This is an excerpt from the book, The Shotgun and the Modern Short Punt, by Lou Howard.

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In his book, I Pass, Y.A. Tittle discusses the first time on November 22, 1960 when he and his fellow San Francisco 49ers squad members heard about Coach “Red” Hickey’s intention to move away from their standard T-formation and use a direct snap offense against the World Champion Baltimore Colts and Johnny Unitas.

Y.A. goes on to tell the reason that Hickey called the team together on the practice field at Georgetown University that day. Hickey extracted a few sheets of paper from his jacket and announced, “gentlemen, we have worked out a “new offensive” pattern. We are going to beat the Colts with it”. The offense he discussed at that time is illustrated here.

Coach Red Hickey’s Shotgun Formation

As it turns out in the foregoing two statements, one was absolutely true and the other was absolutely false. On November 26, 1960, the San Francisco team did beat the world champion Colts by a score of 30 to 22 in one of the biggest upsets of the 1960 season. The 49ers went on unbelievably, to win three of the last four games.

The false part of the statement was that the offense was anything but new. Again back to Y.A. Tittle’s book, I Pass , Yalburton has this to say and I quote, “ by the time we got to California to play the Rams, the so called Shotgun Formation was the talk of the football world. The newspapers took over. They ran diagrams of Hickey’s offense. They called it a revolutionary form of attack. Of course, it was not new. Many teams had put the quarterback in a Short Punt Formation before, but Hickey’s version apparently caught everyone’s fancy. It was an overnight sensation. **

Of course it was a joy for me to read the foregoing paragraph because it gave rise to a point I would like to expand upon later in this segment. Tittle agrees that the Short Punt, which by the way goes back to World War I…. was involved in Hickey’s and his staff’s thinking.

As a further substantiation of quarterback Tittle’s observation anything but new, I would like to call your attention to a “blurb” that appeared in the Pro Football Hall Of Fame News Release : NFL Greatest Moments of the 1960s

“Although it is used today by nearly every team in the National Football League, the popular Shotgun formation is nothing new. The San Francisco 49ers head coach Red Hickey unveiled a version of the now popular formation in 1960. However Coach Hickey’s Shotgun was really just a new version of an old formation. Coaches likened it to Pop Warner’s double wing that was introduced at Stanford some 30 years earlier or the Short Punt formation that had been used by numerous teams through the ‘20s and ’30 and in some cases dating as far back as World War I times”.

“Now Here’s the Rest of the Story”

I believe we have all heard Paul Harvey, the famous radio and TV commentator make that comment. I hope he will permit me to repeat it once again. Here is why I make that observation.

After I had written about Y.A. Tittle’s recollections of Red Hickey’s comments to the team before the Baltimore game in November of 1960. At about 9:00 P.M. on a Sunday evening I had completed the finishing touches on quarterback Tittle’s account.(see p.6) I received a telephone call from Ed Racely who was summering on Cape Cod. **

I often referred to Ed in my writings because he is an old friend and considered the nation’s leading historian on the single wing and the direct pass offense.

After listening to the information that Mr. Racely had for me….my mind raced back to the comment by Paul Harvey. …..Now here’s the rest of the story. Racely read to me a portion of a newspaper article written by Dan Fitch, on November 1, 1998, in the sports section of the Santa Cruz County Sentinel. It was immediately evident to me that Red Hickey was still alive (which I didn’t know) and living in Santa Cruz, California.

To ensure accuracy of Mr. Fitch’s material, I am going to report the following information directly from this article.

“……it is history in the San Francisco 49ers media guide. It is a paragraph synopsis for the 1990 season. Howard W. (Red) Hickey saved a seemingly hopeless season when he installed his shotgun attack and the club captured four of its last 5 games including a 30-22 upset to Baltimore.

Red Hickey remembers it well. It was in his second season as San Francisco 49ers head coach. The team was 4-4 coming off a win over Dallas. Looming ahead on the road was powerful Baltimore. Hickey was desperate.
He had time to think on the train ride from Dallas to Baltimore. He sat with a fountain pen and a piece of paper and “diddled and fooled around” trying to come up with something to confuse the Colts.

Somewhere between Texas and Maryland, it came to him. Problem was he had to sell it to the other coaches and players.
“I got the coaches together and asked for a show of hands”, Hickey said. “I asked can we beat this team with the offense we have. And no hands went up”.
He explained the formation he wanted to try. It spread the backs and receivers and most notably dropped the quarterback three yards behind the center. The rest of the coaching staff was under whelmed.

“They started to laugh”, Hickey said. “There was a lot of giggling when I put it on the board”. Someone said “well that’s unusual .

On the first-play from scrimmage in Baltimore, quarterback John Brodie; hit RC Owens for 20 yards. The 49ers scored 30 points on a championship defense using the spread offense. Two weeks later they beat the same club at Kezar Stadium 34-10, before 57,269 fans. The team scored 346 points in the course of the 14 game season, it’s most since 1953. The end of Mr. Fitch’s article.

I believe the reader will agree, that the offense reported by Y.A. Tittle and his observations were correct. He probably could not have known at that time the information that Fitch reported about, an incident that had happened some 30 years previous.

After winning three of the final four games in 1960, San Francisco continued in their winning ways in 1961 when they were able to obtain the services of the first team All-American, Billy Kilmer of UCLA, where he had starred in the single wing. Kilmer’s passing and running ability were a perfect fit as he joined the other two pro quarterbacks, John Brodie and Bob Waters. Y.A. Tittle was gone, having been traded to the New York Giants.

The trio jumped off to a sprinting start with the Shotgun posting a 49-0 score against Detroit and 35-0 win over the Los Angeles Rams. The final curtain came down on the San Francisco’s Shotgun the following week however.