Air Raids On and Off the Field

I am probably the only football fan under 30 who hated Mike Leach’s offense. Most people found it exciting. I thought it was like watching basketball on grass. His quarterbacks operated almost exclusively out of the shotgun. He never used a fullback and preferred deploying four wide receivers over even one tight end. His teams almost never huddled, and tried to play as fast as possible. Leach called plays from a napkin-sized play sheet, and as a rule, didn’t move players around much before the snap. He wanted to spread you out, run you ragged, and beat you with the small rolodex of plays his players had practiced all season.