Pistol Duo: 2023 Rams

Explore the primary ways the Rams ran Duo from the Pistol in the 2023 NFL season!

This season marked a paradigm shift for Sean McVay. After making his mark running an Outside-Zone based offense, he shifted his base run to Duo, running it nearly 20% more than Outside Zone in the 2023 season. In the middle of the season, he also started lining up the backfield in the Pistol. With the prevalence of the Pistol in high school football, we are going to dive in this week at the intersection of this alignment and scheme: Running Duo from the Pistol.

Why run Duo? It graded out as the most efficient run in the league. It may not produce as many explosive runs, but it’s going to keep the offense on schedule. I think it pairs really well with Outside Zone in that regard, and given that those two runs accounted for nearly 70% of the Rams’ run game, it’s no wonder they had one of the league’s best rushing attacks.

There are three primary variations of Duo, in my opinion. Duo is a physical play, and the Shanahan tree chose physical, fighting words to tag it. These tags can be found in the 2018 49ers Playbook (access given to all subscribers). The way I use them is maybe slightly different than they do, but their playbooks hold a lot of inspiration for my own verbiage, and I try to get as close as possible.

·       Jab: 4-5 man surface, all blocking down, forcing a DB to be the force defender outside

·       Punch: Same as Jab, adding a Fold on the play-side EDGE (motion into the iso has been frequently called “Duo Wrap” in social media circles)

·       Kick: Kick out on the play-side EDGE (idea of “Power without a Puller”)

The Rams ran all of these variations from the Pistol and added in various motions and back-side tags to run one play many ways for an average of 4.1 YPC from the Pistol. We’ll take a look at each and share a cutup at the end of every Rams Duo run from the Pistol in the 2023 season.

JAB

Jab, to me, is the base of Duo. The name “Duo” is generally thought to come from the idea of getting as many double teams as possible at the point of attack. Jab is the epitome of that – loading up one side of the line of scrimmage and double-teaming to the second level, sometimes creating up to 3 double teams.

Later in the season, the Rams added a variation with Fly motion away from the play, which I call “Delta” as opposed to “Virgin,” which is Fly motion in the direction of the play.

 What Delta motion would primarily be used for is having the second level of the defense “pull the string” to account for the moving gap. Generally, the back-side linebacker would expand with the motion, and one of two things could happen from there: either the play-side linebacker also gets pulled too far by the motion and opens up the primary running lane, or he doesn’t shift far enough, offering a crease for the Running Back between the linebackers. The best way defenses played it was by rotating down the Strong Safety with the motion, but then the defense is exposed to play action against single high coverage, something Sean McVay is a master at exploiting.

Paid subscribers will have access to the other two variations and a 13+ minute cutup of every Duo play the Rams ran from the Pistol this season and many more breakdowns and cutups throughout the offseason!

ICYMI: YouTube video for the week: Mobile QBs in the Shanahan/McVay Offense