Mouse Davis

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Darrel "Mouse" Davis (born September 6, 1932 in Palouse, WA) is a veteran football coach.

Davis has been head coach of the USFL's Denver Gold, the WLAF's New York/New Jersey Knights, the Arena Football League's Detroit Fury and Portland State University. He was also an assistant coach with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions and with the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League. While at Portland State from 1975 to 1980, and at each of his subsequent stops, he popularized the "Run & Shoot" offense.

Recently, Davis served as an assistant coach at the University of Hawai'i under June Jones. In February 2007, he returned to Portland State to serve as offensive coordinator on PSU head coach Jerry Glanville's staff.

Davis is the man who made the Run & Shoot offense famous, revolutionizing football back in the 1970s. At that time, he led a Portland State program that went 42-24 over six seasons, averaged 38 points and nearly 500 yards of offense per game. PSU led the nation in scoring three times. The unique passing game made stars out of Davis’ two main quarterbacks, June Jones and Neil Lomax.

After his previous coaching tenure at Portland State, Davis went on to coach at UC Berkeley, the Canadian Football League, the now-defunct USFL, the NFL and the Arena Football League. The past three seasons, Davis has been an assistant coach for Jones with the University of Hawai’i. The Warriors have employed the Run & Shoot to great success, averaging 559.2 yards of total offense, 46.9 points and producing a 10-3 record in 2006. Hawai’i led the nation in passing offense (441.3), total offense, scoring offense and pass efficiency (185.95).

Originally from the northwest, Davis claims Independence, Oregon as his hometown, and he is a 1955 graduate of Western Oregon University (then Oregon College of Education). Davis spent 15 seasons coaching high school football in Oregon, culminating in a 1973 state championship at Hillsboro High School. Davis also was head coach at Sunset (OR) and Milwaukie (OR) High Schools, building a combined 79-29 record among those three.

Mouse gained his nickname from older brother Don while a freshman shortstop on the Central High School team in Monmouth, OR. Despite his 4’10” stature at the time, Mouse already excelled at sports. He played quarterback and halfback on three straight championship teams from 1952-54 under Coach Bill McArthur at OCE (WOU). Davis also played basketball and baseball in college.

In developing his Run & Shoot offense, Davis espoused the theories of Middletown (Ohio) High School coach Glenn "Tiger" Ellison, who wrote the book Run & Shoot Football: Offense of the Future. Ellison was a mentor during Davis' tenure at Hillsboro High. Davis avidly read Ellison's manual, eventually modifying and polishing it into the "Run & Shoot" that has terrorized defenses, amassed yardage and scoring records and turned quarterbacks into supermen at every level of football.

In 1975, his quarterback, current UH head coach June Jones, threw for a Division II - record 3,518 yards. Davis' next quarterback, Neil Lomax, set NCAA records of 13,220 yards and 106 touchdowns in 42 games. Under Davis' direction, Portland State set 20 NCAA Division I-AA offensive records in addition to the Vikings being named the NCAA's all-time point producers in 1980, scoring 541 points in 11 games for 49.2 points per game, along with 434.9 yards passing and 504.3 yards of total offense per game.

Davis was an inaugural member of the Portland State Athletics Hall of Fame when he was inducted in 1997.