When I was trying to open up the Multi-Bone Offense in 1984, The Run & Shoot was flourishing . So I studied the father of the Run & Shoot, Tiger Ellison. This is an excerpt from “Tony DeMeo’s Triple Gun Offense: An Evolution of Option Football” explaining howTiger Ellison’s ideas. & concepts were adopted by The Multi-Bone which evolved into The Triple Gun. Here’s the story…

Studying a Tiger

In 1965, a high school coach from Ohio wrote a book about how he took a moribund High School football team and turned into a football power. That coach’s name was Tiger Ellison, and his innovative offense was called “The Run and Shoot”. Tiger’s offense was flourishing in the 80s, popularized by Mouse Davis, John Jenkins, and Jack Pardee. It was a faced paced, wide open, high scoring, pass first offense that was fun to watch. So, what brought me to study The Run and Shoot Offense?

Widener University and the Run and Shoot

Well it just so happens that our best opponent in the school’s brief history had been running Bill Manlove’s version of the Run & Shoot Offense. So the first thing I did was buy Tiger’s book and find out what it was about. I really liked some of the concepts and felt Tiger’s ideas fit in with my philosophy of Strategic Flexibility. I also looked into the other coaches that were running and shooting at the same time.

How to Defend the Run and Shoot

The best way I found to defend the Run and Shoot was to keep it on the sidelines. We had to control the clock on offense and play scorched earth on defense. The other thing I noticed was that we could pressure their 6-man protection with our 50 Defense IF they didn’t know which 6
were rushing. Plus, we had D.E.s that were very fast. (One was a legit 4.6 in the 40 at 240 lbs.). Our Defense worked perfectly! Widener went 88 yards on their 1st drive to take a 7-0 lead. Fortunately, we did slow things down and with the score knotted at 7-7 going into the 4th Quarter, we got into the 2 Tight End Wishbone and had the ball for 11 minutes to pull out a 17-7 upset.

I got a note from one of my mentors, Jimmy V congratulating me on the “W”. Little did he know how much he played a part in it. By the way in 1983, Jimmy V had taken underdogs North Carolina St. to the National Championship over The University of Houston 54-52 with a buzzer-beater by Lorenzo Charles. (“The only lead that matters is the one at end of the game” – Jimmy V)

Adding Some Run and Shoot Ideas to The Multi-Bone

We felt we could add some ideas to our existing Quick Game and Sprint Game. I did not want to add more protections. We did add 2 semi-new formations: Twins, which we had used but now we were going to use 3 Wide Receivers and only one back in the backfield and Trips which was the same formation except the Slot would SHIFT to Trips.  This would tip us off on how the defense was going to adjust to a Trips set. Also, we
could run The Triple back away from the shift or throw the Quick Game.

Needless to say The Run & Shoot Concepts added explosiveness to an option attack.

 Tony DeMeo’s Triple Gun Offense: An Evolution of Option Football is available in Paperback at Amazon .

https://amzn.to/3YIKFJ9

This video explains it further :