Old offense adding new wrinkles
Jones’ retooled run and shoot has put up big numbers in XFL team’s 3-0 start
Houston Roughnecks coach June Jones was introduced to the run and shoot offense as a quarterback at Portland State in 1975.
He further developed the philosophy in the NFL and the college football ranks. Forty-five years later, he continues to evolve the system in Houston.
“If we don’t tweak 17 to 20 percent every year, the defenses will catch up with us,” he said. “We have added and kinda looked at what other people are doing. This year we’re doing some things we didn’t do before, and we got better because of it. Routes you see, we throw more screens different ways than we used to, some of the reads we have for the receivers, we’ve added to those.”
Roughnecks offensive coordinator Chris Miller was Jones’ quarterback when the latter was offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons in the early ’90s. He had his best season in 1991, Jones’ first year in Atlanta.
In Jones’ current iteration of the run and shoot, he sees an offense that’s more diverse than the one he ran years ago.
“We coached in the 2006 East-West Shrine game together … so I got reacquainted with the run and shoot a little bit, but I think as all things do over time, offenses evolve. You pick up things from other schemes or something you may see on TV or whatever,” Miller said.
“It is the run and shoot, which is predicated on four wide receivers, but there are a lot of schemes from the West Coast, Bill Walsh-influenced offense, but it’s still a quarterback-friendly offense.”
Roughnecks quarterback P.J. Walker and top receiver Cam Phillips have benefited the most as Houston has started off 3-0. Walker tops the XFL in passing yards (748) and touchdowns (10). Phillips leads the league in receiving yards (324) and touchdowns (seven) and is tied for first with 20 receptions.
But ahead of Sunday’s game against the
Dallas Renegades (2-1), Miller isn’t overestimating his offense.
“We got Tampa Bay’s best shot last week. You saw L.A. gave D.C. their best shot last week and smashed ’em, so all these guys play hard. Dallas has some good DBs, some athletic linebackers that can run,” he said.
“We do have three games of film study on Dallas now, so you do learn some tendencies through the film study, and they’re always going to add one or two little nuances or tweaks to their defense to adjust to what we do, but a lot of defensive coordinators are trying to do what they do.”
So far, none have been able to formulate a winning scheme.
But a Houston defense that’s recorded fourth-quarter takeaways in each of its games deserves some credit for that.
“Bend, don’t break. You’re never trying to break but aren’t trying to bend either, so that’s something that we work on in practice and through the week,” linebacker DeMarquis Gates said. “In football, offense is going to get the shine, but as they say, ‘Defense wins championships.’ ”