Landry, Roger and the Origin of the Shotgun

How Dallas borrowed an old idea and planted one of the lasting innovations in football.

21,055.

That number is how many snaps the NFL ran out of shotgun in 2024.

It is 62.3% of all snaps in the NFL and without question it is the most prevalent offensive formation at all levels of football.

But, there was a time when every single snap of a season in this same league was taken with the quarterback under-center.

All of them.

That time was 1974 and pretty much every year before it. I say pretty much, because it did exist before the summer of 1975 – exactly 50 years ago from this summer – but barely.

Then, in May of 1975, the Dallas Morning News offered this small piece of information which we assume was fairly confusing to those who read it as they tried to follow their favorite football team:

“The Cowboys have been using a spread or shotgun formation,” it said. In that formation, “the quarterback would, of course, be the deep man in the spread.”

It also added that “players involved in the passing game appear to be enthusiastic about the new formation.”

We would soon learn that it had been a very long time since the shotgun was last seen in the NFL. They were a desperate football team in 1975 and were very uncertain what their running game would be. They were confident in their passing attack, but also were a team in transition. This wrinkle was something that had been considered for a while, because they happened to employ a scout at the time who knew a little something about this formation.