concepts was “Gangster”, which began by motioning into trips (which started the idea of using motion to identify coverage). Gangster was the grandfather of our modern day Go route, and basically looked like a flood route with the “deep out” guy simply finding grass.

The quarterback would roll right with the FB blocking and throw on the run. Ellison also gave his quarterback the unheard of freedom to roll the opposite way whenever he felt like it to throw what was essentially the choice route. Very cool.

Two coaches picked up on the basic structure and philosophy of Ellison. The first one you all know about. The second was a head coach at small private school in southern Indiana called Franklin College. His name was Stewart “Red” Faught. Facing limited scholarships, limited staff, and limited, well, just about everything else, Coach Faught knew trying to win the old way would not work. He needed an edge, and he found it in the animal Ellison created.

The main difference between Mouse’s version and Red’s version of the run and shoot lay not only in route structure, but in the philosophy of attack. Make no mistake, Red was shocking the folks in Indiana with how much he was throwing the football. Coach Faught said when the quarterback got off the bus he wanted the ball in the air until he got back on. One of my favorite Redism is: “Balance?! Hell, pass!”

However, Red’s version did include some wing-T run game elements whose primary function was to set up one of the most devastating Play Action Passing and Play Action Screen games ever devised. More than once, I’ve heard coaches who really knew him say he ran just enough for you to believe the play fakes.

Red’s run game included some base inside runs, and as expected, the draw. Later on, Red would become the offensive coordinator at Georgetown College (which, despite the fact they had several more scholarships, Red held a winning record against while at Franklin) and he added some triple option, setting the foundation for Georgetown to win the 2000 and 2001 NAIA national championship.

For the purposes of this article, I want to focus on his sweep and trap series. For those versed in the “fun” terminology that Ellison created, that would be “Texas” and “Popcorn”.

One of the improvements Red made to the run and shoot was use of Rocket Sweep. Ellison’s version utilized a orbit sweep with the FB leading off the edge. As early as the 1970’s Franklin College was running the Rocket, and few teams could keep up. Anyone who hasn’t checked out Ted Seay’s Wild Bunch manual needs to do so right now for the best explanation I’ve heard for the power of the Rocket Sweep.

While not from the same formation, this is the best diagram of Rocket Sweep I could find on Google…..and I did spend over 30 seconds looking.

The slot, sent in deep motion, should be behind the FB when the ball is snapped. The QB reverses out and pitches. The slot should catch the ball just as he is breaking the tackle box. Because they will never make a play, every down lineman inside a 5 technique can be left unblocked (many times, the 5 tech can’t make a play either and can be ignored), allowing offensive linemen to scramble to the second and third level.

The sweet part of rocket how it demands that the defense move pre-snap, because after we snap the ball you will be out of position. Obviously, like any sweep, you stop the Rocket by keeping contain and making the runner cut back into the defensive pursuit. It is the pursuit that sets up the constraint play known as “Popcorn” (trap).

Before we get into trap let’s examine a current trend in the NFL. Pre-inside zone, any team worth their salt stopped trap. Trap, power and power sweep were the basis of the NFL run game. Then, people started to pass and utilize area blocking. The demands on an Over Front 3 technique started to shift into a more penetrating, rush the passer, split the zone double type of player. The Warren Sapp’s of the world became gold. In the last few years, however, you can see a cyclical return to the use of trap as a constraint play, and NFL teams are garnering big yards. The Rocket Sweep and the roll-out pass game Red utilized lends itself to horizontal and vertical DL movement, and the trap take perfect advantage.

Again, bear with the diagram.

The left slot goes in Rocket motion to the right, and the QB opens up to his left (which is the same as if he were reversing out to pitch the sweep), and hands to the FB running trap to the right.

As we mentioned, this little series had the power to make defenses worry about the width of the field, and then make them pay when they rallied too strongly to the sweep. The real beauty, and what Red loved to do, was the Play Action Passes and Screens off this action.

To wrap up this article, we will look at Red’s best play action pass (Popcorn Pass), and then some of the screens he would throw off it.

Rocket motion, fake the trap, and boot to the smash route. Very much like an inverted Buck waggle. This was a simple play, yet with defensive secondary concerned with filling the alley on Rocket, it was a highly productive part of the playbook.

Another important difference between Mouse and Red was in protection. On Popcorn Pass, 7 blockers stayed in. Red also had an 8-man protection call “Everybody Block” (love it). With the ability to utilize more than just the 6-man protection Mouse and his heirs utilize, Red was not merely providing more protection for his quarterback, he was preparing to ATTACK the blitz.

The Superback screen in Mouse’s version of the run and shoot is deadly. One of those ‘just when you think you have everything covered’ type of plays. Everything looks like roll-out (60/61 protection), and then the OL releases up field and the FB curls around for the dump off screen. It is just so easy to discount a skill player staying in to pass protect.

That’s right, I went there……

What Red added was the ability to manufacture multiple screen looks (off roll and play action), using multiple screen men (FB and slots), while keeping it simple with one screen scheme (the OL just had ‘screen left’ and ‘screen right’). Again, it is so easy to ignore an offensive skill player tied up in protection, especially with so many moving pieces (rocket, trap, play action pass) going on around you.

In the Popcorn Pass diagram, you can see how easy it would be to slip screen the FB to the left, and also how easy it would be to slip screen the slot who stayed in to block to the right. Some of the biggest gainers in Franklin College history have come off simple dump offs to a screen man with a wall of undersized, but willing to cut block their grandmother down, offensive linemen in front.

I’m not advocating one style of run and shoot over the other. However, I cut my teeth on Red’s run and shoot attack; the offense and the man holds a special place in my heart.

Red Faught passed away during my sophomore season at Franklin College. I, along with 90 other players, attended his funeral in our game jerseys….each of us also wore a plain red baseball cap. Red always wore one on the sidelines, despite the fact Franklin’s school colors are blue and gold (I loved that about him). Obviously, that is why people called him “Red”. I had the pleasure of speaking to him a few times, and that philosophy to “go reckless and stay loose” (which Ellison coined and Red so ardently advocated) applies as much to football as it does life.

“Balance?! Hell, pass!”

Right on Coach Faught, right on.

Match Zone or Match Man: An Alternative Perspective

Hopefully, this will jumpstart me a bit so that I can start fulfilling my obligations to this blog again.

Recently, on this site, as well as on others, the term “match zone” has gained a great deal of currency. There is good reason for this: without question, match zone is the defensive technique in pass coverage that is currently most in vogue throughout all levels of advanced football. No doubt because of the pioneering advances made by Nick Saban, Gary Patterson, and a few others in diagnosing the pattern combinations and route distributions that are the hallmark of every sophisticated passing game, match zone techniques and coverage concepts serve as the foundation of virtually every defensive structure. In a sense, match zone has breathed new life into the 1-Hi looks that for a while looked incapable of handling the vertical threats posed by today’s spread offenses. However, in another sense, and I will be the first to admit that I may be completely wrong here, match zone may simply be today’s Tampa 2, another knot in the tactical and strategic evolution of defensive football.

This will be short piece, and much to my chagrin, one bereft of the ever useful power-point diagrams of my colleagues on this site. My goal in writing is to play a little bit of devil’s advocate, to point out what I view as some structural deficiencies that undergird match zone concepts, and in so doing, suggest that perhaps the old way of defending space is not as antiquated and insufficient as the prevailing defensive orthodoxy of today seems to suggest.

Let’s begin by boiling away the fat of match zone. In layman’s terms, what is match zone? At its core, match zone is a man/quarters concept predicated on upon a 3 on 3 triangle with a linebacker. Now, if we pause to think about it for a second it is not difficult to see from what match zone as both a concept and technique and concept evolved, and here, I’m not simply repeating Brophy’s citation of Saban’s remarks on its historical evolution dating from his days with the Cleveland Browns. Match zone evolved out of the Banjo bracket concepts that dominated college football throughout most of the 1990s. I coached in the then Big 8 when Kansas State was making its rise in football and very well remember the aggressive Banjo concepts they used in the their under-coverage as a way of bracketing and walling off the shallow routes that were then gaining in popularity amongst college offenses. And I think we all know that Banjo is essentially a man technique played within a defined zone: defender plays his man until said man leaves his zone and is then passed off to the adjacent defender.

Match zone builds on banjo by adding a number of additional elements into the mix, the most important two being a hyper-developed concept of pattern reading, or pattern matching to be precise, and the RAT, about whom I will write in a future post. For now, I will focus primarily on pattern matching. I use the term “matching” and not “reading” here not simply to reinforce Saban’s language, but because pattern matching and pattern reading are not interchangeable concepts. To match a pattern, it is necessary to first read the pattern. A defender matches an offensive players route when he diagnoses his intention; he’s then matched on him in what amounts to man-to-man coverage. This here is what I see as the rub about the very term “match zone,” for it’s really a misleading coinage, because what it is in reality is not match zone, but really match-man. What distinguishes match-zone from pure man is the way in which “matching” as a technique is integrated within the schematic structure of the defense as a whole. This is where the pattern reading aspect of match zone comes into play, the aspect that enables it to diagnose threats and cover them not simply with a lone defender, as in pure man, but in coordinated collaboration with another defender whose action’s are predicated upon his ability to read, diagnose, and match the pattern in question.

Now, I think it should be pretty clear where I’m going with this. Because defenders are taught to match the route of the receiver they by default become chasers. In other words, when defenders match a route they are in effect chasing it; defenders thus are not covering space, but rather receivers. This is why I prefer the term match man to that of match zone. The term zone implies space and area; match zone teams do not cover space, but people.

Why am I making a big deal about this? I’m harping on this because I believe that there are some profound structural issues with this concept as a whole, especially versus spread offenses. The first problem should be self evident. Since everybody is chasing in match zone the concept is suspect versus any team that has a QB that can run. A good friend of mine who coached for a long time in the Big 12, a predominantly match zone conference, told me that if Vince Young played today he’d run for over 2,000 yards. I have no reason to doubt him. With the exception of Robert Griffin at Baylor the Big 12 today is quarterbacked by kids who can chuck the ball, but who are not much of a threat with their legs. Today, if I were still coaching, I’d be tempted versus a heavy match zone team to line up in Empty a lot and run a great deal of QB draw, as well as motion a back into the backfield from Empty in order to run zone read, and later Jet.

Another problem with Match Zone is its lack of physicality. How is it possible to blast a receiver if you’re always chasing him?

Now, I’m aware that the RAT, to a degree, functions as the punisher in most match concepts, but RAT is only one player and thus one that can be identified and schemed around. I know this sounds counterintuitive, man teams are rarely ones that punish receivers on a routine basis. Here, I’m drawing on my friends insights regarding the 2006 Colorado defense. CU was a 2 shell team that played a lot of quarters, 2, and Tampa 2. They did nothing fancy except squeeze down zones and tackle extremely well. All one needs to do is to watch their tape against Texas Tech and Kansas. Versus both teams, CU aligned in some type of a two shell or four across look and pretty spot dropped the entire game. What made their spot dropping effective, as opposed to, let’s say, what VaTech did versus Boise State earlier this year, was that CU’s people were dropping and reading at the same time; in a word, they a had a keen sense of what was developing behind them.

I will conclude my remarks with some words as to how I, as Run-N-Shoot guy, would treat match zone. To be totally honest with you, I would rather face a match zone team as a Run-N-Shoot coach than a pattern reading – spot drop team (more on this formulation in my next post). Why? Pure and simple: match zone teams, especially those that are heavy fire zone ones, by and large, always end up, regardless of shell, in a 1 Hi look. I can thus tell my people to disregard the other 6 generic shells we use to categorize coverage and instruct them to focus their attention on attacking the technique of the defender charged with matching them. So, for all intent purposes, match zone takes the thinking out of things for my receivers because for as far as they’re concerned all they’re facing is man.

What is interesting about this, historically speaking, is the fact that match zone as a both a technique and concept reinforces something that John Jenkins spoke about frequently during his days with the USFL Gamblers and later with the Houston Cougars: all zone coverage eventually becomes man at some point or another. Jenkins remark was particularly on point for his own offense, because the Run-N-Shoot is a vertical stem offense, especially his variation of it. Even back in the 1990s Jenkins was teaching his receivers, regardless of coverage, to attack the individual technique of the man against whom they were stemming their route; he was less concerned with the overall scheme of a coverage than with the individual technique of a defender. The explicit goal of every receiver, even versus soft looks was to collapse the cushion and the force the defender to play man. In a way, match zone does this, but in a more economically effective way; for, the receiver does not even have to collapse the technique in order to get the match man technique he desires.

Building a Better Mouse Trap (1a)

Given my writing schedule, rather than writing long posts, I am instead going to offer up shorter ones that will address a specific point of a larger topic. In the end, this may take a little longer, but the content will be the same.

In my last post I talked bit about the origins of the Run-n-Shoot under Tiger Ellison. Some people clearly took umbrage with some of my remarks, perhaps feeling that I was dismissing his work. Not so. Ellison was an innovator and we have much to be grateful to him for.

Ellison laid the foundations for what Mouse developed; his base packages, such as Gangster, Wagontrain, and Popcorn are all present in Mouse's stuff. This serves as a nice segue into what I want to talk about: How Mouse built a better mouse trap and the anxiety of influence.

Structurally, Mouse preserved the basics of what Tiger created. His version of the Run-n-Shoot from the very beginning was one predicated upon operating solely within a four wide environment. He would also make use of moving pocket; like Tiger's, Mouse's QBs would not thrown from vertical axis. But here is where Mouse started to modify or reign in some of what Tiger did. Tiger's QBs utilized a hard role. The side of the field they worked was clearly defined based direction of their role and the QB was ALWAYS a real threat to run the ball. Tiger wanted his QBs to throw downhill off the roll. Mouse did not exactly jettison this; the Go route, arguably the most famous concept of the offense, is a downhill concept that is most effective when the QB attacks the line of scrimmage, thus putting the invert player in a three way bind between the seam, angle, and QB. More on the Go later and its more limited uses today. The Go was great in the early days of the offense because most defenses operated some type of 3 shell with sky rotation. But Mouse recognized that you could not build an effective passing offense around a concept whose very strength eliminated 3/4 of the field. Mouse's solution was to control the QB's steps by numbering them and thus calibrating them loosely to QBs progression. The QB thus was still utilizing a mobile launch point, but one that enabled him to pull up under control behind the tackle, work the back side, and take better advantage of how the role moved the FS out of position. This today is still a reason why the offense has yet to take out the angle drop of the QB; defenders still tend to angle their drops with the QB thus taking themselves, even if ever so slightly, out of position.

Mouse's most important "reform" was arguably his most ironic one. By this I mean the one that seemingly contradicts the base principles of the offense itself. Mouse added structure to the offense; he defined the goals of each concept, and created a structure within which the concepts operated. Think of it in terms of poetry. We all have rhythm; it is the feel of the poem. This is what Tiger had with his stuff; what he did not have, however, was meter. Mouse gave the Run-n-Shoot a meter that structured the rhythm of the offense. Put differently, but defining each concept, Mouse expanded their creative potential. This is the hallmark of great verse. Great verse has the ability to create anew within established structures. Great poets, or writers, thinkers, and football coaches for that matter, are ones that have the ability to overcome the influence of their predecessors not simply by miming them or rejecting them but engaging directly with their creation and overcoming it through their own work, which in fact is creative criticism of their predecessors. This is what Mouse did.

