Run-and-Shoot Finds a Place in the NFL

Mouse Davis, the short but potent guardian of the run-and-shoot offense, turned on his small-screen television Monday night to watch big-time critics rip his lifelong beliefs.

On the screen, retired quarterback Ron Jaworski and former New York Giants coach Allie Sherman trashed Davis’ run-and-shoot offense, saying that it had no place in the NFL. Davis, currently the quarterbacks and receivers coach with the Detroit Lions, rolled his eyes. He’s heard the same complaints too many times since installing the run-and-shoot into the Portland State offense in 1974.

“They were saying that the quarterback gets hit too much,” Davis said. “They were making such a big deal about it. So I watch Houston play the Buffalo Bills. Every time the Bills blitzed, Warren Moon completed a quick pass and didn’t get touched. Every time the Oilers blitzed, Jim Kelly went down. I wondered what they’ll dig up next.”

Houston’s 27-24 victory over the Bills Monday night marked another graduation of the unconventional offense the NFL refuses to accept. Moon passed for 300 yards, his eighth 300-yard game of the season. Halfback Lorenzo White rushed for 125 yards.

From high school to the Canadian Football League to upstart pro leagues to NFL prime time, the run-and-shoot refuses to die. Davis feels like Dr. Frankenstein telling the scientists that his monster is alive. It is alive, but the scientists demand more proof.

“They won’t want to look at the facts,” Davis said. “They just want to bitch about something.”

Sunday at 1 p.m. in the Kingdome and on Dec. 30 when the Lions pay a visit, the Seahawks will watch more of the run-and-shoot than they would care to see. To them, the run-and-shoot is scary. They believed in the concept enough to install it in their playbook. Now, their task is to try to stop it.

“Nobody’s stopped the Oilers yet,” Seahawks defensive coordinator Tom Catlin said. “I guess our goal is to make them punt one time and not let them get into the end zone. Against the Bills, they didn’t even have to punt.”

Oilers coach Jack Pardee doesn’t sugarcoat the run-and-shoot. He doesn’t call it the spread or the stretch or the red gun. To Pardee, it’s the run-and-shoot. It’s worked for him in the United States Football League, at the University of Houston and now with the Oilers.

“I’ve been doing this for eight or nine years,” Pardee said. “There’s a lot of criticism going around. It’s a good system. As a coach, you find players with enough ability to win with it. As a coach I wanted to move the football, but I’ve never been in the situation where I thought we could line up and dominate a team.”

So when he coached the USFL’s Houston Gamblers, he hired Davis to teach his team the run-and-shoot. For Davis, it gave him the forum to show pro fans that the four-receiver, wide-open format worked on levels higher than high school or college or the CFL.

In the past 20 years, Davis has heard all the complaints and the myths. The so-called geniuses first said the concept wasn’t sound. Later, they doubted it would work. Eventually, a few saw things in the offense that were appealing. Now, the majority fear it.

With Moon directing the Oilers’ run-and-shoot, the NFL record book will look as though it has been riddled by a machine gun. By season’s end, Moon should break all of Dan Marino’s season records for completions, attempts and yardage and throw for more 300-yard games than anyone ever imagined.

His four receivers -- dubbed the Fab Four -- already rank among the top nine in the AFC and should collect more than 300 passes as a quartet, another NFL record. More importantly to Davis and Pardee, the concept is winning games and supporters within the NFL establishment.

Each week, the run-and-shoot breaks records and myths.

“There are a lot of people who don’t want it to work,” said Oilers offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride, who’s also grown tired of the criticisms. “They keep saying the system doesn’t work.”

Folks, it works, and the Oilers are embarrassing defenses and dispelling those myths.

Each Sunday, Moon steps to the line of scrimmage feeling like a young lad in a candy store carrying a blank check.

“Teams have played so many looks against us, it actually takes a little while before you see everything a team wants to do against you,” Moon said. It takes you a couple series going into each game to see exactly want kind of package a team wants to play against you. You pretty much have to adjust on the run.”

As Moon adjust his sights, the NFL adjusts its stereotypical criticisms.

Myth 1: The run-and-shoot won’t work in NFL.

Pro Football Weekly rates the efficiency of NFL offenses. The Oilers are first. The Lions are second.

Look at the Oilers’ numbers as an example. They are averaging 379.5 yards and 23.2 points a game. They’ve converted 52.5 percent of their third downs. Each offensive play averages a 6.1 yards. That’s 1.3 yards per play better than the Seahawks. The Oilers are also averaging four plays a game more than the Seahawks.

Myth 2: Because run-and-shoot teams have no tight ends on their rosters, the offenses stall once they cross opponents’ 20-yard lines.

The Lions, despite having inferior quarterbacks and receivers, are converting 64 percent of their opportunities inside the 20 into touchdowns, one of the best ratios in the NFL. That deflates the argument used against the Oilers, who have converted only 47.5 percent of their scoring chances into touchdowns.

“We’ve had chances to score, but we’ve had dropped passes and fumbles,” Gilbride said. “It’s not a matter of the scheme being the problem. It’s execution. The No.1 problem has been the drops. We had two touchdowns dropped in a game against the Rams.”

The Oilers dropped 15 passes in an early-season game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the time, the Oilers were still learning new routes and Moon was adjusting to new reads.

“I don’t see any defense stopping us,” wide receiver Ernest Givins said. “At first, we were wondering if we were in the right area, and wondering if we were using the right techniques. Now we are starting to get great continuity and we are not seeing that many drops.”

Myth 3: There is no run in the run-and-shoot.

Lions halfback Barry Sanders led all NFC rushers with 1,470 yards in 1989, 10 yards behind Christian Okoye of the Kansas City Chiefs. He leads the NFC with 844 yards in 1990. When the Bills concentrated their defense on Houston’s Fab Four, White burned them on draw plays.

Myth 4: The Seahawks junked the run-and-shoot after one half of the Chicago Bears game because they didn’t think it would work.

Not true. The Seahawks found that they weren’t skilled enough or proficient enough to use it regularly. Now, they sprinkle in the run-and-shoot as a change-up.

“I’ve always thought it’s got a chance,” Seahawks offensive coordinator John Becker said. “There’s some guys who think it’s a passing fad and all that. It didn’t look like a passing fad to me the other night against the Bills. They lit it up against a real good football team.

“You spread people out and then you’ve got the skilled people that they have, I’ll tell you what, you create some real problems. We’ve used it really, really sparingly. Nobody ever promised how much we were going to us it. I don’t think it was given what you would consider an awesome look.”

With the Oilers, who use it all the time, it looks awesome.