Portal:American football/Selected article
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The run-and-shoot is an American football offensive scheme devised by Glenn Ellison for use on the secondary school level at Middletown High School in the eponymous Ohioan city, popularized on the collegiate level by University of Houston Cougars head coach Jack Pardee in the 1987, and ultimately introduced on the professional level in the Canadian Football League—in 1982 with the Toronto Argonauts—and the United States Football League—in 1984 with the Denver Gold—by Mouse Davis and in the National Football League (NFL) by Jerry Glanville in 1986 with the Houston Oilers. By the late 1990s, the run-and-shoot had been abandoned as a a principal offensive strategy on the collegiate and professional levels but continued as the philosophical basis for several common schemes.
The offense, named for its emphasis on passing and its predicating such passing on the motion and shifting of players parallel to and behind the line of scrimmage prior to the snap of the football by the center, employs multiple formations but most often comprises four wide receivers, five offensive linemen, one running back, and a quarterback (formation at left); neither a fullback nor a tight end is typically featured. The repeated mixing of strategies and the consistent movement of players serves commonly to permit a quarterback to discern in what alignment a defensive team intends to employ and subsequently to audible into plays that allow the exploitation of favorable player matchups and to spread a defensive team across the field in order that space might be accorded running backs who often seek to rush between guards in the middle of the field, as in a plunge or dive play.
The rapid and powerful nature of scoring under the run-and-shoot enables quarterbacks to compile copious passing yards and touchdowns and on the collegiate level was the primary offense practiced by B.J. Symons, the holder of the record for most passing yards by a player in a single National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I-A season, having tallied 5,833 yards whilst the starting quarterback for the Texas Tech University Red Raiders in 2003; Timmy Chang, the holder of the record for most passing yards by a player across his career, having tallied 17,072 whilst the starting quarterback for the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Warriors (styled until 2001 as the Rainbow Warriors between 2000 and 2003; and Andre Ware, under Pardee in 1989 the winner of the Heisman Memorial Trophy as the most outstanding player amongst those in the NCAA; and in the NFL by Warren Moon, pictured at right, with the Pardee-coached Oilers the honoree in 1990 by the United Press International and Associated Press (AP) as the offensive player of the year.
Because of its tendency to produce quick scoring drives and thus to oblige a team's defensive unit to return to play routinely and with little rest, its disfavoring by many running backs in view of its common forsaking of running—in view of which just three backs–Barry Sanders (Detroit Lions), Lorenzo White (Oilers), and Gary Brown (Oilers)–earned selection to the Pro Bowl whilst playing in a run-and-shoot system—and its complex requirement that a quarterback be able to discern with celerity the defensive formation he faces and to select and to direct a play to exploit such formation, the run-and-shoot was disfavored on the collegiate and professional levels in the mid-1990s during the ascendency of the West Coast offense but nevertheless served as the basis for several successful hybrid schemes, most prominently the redgun employed by head coach June Jones and Glanville with the Warriors, the fun 'n' gun employed by Steve Spurrier for the University of Florida Gators in the late 1990s—which scheme focused primarily on the varying of offensive plays and the pre-snap movement of players in order that defensive squads should be confused and the use of shotgun formations to accord quarterbacks more time to appreciate defensive formulations, and with which quarterback Danny Wuerffel led the side to the 1996 AP, USA Today/ESPN, and Football Writers Association of America national championships—the air raid practiced by Red Raiders head coach Mike Leach; and the spread option developed in 2001 by Urban Meyer, then of the Bowling Green State University Falcons, an amalgam of the West Coast, fun 'n' gun, and run-and-shoot systems that, though permitting the rushing of quarterbacks and running backs and occasionally including a fullback, emphasizes the pre-snap motion, use of players across the width of the field, and the read and react themes of the traditional run-and-shoot.
Read more about the run-and-shoot...
