How the run-and-shoot offense was born after Mouse was inspired by Tiger’s tale

Bob Wagner was befuddled.

The junior defensive tackle at Newark High School in Ohio had never seen anything like it. Neither had his teammates, nor his coaches.

Newark was playing Middletown, coached by Glenn “Tiger” Ellison. Middletown’s offense came out in a strange formation, with two slotbacks and no tight end. It was the original run-and-shoot, as designed by its creator, Ellison.

“I remember it was a big deal, and we had to change our whole defense,” said Wagner, who would use a four-wide, triple-option running offense himself 25 years later as head coach at the University of Hawaii. “They jumped out to a 21-0 lead (and) won. You can imagine what an adjustment that was in the early ’60s.”

The original run-and-shoot as Ellison drew it up wasn’t all about passing. Yes, the formation was wildly different than others of the day. But it was balanced, with an equal number of running and passing plays.

The way the story goes, Ellison was on his way home from practice one day in 1958 when he stopped to watch some young kids playing sandlot football. What he saw eventually changed the game at every level from high school to the pros.

These kids played the way a lot of youngsters do before they get influenced by organized football. They didn’t huddle or call plays on offense. The quarterback scrambled from the time he got the snap. The receivers had no set routes; they simply ran away from where defenders were stationed or headed.

Ellison’s Middletown team was 0-4. In desperation and inspired by the kids at the park, he unveiled a formation called “The Lonesome Polecat.” It got that name because of one of his assistants’ opinion of it: “It stinks.”

But it worked.

The Lonesome Polecat overloaded one side of the field, giving the Middies’ athletic quarterback room to make plays on the other side.

Longtime UH fans remember a version of it called “The Muddle Huddle.”

Instead of specific routes, receivers ran to six areas of the field based on what defenders did. The deep zones were designated as Red, White and Blue and the shorter ones were called Heaven, Boston and Hell.

Ellison was also a pioneer with tempo. It has become fashionable in recent years for offenses to speed up the game by not huddling. But Ellison was doing it in the ’50s, since he believed it added to the Lonesome Polecat’s elements of surprise and deception.

Defenses had no idea how to deal with the bizarre formation and pass routes, and Middletown won the rest of its games.

The next season Ellison switched to something much closer to the current run-and-shoot in appearance. A couple of years later, Ellison, also an English teacher, wrote “Run and Shoot Football: Offense of the Future.”

Another high school coach, more than 2,000 miles away in Milwaukie, Ore., read the book. Darrel “Mouse” Davis expanded on Ellison’s concepts, eventually taking his version of the run-and-shoot to college football and the pros.

They never met in person, but Davis, now 85, often conversed by phone with Ellison until he died in 1990.

As does Davis, Ellison had a whimsical side. You can see it in his writing and his terminology: Frontside Gangster, The Cowboy Series, Operation Mudcat. On some plays, Ellison had his players running from Heaven to Hell, or vice versa.

“Tiger was a good guy,” Davis said. “We kept running it, and kept getting better. Tiger would call and say, ‘Keep it going, I’m selling more books!’ ”