The Future is Here: The NFL and the Pistol Offense

[The Goat]

Originally Posted by Lotus

To repeat: the pistol is a formation, not a play. You can run the pistol without the QB's EVER keeping the ball.

When people talking about RGIII making good reads, as described above, they are talking about a play, the read option, not a formation. The read option can be run from formations other than the pistol. The read option and the pistol are not the same thing.

I cannot understand why this concept is so difficult to understand.

Wow, just wow. Do you have invented arguments with your walls at home too lol? Nobody, including me, ever implied the pistol is a play rather than a formation. The forest through the trees issue here is whether it can be an effective formation (run, pass, pitch, toss) without the threat of the QB keeping the ball X percent of plays per game. I'm far from the only person asking this question. The analyst discussions have gone something like this:

The pistol's effectiveness is based on 1) keeping the defense back on its heels trying to diagnose the play and 2) quicker development. If Seattle's corners can effectively crash from the outside to stop major gains on the keeps, then we're limited to pass, hand-off, or pitch in a loaded backfield. The defense already has the luxury of stacking the box, and now we're seeing defenses come with heavy blitzes too. You've seen this on a few occasions where RG looks to pass out of the pistol. Unless he finds a target immediately open the pocket collapses around him. When he was in top form he could often escape and even turn it into a positive gain. Last week was a different story. He took a sack out of the pistol while trying to pass, and on another play like it near the goal line he got hurried and threw into coverage, luckily avoiding an INT. Passing out of pistol hasn't looked terribly effective to you, has it?

So again, there's absolutely no confusion what the pistol is. There's a debate whether it can be an effective formation if the defense finds a way to shut down RG on X number of designed keeps. It should be obvious that you give up a lot with the pistol. It forces you by its nature to load up the backfield, and therefor keeps you from putting more than two receivers out wide. Some d coordinators, to be sure, will see this as an opportunity. To highlight this, offenses who've had success with the pistol (Washington, Seattle, and SanFran to a lesser extent) have very mobile QBs who, once again, keep the ball X number of times. The Steelers on the other hand didn't find much success with it, though they tried using it to cover Ben's immobility when he played with injury.

It is why, IMO, we don't see, and won't see, elite pocket passers like Manning and Brady use it beyond a gimmick set, if at all.