Bradford was no shotgun quarterback
Published: 4/30/2010 3:32 PM
Last Modified: 4/30/2010 3:32 PM
I've been hearing this for a while now, and it never did sit right with me. Today, I shall set the record straight.
Sam Bradford is not a shotgun quarterback. He was not a shotgun quarterback at Oklahoma. He didn't win the Heisman Trophy in 2008 because he played in some speeded-up version of a Hal Mumme/Mike Leach/Gary Crowton/Urban Meyer offense that operates exclusively out of the shotgun and passes on every down.
Here's the math from 2008, when Bradford threw 50 touchdown passes and broke every major OU passing record (and you can't argue with math):
The Sooners ran 1,106 offensive plays. Of those, I have confirmed that 525 were out of the shotgun formation. That's just under 50 percent.
In the play-by-play that I keep for every game, one of the things I chart for every play is the offensive formation — what the teams are doing in the backfield, and what their wide receiver or tight end deployment is.
I didn't chart about 40 snaps from '08. There were a few late kickoffs, and in trying to write a game story on deadline in a 30-point blowout during the fourth quarter, I admittedly don't follow the action close enough to chart formations. In many of these instances, I go back and fill in from watching my recorded version of the TV broadcast.
I just asked Kevin Wilson if my approximation was approximate enough. He said it was. OU in 2008 operated out of the shotgun about 50 percent of the time, he said. He figures it was probably a little more than 50 percent in 2007, Bradford's first year as the starter. Some games it was more, some less. Some situations more, some less.
"I'm not a shotgun guy," Wilson said. "I'm not an under-center guy. I think there is a place for both."
I did notice a trend from '08. OU ran 103 shotgun plays during its four non-conference games, 171 over the next four games (Texas and Kansas were inordinately high), and 155 over the next four (the OSU game was also high). Then, in the Big 12 championship and national championship, the Sooners ran 96 shotgun plays.
The reason for those escalations? Remember that Bradford tore a thumb ligament early against OSU, which means that game, the Missouri game and most of his practice for the Florida game, he couldn't receive a hard snap from under center and was in shotgun a ton.
Also, the Kansas and Texas games were back-and-forth offensive shootouts, with neither the UT nor KU pass defenses able to match up with the OU pass offense.
And lastly, the Sooners got into that 60-points-a-game mode, where impressive scores and wide margins of victory meant BCS points. Say what you will about the BCS, but the Sooners got into the Big 12 and national title games that year because they scored so many points.
Wilson said he recalled a statistic from 2008 where OU's three big-bodied players — tight ends Jermaine Gresham and Brody Eldridge and fullback Matt Clapp — were on the field together for some 190 plays. That's nearly 20 percent, and consider that much of the time, they didn't play in the fourth quarter. That doesn't sound like a shotgun finesse team.
Wilson also reminded that the two Super Bowl teams last season, Indianapolis and New Orleans, are heavy shotgun offenses.
The idea for the shotgun is for the quarterback to be farther away from the pass rush and thus have more time to throw. But as Wilson said, the late Bill Walsh didn't like the shotgun because it took the QB's eyes off the defense for a split second. However, the evolution of faster athletes and more complex and aggressive zone blitzing defenses have made the shotgun more valuable than ever.
Wilson hates to be called predictable — OU can equally run out of the shotgun and pass under center, and likes the play-action pass as much as the power run — but he did acknowledge one tendency in his offense that may be behind the notion that Bradford and the Sooners are shotgun-only.
"One tendency we have, under center we don't do a lot of drop back and then throw intermediate passes," Wilson said. "We'll throw it short or we'll throw it deep, but not a lot of intermediate throws under center."
— John E. Hoover
Written by
John E. Hoover
Sports Columnist
