One From the Vault: Restart the Revolution by Joseph Mellor

The article below is one I found on the internet years ago, saved on my computer, lost, and recently found again.  It doesn't appear to be available online anymore, so as a service to the internet football community, I'm reprinting it here.  Joseph Mellor, whoever you are, if you don't want your work on my site just let me know and I'll take it down.


The main thesis of the essay is that the Run and Shoot Offense, particularly at the NFL level, was unfairly maligned by casual fans and lazy reporters, and remains a devastating scheme that should be given another chance.  Mellor backs this argument up with convincing enough logic and facts, but near the end of the article he answers his own question of why the Run and Shoot died out: it didn't.  Its principles have been incorporated, Borg-like, into every NFL offense today.  Like the timing routes of the West Coast Offense or the zone run game of Alex Gibbs and the Redskins, once the effectiveness of the Run and Shoot's self-adapting routes had been demonstrated, every team in the league copied them.  No NFL team runs the "pure" Run and Shoot offense of Mouse Davis anymore, and even June Jones, now head coach at SMU, has adapted his offense to base out of the shotgun and use less motion than he used as a player at Portland State or as the coach of the Falcons.  But remnants of the scheme certainly live on in almost any modern passing offense, and the "pure" offense still has a dedicated following as a High School offense.

Reminder: NFL (and College) Overtime is Still Not "Fair"

I don't mind tie games. If two teams are evenly matched and play equally well, a tie is the logical way for a game to end (outside of elimination games, of course).  Ties also make for more interesting playoff races as more teams remain in playoff contention later into the season.  Most football fans, however, disagree with me, and see ties as unsatisfying cop-outs that should be quarantined in the world of soccer.  Overtime reliably serves to break a tie, but it has to be designed carefully or it may reward the wrong things.  In football today, no level of football can claim an overtime system that is totally "fair," but there are fair alternatives to the current systems.