Sidelines
Run-and-shoot
can be a tough catchTHERE are the stories of the moments. Jim Kelly, on the verge of being benched, suddenly catching on and playing his way into the Hall of Fame. Warren Moon, in the 16th week of the NFL season, already leading the league in offense, playing catch with an assistant coach (a certain familiar mustachioed figure) and saying with awe, "I think I'm finally starting to get it. I'm starting to understand what you're really talking about."
And of course there was Hawaii hero Nick Rolovich last season. Playing blind in his first several weeks, winning games on guts and grit and last-second heroics. And then finally finding the light switch against Air Force, seeing it all before him for the first time, and suddenly the tough-guy winner was unstoppably smooth and in a zone like few of us had ever seen.
"It hits you," Dan Robinson told me once, trying to explain the feeling, "and you say, 'Oh, my heaven, this is incredible.' "
The moment a quarterback grasps the run-and-shoot offense.
June Jones owns up to no such moment. He says there was no single defining lightning bolt for him. Only this: "My first pass that I threw was a touchdown pass." And he's been hooked ever since.
HE PICKED IT up, he ate it up, in those first early days at Portland State in the mid '70s. He was a rambling man of a quarterback in his second last chance, and if the offense is complicated, if it takes Warren Moon 16 games to master, if Rolo was still grasping at straws late into the season, well, Jones had finally found a home. It didn't take him long at all to digest what he needed to know.
"I would say, you know, by the first game I was ready to play," he said.
He came off the bench, threw that touchdown, fell in love. He started, records fell, the NFL called. But even then, at the pinnacle of the game, no system could compare to the days of stealing yardage, of taking touchdowns almost at will.
"I got to the NFL and started learning different offenses, I knew the way that we did it was a more efficient way of moving the football," Jones said. "And so, I was constantly trying to get our head coach to look at some of the different looks."
He was a convert, a zealot, an apostle. But he was a voice in the wilderness. Crazy talk. It was simply too much too soon.
"It was so drastic at that point," Jones said, "so 'Communist.' "
But it was the future. It would seep in, first into the USFL, then the NFL. Jones would become a commodity, making the rounds. He knew this new offense. He could teach it.
He would dedicate his professional life to it, this system of wrinkles and reactions and adjustments. Its popular heyday in the NFL came and went, in style then out. And Jones got out, too, taking his system to UH.
The irony is that while the run-and-shoot is out of vogue in the NFL, it has also never been more popular. You see it every Sunday on your TV screen. For the most part, in principle, there is little difference between what Hawaii runs and what color commentators call the "West Coast Offense."
"Really, really it's not," Jones said. "It's a media deal. It's a, it's a ... you know, a name. But the concepts are the same. You know, they call theirs West Coast, we call ours whatever we call it."
Still, the NFL is stubborn. Jones is, too. Everyone uses part of the run-and-shoot (Oklahoma, Florida, Purdue get the benefits without the backlash), whether they admit it or not, but Jones sticks with its pure form, and pure formations. He takes on the name, and all the criticism that comes with it.
Somewhere along the line he snatched the pebble.
In his outpost in the Pacific, (with Mouse Davis in the arena league, with major colleges and pros leaving the label long behind) Jones is the last remaining guru of the run-and-shoot.
JONES HOLDS THE system personally, he can recite all the stats, he remembers all the championships, the records, the offense, the scores. He can tell you exactly how well it worked in the NFL. Everyone that ever ran the offense is included with the familial "we," their successes shared and celebrated.
He believes in the run-and-shoot, firmly and unequivocally, and he can give you every tangible reason why.
But that's not important. Every system works, doesn't it?
What's important is what made him believe, the zigging while others zag, the on-the-fly adjustments that bring yardage and points, the feeling of being unstoppable and free. The discovery Jones made that September in Portland 27 years ago.
We saw it happen again, last year, the true run-and-shoot being run when Rolovich came of age for the season's final stretch. Another convert. Another moment. We watched him explode, a supernova with a stubbled grin.
"Obviously he didn't have it even when he came in the third game," Jones said. "Even three or four games before he didn't really know what he was doing. You know, he got a little experience, and then, boom, then he knew."
He knew.
What was that quote Jones used about Kelly last fall during Rolo's remarkable run? "He saw everything, and knew exactly everything."
That's quite a feeling to have. Like the world opening up before you. Like, Oh, my heaven, this is incredible.
"It's," Jones begins ... "I know (Rolovich) gained so much confidence, he felt he could -- you know, he was just like me -- you can score every time you have the ball.
"You gotta have that belief. And I think most all the quarterbacks I've had believe that."
Jones believes it to this day. He remembers that feeling. He still has it. He never forgot.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com