With much of the conversation in the offseason surrounding the installation of the pistol formation by Brian Kelly (and a visit from Pistol visionary Chris Ault), I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at what plays we can expect to see on Saturday out of the pistol formation. Since it should be a pretty vanilla gameplan, any plays we see out of the pistol will undoubtedly be of the bread-and-butter variety. I truly expect to see the standard plays we've grown used to over the past few seasons, just from the new formation.
Why the pistol formation instead of the shotgun or the singleback Ace formation?
Pistol tends to offer the best of both worlds. It offers the QB the same dropback safety and time that the shotgun formation provides, along with giving him a wider view of the field at large. When the QB isn't worried about his dropback steps, he can focus his brain power on efficiently reading and dissecting a defense. It does lose out to the Ace formation on the play action potential, but it is much better than the shotgun formation at selling a play action fake. The pistol offers the RB a downhill start into the line (useful for GAIII, according to Larz), taking away the biggest downside of running out of the shotgun, the essentially "standing start" that is required for most inside runs. There is an argument to be made that putting the QB directly in front of the RB hinders the RB's initial vision, which puts a lot of pressure on the QB to be able to read defensive fronts to see if he needs to check out of a running play or flip the direction.
The downsides to the pistol when compared to the shotgun are usually melted away by one simple advantage which the pistol has. When you line up in the pistol, you declare nothing about the play's likely direction. Sure, there are ways in the shotgun to counteract this (most effective being the zone read), but why reinvent the wheel when you can simply run your normal plays with the benefits of the shotgun package as well? Especially in the case where you have a non-mobile QB and cannot utilize the zone read as effectively as possible, the pistol provides a great alternative to the shotgun to ensure the running game is still successful.
