Choose your weapons

OK, as promised, lets talk football!! Specifically Shotgun football.

The shotgun formation as we all know has its upside and its downside just like any other formation, however are the upsides and downsides player driven or are they play driven? Are the mistakes and miscues because of the personnel on the field or on the side lines?

Lets look at the stats...the three quarterbacks with the best pass completion rating in the NFL in 2012 were all shotgun QB's. In fact Matt Ryan, who dominates the category had a whopping 98% completion rating when in the shotgun. Sure his receivers had a lot to do with it, but the stats don't lie! Matt Schaub came in second place with a 93% rating out of the shotgun formation. Both teams have a fierce running attack and some of the best wide outs in the game today, not to mention some pretty darn good linemen. Now lets look at number three of that passing class, the Sheriff himself, Peyton Manning. Out of all the snaps he received, 83% of them were out of the shotgun where Peyton completed 89% off his passes. Unlike Ryan and Schaub, the Broncos had a platoon of inconsistent running backs which would force the passing game at times letting defenses know what was coming. His receiving corps has not seemed to matter in the past, he has an uncanny way of making anyone a good receiver. All three of these quarterbacks had help from play action as well.

One person I absolutely have to speak about though is Tim Tebow. This man made a legacy out of the shotgun as a Gator at the University of Florida under the tutelage of Urban Meyer. He broke and set record after record, won games, and won trophies, yet coming out of the NCAA into the NFL, he is not a good quarterback with bad footwork, bad arm work , and bad everything in between. In the 2011-2012 season Tebow led his team to the playoffs where he beat the highly favored Steelers in an overtime playoff game. Tim only had a passer completion rating of 46% and a season QB rating of 72%, a little more than slightly different than that of Mr. Ryan in the ATL huh? Lets not forget that he ran for almost 700 yards even though he has "bad footwork".

Colin Kaepernick, who ran the pistol formation which is the shotgun with a slight modification, only threw for 1800 yards with a passer rating of 62% and took his team all the way to the Super Bowl.

On the other side of the coin, Cleveland Browns quarterback Colt McCoy has said he prefers to be under center in order to hear everything and to see everything the defense is saying and doing on the other side of the ball.

There are ups and downs to this formation, I particularly like the aspect of giving more time to the QB through the distance created. So what do you think? Do you like it some of the time , all of the time , not at all? Does it depend on the players around him or does the QB make the formation work? Let me hear ya!