Glenn âTigerâ Ellison and the Story of the Invention of the Original Run & Shoot Offense (1958)
(Above) 1958 Middletown HS Middies – The very first (and original) Run & Shoot football team in history.
In the late 1950s, football was rigid. Plays were drawn on paper. Coaches called plays. Players obeyed. If a defense guessed right, the offense usually paid for it.
Tiger Ellison was coaching at Middletown High School in Ohio, searching for answers. His team didnât have the size or power of its opponents, and the traditional playbook wasnât closing the gap. Something felt off. The game looked too controlled, too stiff, too predictable. They were sturggling and losing every game.
One day, as the story goes, Ellison took a walk to clear his mind, while thinking of ways to help his team overcome such a depressing season. Along his walk, he noticed kids playing football in a park. No coaches. No play cards. No organized huddle. Just kids having fun. What stood out wasnât the athleticism â it was the instinct. The kids werenât running routes; they were reading people and looking for space. The quarterback was reading the same thing as the receviers and finding the open man. They werenât following instructions; they were solving problems. The game flowed because everyone adjusted together, in real time.
The “aha” moment went off in Ellison’s mind and he took the ideas back to the football office. Ellison began experimenting with spacing and leverage, including an unconventional formation he called the Lonesome Polecat, which he displayed the very next game after creating the idea. The look was strange, but the purpose was clear: spread the defense, force it to declare, and let players attack the space it gave up.
Receivers were no longer locked into one route. Quarterbacks and receivers learned to read the same defenses and adjust together. The play became correct after the snap, not before it. They lined up, took off, and reacted. When a defender overplayed, they broke away. When space opened, they settled into it. The quarterback didnât throw to a spot on paper â he threw to whoever was open. It was natural instinct with awareness. It was refined playground football.
Ellison didnât see chaos. He saw clarity. He saw football stripped down to its truth:
Find space. Read leverage. Trust what you see. Just as all football player did growing up having fun. That players could be taught how to think, not just what to run. The season completely changed and Middletown did not lose the rest of the season.
What emerged in 1958 wasnât just a new offense â it was a new belief:
-That the game belongs to the players after the snap.
-That structure should support freedom, not eliminate it.
-That the best football looks less like a chalkboard and more like that park â players moving, adjusting, and attacking space together.
That belief and the foundation of his Lonesome Polecat would evolve. There were several names considered over the year as the Lonesome Polecat evolved. At one point, it was considered the “Galloping T Offense”, amoungst others.
In 1961, the Lonesome Polecat became known as the “Run & Shoot Offense”. Not becasue it was so different, it just better captured the evolving nature of the system. The Lonesome Polecat is the truest form of Run & Shoot football. With the original formation (Lonesome Polecat) and the spirit of the it’s foundation, (the kids in the park), Ellison, felt the style of play best resembled the game of basketball; running free, finding space, and shooting the ball effortlessly to score.
The park wasnât about kids being undisciplined…
It was about them being free enough to be right.
(Below) Tiger Ellison’s reflection of his first season with the Lonesome Polecat – later known as the Run & Shoot:
