Who invented the pistol offense

This gives Alabama the potential for a very big threat offensively: perfect run-pass balance. Why not use it? Breaking things down, Alabama has the perfect setup to run the Pistol offense to perfection. Offensive linemen Barrett Jones, D. Fluker and William Vlachos are experienced and show a great level of balance in run blocking and pass blocking skills, giving the Tide an edge in the trenches in a balanced Pistol offense. This will continue in years to come with upcomers such as Cyrus Kouandjio.

In the aerial attack, AJ McCarron is known especially for his deep ball, which works perfectly with the speed Alabama has at wide receiver, especially in youth such as Marvin Shinn and Danny Woodson, Jr.

When the deep ball is covered, McCarron can always go to the play action pass, which often uses crossing routes to big targets such as 6-foot-4, pound Duron Carter. To compliment the play action pass, Alabama will always have the running game, the traditional Alabama bread-and-butter with Trent Richardson, Eddie Lacy, Jalston Fowler and Dee Hart, when he returns from his knee injury.

Likewise, the pistol formation can also open up the offense to pullers and different option plays in a way that may be tougher to execute out of shotgun, where the running back's rush paths are tighter to the line of scrimmage.

Much like any traditional under-center offense, the pistol can be tweaked to 10 or 11 personnel as well as heavier 12, 21, and 22 personnel looks. It is as versatile as the offense wishes it to be. Over the past two games, Baltimore has become a pistol offense. Pro Football Reference credits the Ravens with offensive plays kneeldowns not included through the past two weeks, and I personally charted 60 of those plays as starting in the pistol formation.

The offense hardly ever went to pistol when Flacco was starting, but the pistol has more or less become the team's base offense with Jackson playing. Even when Jackson was only coming in for occasional package plays, the Ravens turned to the pistol.

The following table shows the personnel Baltimore has used in its pistol formations, broken down by runs and passes:. While at Louisville, Jackson operated a fair amount out of pistol looks.

Louisville was more of a 10 and 11 personnel squad, while Baltimore currently leans more on heavier formations, but many of the same philosophies and concepts apply either way. Adding familiarity for Jackson out of the pistol is a healthy change to Baltimore's offense. Among a handful of other concepts, arc read is a deadly rushing play out of the pistol.

Arc read is effectively a zone read play, but with split-action from a tight end or H-back, rather than traditional inside zone. Kaepernick's Nevada highlights are littered with shots of him keeping the ball on this concept and torching Mountain West defenses up and down the field.

Baltimore is in a two-back set with a single tight end on this play. The defensive end circled in orange is the read key for Jackson during the hand-off exchange. During the handoff exchange, the H-back lined up by Jackson's side will cross the formation and the read player's face, looping around the edge to meet the outside linebacker at the second level. Assuming Jackson makes the correct read and the H-back can get around the edge in time, Jackson should be sprung free out of this look.

Click here if you are having trouble loading the image. As designed, Jackson keeps the ball because the defensive end read key shuffles inside to defend the running back. Jackson is able to get to the edge and pick up 8 yards without even taking a hit. While arc read can be plenty effective out of shotgun, putting the running back farther away from the defensive end via alignment and path can coax the defender into following the back instead of playing the mesh point.

Later in the Cincinnati game, the Ravens doubled down on their heavy-personnel pistol formations with a "diamond" look in a third-and-short situation. Pistol diamond, or "full house," puts one running back behind the quarterback with two other running backs, tight ends, or H-backs on either side of him, creating the diamond alignment. This formation is specifically great in short-yardage situations because the abundance of players throughout the backfield presents the defense with a handful of potentially moving blockers and run gaps.

Again, the Ravens turn to arc read, but this time with an added blocker to the outside. The Pistol peaked in , Kaepernick's senior season, when the Wolf Pack rushed for In the process, Kaepernick joined Tim Tebow and Cam Newton as the only quarterbacks to throw and rush for 20 touchdowns in the same season.

Kaepernick was drafted in the second round of the NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers, and he largely remained on the sidelines until the latter half of this season. He entered the 49ers' starting lineup in November, throwing for 1, yards and 10 touchdowns while rushing for yards and three scores over the team's final eight games. I thought the play-action passing really helped with the read itself out of the pistol. I recognized most of it, and I'm sure they changed it to match their personnel, but it was fun to see the skeleton, anyway.

The Pistol reached a fever pitch on Saturday night after Kapernick set an NFL quarterback rushing record with yards and two touchdowns to go with completing of passes for yards with two more scores in San Francisco's NFC Divisional playoffs win over Green Bay. Ault retired from Nevada in late December, and, as stated above, teams across the country have reached out to Ault , asking how to implement, and slow down, the Pistol. We may never speak to the guy who invented the post route or called the first blitz, but we can talk to the man who held the first Pistol.

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