| Pistol Spread Option Offensive System
It has been an amazing thing to see the Pistol Offense take off! I still remember the first time that I saw the formation on TV. I was watching Boise State play Nevada, and I remember saying to myself, "What in the world is that? That may be the craziest formation I have ever seen." It was then that the wheels started turning and the Pistol Spread Option Offensive System was born. I had grown up as a Split Back Veer coach and was blessed enough to play in three State Championship games in high school as a player and we were able to win two of them. I obviously knew that the Split Back Veer Offense works and works well. However, upon getting my first head coaching job at the age of 24 back in 2000, my plans of running the split back veer came to an abrupt halt. Our offensive line didn't have a single player over 200 pounds, and only 1 of them had even played offensive line before. We tried to experiment with the Flexbone offense, and keep just one back in the backfield to spread out the defense. I found that being under center wasn't the best fit for us and I decided to move to the Shotgun Option Offense. At the time, the Shotgun Option Offense was being run by just a few teams at the college level and even fewer teams at the high school. While we found limited success with it, our running game left a lot to be desired. We were able to move the ball through the air, but struggled to move the ball on the ground. After seeing the University of Nevada run the pistol formation, it was a revelation for me. I could take my option running game that I had known and loved with plays like midline, inside veer, and trap, and incorporate the passing game that I had found success with while using the shotgun. I distinctly remember "Turkey Bowl" on Thanksgiving Day where several of my former high school friends gathered every year to play a game of pickup football. As the game drew to a close, I "encouraged" my friends to line up in the pistol and try and run some plays like Midline and Veer. I was QB, and luckily a lot of my friends had played High School football, so they were able to give me positive feedback. By the end of the day, the Pistol Spread Option Offensive System was born. The first chance I had to test the offense was at Leonardtown High School in Maryland. I had taken over a program that had struggled mightily in the past. The team had just 8 wins in the previous nine seasons. They had only 1 victory in the previous two seasons. To make matters worse, I was hired on July 31st and had to begin football practice on August 15th. I had to move from Michigan, assemble a staff, and teach the system to them very quickly. The Pistol Spread Option Offensive System was exactly the answer that we needed to allow us to have some success. In our first season, we went 3-7 and had the leading rusher in the conference. I knew right then and there that the PSO was a system that I wanted to develop. The system itself has changed quite a bit over the past 5 or 6 seasons. First, it was originally designed to be a hybrid between what the Naval Academy does and the Shotgun Spread Option offense. For the first few seasons it was. We effectively ran plays like veer, midline, trap, belly and quick toss. It wasn't until a few years later that I started to incorporate the inside zone scheme and the zone read. It didn't take long for me to realize that all of the plays that we had previously run we were able to now run using the zone read scheme. We now are almost exclusively a zone read team. Because it is so simple to teach and has so many options, we are able to focus more on our passing game. I feel that the Pistol Spread Option Offensive System now incorporates all of the best parts of the previous systems that I have run. We now break our offense down into 5 essential parts. We as coaches will evaluate the talent that we have and we will try to be very good at three of the 5 essential parts of the offense. The 5 essential pieces of the PSO are:
As a staff, we will evaluate the talent that we have returning, look at what the strengths of our QB, RB, Offensive Line, and Receivers are and we will try and focus on three of those areas to install. That doesn't mean that we won't use the other portions of the offense, it simply means that it will not be a main focus of the offense this season in practice. In conclusion, I feel that the Pistol Spread Option Offensive System is a system that is easy to implement, easy to teach and flexible enough to allow you to have many options on offense. The biggest strength of the system is the ability to make the plays that you run fit the personnel that you have without completely reinventing the wheel year to year. For more information on the Pistol Spread Option Offensive System, please visit our website at http://www.pistolspreadoption.com.
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Pistol Spread Option Offensive System