Next time I will explore the mechanics of Mouse's offense.

Oh, and speaking of influence, John Jenkins followed Mouse's path in this regard. He did not just copy Mouse, but engaged with his work directly and in the end put forth an offense that was substantially different.

BEGINNINGS (1)

I want to start my treatment of the Run-N-Shoot by discussing the offense's diachronic (read: historical) development. (Please pardon some of my jargon. Much of my academic research focuses on historical writing as a type of literary event, thus I loath how "history" as a term is conventionally used) Here, in Part I of this section, I will talk a bit about Tiger Ellison's version of the offense. My purpose in doing so is not to provide an in depth account of his offense, but rather to demonstrate why it is really no longer relevant to the Run-N-Shoot as it is currently employed at the major college level.

Without question, Tiger Ellison's Run-n-Shoot was an innovative and dynamic offensive system, especially for its time (although, in some ways, especially in terms of innovation, I would say that what Dutch Meyer did was perhaps even more so). Tiger's version of the offense is predicated upon a four hot environment. And yes, much like what Mouse would later do, Tiger's offense utilized option routes that he packaged into series that would in time provide a very rough template of sorts for Mouse's system. Tiger also used motion, but not really as a means of decoding coverage, but rather because so much of what he created derived from the Wing-T. In many ways, if we were today to compare Tiger's Shoot to one of Tubby Raymond's later Wing-T teams we would find the resemblances striking. The reason for this is that Tiger still wanted to run the football, just not into an 8 man front. He also wanted take full advantage of the misdirection potential that his double-wing formation afforded him, something that Mouse would use only as a way of controlling the edge and preventing a hard end from crashing his protection from the backside.

Tiger's version of the Run-N-Shoot is still an effective offense at certain levels. In this regard, his offense really is like the Wing-T, an offense that is still very effective at the high school and small college level, but whose trap and cross buck run game is no longer feasible at the higher levels due not only to increased speed, but schematic evolution as well.

Clearly, some Run-N-Shoot purists will not be happy with these comments; especially my equating Tiger's offense to the Wing T. But I wish to stress that these comments are not intended to be dismissive; rather, they are simply predicated upon a close analysis of the deep grammar of Tiger's system.

Tomorrow night I will discuss how Mouse modified Tiger's basic structures and how in so doing he laid the foundation for the modern Run-N-Shoot offense.

Forthcoming Run-N-Shoot Series

Much to my chagrin I've been mostly silent since joining this blog. This is about to change. Starting sometime next week I will begin a series that I suspect will run for about six months or so on the Run-N-Shoot offense. The Run-N-Shoot has been around for a long time, but it's still one of the least understood offenses in football today. There is a certain mystery that to this day enshrouds the offense. The one thing that is certain is that it remains a source of anxiety within the football community. Defensive coordinators from time to time will dismiss the offense publicly, but if you speak to them privately they will tell you that the Run-N-Shoot unnerves them to the same extent that the triple option does. By the same token, the Run-N-Shoot is also a source of anxiety for those coaches who wish to practice it, that is, those who are enamored by the offense, but still cannot find the will to commit to it all the way.

I've been around the Run-N-Shoot in one form or another for about 20 years. I learned the offense from its founding architects and I now believe the time is right to share what I know.

As suggested above, this series will be extensive. I will treat the following topics in detail:

1. Origins and Evolution
2. Problems and Responses
3. The Culture of the Run-N-Shoot
4. Structural Mechanics
5. Teaching Route Coversions Today
6. Protection
7. Route Concepts
a. Streak
b. Read
c. Switch
d. Divide
e. Rails
f. Banjo
g. Go
h. Slide
i. Choice
j. Hook
k.Side
l. Levels
m. Quicks and Adaptations

8. Screens
9. Run Game

Each topic will be treated globally as a concept; individual plays will be discussed only within the context of specific examples.

10. Conclusions: Dealing with Challenges and Problems.