Gun On The Run: An In-Depth Look At A 1-Back, Multiple-Formation Offense (7 pages, PDF)

Gun On The Run is a Gridiron Strategies Special Coaching Report by Rick Whobrey, offensive coordinator at Crystal City High School in Crystal City, Missouri. It addresses a problem a lot of shotgun teams run into: the formation spreads the defense out, but the running game underneath it never grows past a couple of zone plays. Whobrey lays out a complete 1-back, multiple-formation shotgun running game — zone with a quarterback read, the option and option passes, and an inside series of trap, counter, power and dart — built on four stated principles: hit them outside, use misdirection, use angles, numbers and field, and attack bubbles. This is the digitised edition of the printed report: 7 pages, PDF, with a searchable text layer taken from the printed pages, and the original numbered play and blocking diagrams (the report's diagrams run from Diagram 1 through Diagram 34).

What's inside

• The 1-Back Shotgun Zone Running Game: Spreading Defenses Thin (pages 1–2). The four principles the offense is built on, then the blocking: zone rules in which each lineman replaces the lineman beside him, and three ways to teach that replacing step — the bucket step, the J-step and the slide step. Man-zone combination blocking by the center and guard, including how the two work off each other and which one comes off to the linebacker. Then the quarterback's "ride-and-decide" — pointing the backside foot at the defensive end, riding the ball to the front foot in the back's belly, and snapping his head to the end rather than the back — with separate give and keep diagrams.
• The Shotgun Option Game & Option Passes (pages 3–4). Why the gun option is best run at a 5-technique and the easiest-blocked linebacker, and the two keys the play lives on: the quarterback reading the end, and the play-side tackle avoiding the option key with a quick veer step before getting flat on the near linebacker. The quarterback-to-pitchman relationship and how the back steps back and arc releases to set pitch depth. Four answers to a split-bubble adjustment — the play-side tackle arc releasing, pinning the alley defender, pinning the No. 1 secondary defender, and moving the pitch man to the slot. Then option passes: slide protection, the quarterback's three-steps-stop-two-back path and low-to-high progression, and the receiver bow depths Whobrey starts from (20 yards for No. 1, 10 for No. 2). The section closes with "Smoke," a quarterback sweep that runs to either side, and the apex blocking by the tackle and center that makes it go.
• The Inside Run Game: Trap, Counter, Power & Dart (pages 5–7). "Bob," which shows as Smoke or option but blocks like zone and functions like a draw. The influence trap, where the play-side guard gives a high-hat pass-set read before moving the defender outside the tackle area. "Toy," a quarterback trap off the center's block, for when the trap has lost its edge. The counter off a weak deuce or weak trey combination with both backside linemen pulling (the tackle's "jog block"), plus a counter reverse by the back and a quarterback counter. Power, with the pulling guard's rules and the back moving to the alley as an extra blocker when the end bites inside. And Dart — described in the report as a trap transformed into an isolation play, run to the shade nose side, and noted there as most noticeably used by Missouri and Clemson — with a dart reverse, a version to the 3-technique side and a quarterback dart.
• A closing case for the 1-back offense. Whobrey argues the 1-back offense is simpler than most because of the spreading, that the simplicity is what lets a coordinator dictate where the ball gets run, and that it sharpens further when the offense is turned into a quick, no-huddle attack.

Who it is for

• High school and small-college offensive coordinators who are already in the gun and want a real run game to go with it, rather than a pass offense with a draw.
• Offensive line coaches — much of the report is blocking detail: zone steps, combination blocks, apex blocking, influence blocking and pulling rules.
• Quarterback coaches teaching the ride-and-decide read, the option key and the pitch relationship out of the shotgun.
• Coaches adding option or quarterback-run pressure to an existing 1-back, multiple-formation offense.

Be clear on what this is: a digitised edition of a printed coaching report — an in-depth article with diagrams, not a full install playbook, and not video. There are no practice scripts or week-by-week install schedules in it. What it does give you is one coordinator's complete gun running game, in his own terminology, with the blocking and the reads spelled out play by play.