How Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers Revolutionized the Pistol Offense in the NFL

Editor's Note: This excerpt from The Genius of Desperation: The Schematic Innovations That Made the Modern NFL, by Doug Farrar, is presented with permission from Triumph Books. Farrar explores the history of football's biggest strategic developments alongside the circumstances and personalities responsible for transforming the game.

The Pistol Offense

The San Francisco 49ers selected Kaepernick in the second round of the 2011 draft, but it wasn't until his second season that he got more than a few looks in what offensive coordinator Greg Roman later called "the Colin Package." Long before this, though, Roman, who worked with head coach Jim Harbaugh at Stanford and then at San Francisco, had traveled to see [Chris] Ault and explore the possibilities inherent in the Pistol concept. "About three years ago, [I] made the trek to Nevada and visited with him and his staff," Roman told NBC Sports Bay Area in December of 2012. "That was very valuable time spent. He was very accommodating, and it was very interesting as a coach to go really learn something totally new. And he's a very good football coach."

Roman was then looking to implement Pistol play designs at Stanford, where he and Harbaugh had the kind of power/counter-run game and variable passing game that would seem to be a perfect fit. When Kaepernick became the starter in Week 7 of the 2012 season after Alex Smith suffered a concussion, Roman had worked enough with Kaepernick to make it fly. What Roman called the Q formation (so named because the 49ers preferred to keep their play calls to one syllable) became the 49ers' base quarterback formation, and the 49ers did all kinds of different things with it. They put multiple backs around Kaepernick—one behind him in the traditional Pistol spacing and one to each side—in a full-house power package. They used offset Pistol with a back to Kaepernick's left or right side (the offense's strong or weak-side) and they ran a lot of highly effective play-action out of the Pistol. In 2013, Kaepernick's first season as an NFL starter, he completed 61.3 percent of his passes out of play-action with 11 touchdowns and one interception—as opposed to a 57.2 completion rate, 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions without play-action.

But what made the Pistol work for the 49ers—and provided a guide to future use—was how well they integrated it with traditional football concepts. Every aspect of the Kaepernick option game had its antecedents—from the old-school Wishbone, to the trap blocks favored by the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s, to the counter plays defined by the Washington Redskins of the John Riggins era, to the read-option, to the Pistol. But the ways in which the 49ers put it together were very different and quite befuddling, even to NFL defenses that were primed to stop just about anything.

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

The most compelling example of the 49ers' Pistol offense came in the divisional round of the 2012 playoffs, when Kaepernick broke Michael Vick's single-game rushing record for a quarterback with 181 yards as San Francisco beat the Green Bay Packers 45–31. Harbaugh and Roman understood and exploited a kink in Dom Capers' defense. Because the Packers' cornerbacks played a high percentage of press-man coverage, lining up as close to the receivers as possible and turning their backs to run with those receivers, Kaepernick had more room and a higher percentage of outside rushing lanes.

Kaepernick's 56-yard touchdown run in the third quarter of that game was an object lesson in how the Pistol—and the run-based deception it produces—can leave aggressive defenses in a major hole. On this play, the 49ers lined up with two tight ends to the left, and outside tight end/fullback Bruce Miller motioned into the backfield. This offset Pistol formation set the edge for Kaepernick's run because Miller moved across the formation at the snap and blocked left outside linebacker Erik Walden (93) to help give Kaepernick a lane in the middle of the formation. The Packers had three defensive linemen stacked in the middle of the line, but San Francisco's power blockers took them out, and the inside linebackers bit on the play-action fake to halfback LaMichael James. San Francisco had two receivers to the right—Michael Crabtree to the inside and Ted Ginn Jr. to the outside—and they blocked out Green Bay's attempt to counter Kaepernick with a two-deep safety look converted by motion to a single-high concept. "We didn't make any adjustments," Packers defensive back Charles Woodson told reporters  after that loss. "I just think when the game is going the way it is, you've got to try something different. It's hard to just continue to do the same thing over and over again and continue to get burned. … We need to figure out: Could we have done something differently as far as our game plan was concerned?"

Whatever that something different may have been, it didn't show up in the 2013 season opener. This time, Green Bay had its forces arrayed against San Francisco's running game, and Kaepernick responded by completing 27 of 39 passes for 412 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions in a 34–28 victory. Using the old adage that if you want a running quarterback to stop running, you hit him hard enough to make him do something else, the Packers tried to intimidate Kaepernick. Much to Green Bay's dismay, receiver Anquan Boldin, who the 49ers acquired in a trade from the Baltimore Ravens after Baltimore had beaten them in the previous Super Bowl, outmuscled the Packers' defense for 13 catches, 208 yards and a touchdown. Tight end Vernon Davis added six catches for 98 yards and two touchdowns of his own. The Kaepernick 49ers eventually came into disrepair due to personnel mismanagement and power struggles up top. But for a brief moment in time, Kaepernick looked to be the next evolution in quarterbacking.

For more information or to order a copy of The Genius of Desperation: The Schematic Innovations That Made the Modern NFL, visit Triumph Books.