The Pistol Offense

For the past twenty-five years, I have coordinated the offense at Blue Valley High School. In all that time we have been either an ‘I’ offense or a single back offense. Making the transition from the single back/I offense under center to the Pistol offense in the shotgun has been much easier than we ever could have predicted. All the plays we ran in the I, we can run out of a Pistol alignment. Everything we ran in the single back look, we now do out of the Shotgun-Pistol. The greatest advantage is that you can do more. From the ‘I’ Formation to the Two Back Pistol When we were in the ‘I’ formation, we ran all the traditional plays – Fullback Iso, Fullback Kick Out, Toss Sweep, Counter Trey and Fullback Trap. We were a traditional ‘I’ team. Our offense was dependent upon having a good blocking fullback and an offensive line that could dominate the line of scrimmage.