Sidelines
HIS, ladies and gentlemen, is the run-and-shoot offense. Rolovich finds perfection
We'd thought we'd seen it before last night, but those were only fakes, name-brand knockoffs, pale imitations. This is what it is supposed to look like, with a quarterback dropping back to pick and choose, play pitch and catch, the defense at his mercy, against the big kid at recess. Will he slice up the middle? Go deep down the sideline? To the back in the flat? There's a weakness somewhere, and somewhere, he'll find it.
"Well, historically, this offense has always moved the football like this," June Jones said.
Historically, yes. But there it was, last night, the real run-and-shoot. Rolo feeling it, Rolo dancing in the pocket, hugging linemen after completed passes, striding 76 yards to the goal line to celebrate his last touchdown to Ashley Lelie, his final, triumphant, last play of the game.
"I thought that this game was really the first game that he really saw everything from the beginning to the end," said Jones.
It was. This is what it looks like, and 38,000 of us got to watch it happen.
What must a defense think, facing this stuff, frozen in its backpedal?
"I know people in Hawaii have never seen this before," the coach said.
June Jones had been forced to get by before with tough guys, leaders, winner-types, Dan Robinson, Nick Rolovich, while the guy who was going to put it all together waited to put it all together. Jones won with guys who were willing to take hit after hit while heaving so many passes that a few would connect, and a few of those would connect for touchdowns and a lot of yardage. They got the job done, but perfection would wait. It was crude, but it worked.
We hadn't really seen Jones' baby in its purest form, run to textbook precision, not in a state of offensive nirvana. And even as this year's wins piled up, it looked like we'd have to wait again.
But a funny thing happened along the way. Rolo got it. It all dawned on him in a delirious, delicious, record-setting night. He got it, and he showed us the run-and-shoot.
"That's what this offense is like," said Robinson, now an assistant coach. "It hits you and you say, 'Oh, my heaven, this is incredible.'"
Have you ever felt what it's like to be in a zone? Hit all the green lights, swooshed every scratch paper into the rubbish can, eaten an entire pizza by yourself?
"It's a great feeling when it clicks," Robinson said.
This was the first half. Rolo was signing autographs at intermission. This was the entire game. Everything worked, all of it, everything. This was the run-and-shoot. Welcome home, Mr. Rolovich.
"He really has come into his own," Jones said. "He reminds me a lot of some guys that I've coached -- there's Warren Moon and Jim Kelly -- who took them a little while to get going, but once they get going, he's got all the instincts and a lot of intangible things. And I'm very happy for him."
When it all dawns on the right guy, it's nearly impossible to stop. It turns out Rolo was the right guy. So this is what Jones had been telling us about all along.
Happy for him. That's a great way to put it.
For the critics of the run-and-shoot comes this bit of brilliant strategy. Jones is so smart he gets the other team to run the clock out for him. With long, time-consuming drives, Air Force was sealing its own fate, as effective as if it were UH doing the driving, moving the chains. The seconds ticked the same either way.
This was the other side of the coin, a team that ran brilliantly, but not quite good enough and not nearly fast enough. Air Force was so hard-headed that it refused to pass until 3:38 remaining in the first half (and that was followed by a punt on the next play). Zero passing yards through three quarters. It was going to win or lose with its own brand of football.
Too often we see teams abandon their offenses far too early, we watch running teams pass with plenty of time left. But Air Force was sticking with the run. Bleeding the clock on itself. So what if they moved the ball? So what if they scored? Down three scores and still running the option, those numbers on the scoreboard kept running. Time to catch up was waning. It could have been close. But not close enough.
Not when Rolovich had finally mastered it.
"I wouldn't say that I've mastered it," he said. But the niches, the nuances, the big and small pictures are showing themselves to him. The things that make the true run-and-shoot an offensive masterpiece instead of a clunky gimmick.
"The last touchdown was really something Rolo wanted to put in and we talked about doing," Jones said.
"We just, you know, met up on the sideline and said, 'Hey, when you do this, they're going to do this, so you do this,'" Rolo said.
Boom. Touchdown.
Imagine facing that, against a guy who already knows your next move. A guy who's finally figured it out.
This is Rolo's finest night. This is the run-and-shoot offense.
Kalani Simpson's column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
He can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com