Offensive Philosophy (American Football) - West Coast Offense

West Coast Offense

The West Coast Offense is a passing ball control offense. Once thought a contradiction in terms, it achieves ball control by using short, high percentage passing routes. Since the routes are relatively short, and the pass leaves the quarterback's hand quickly, there is less need for additional blockers. Thus all five eligible receivers are (typically) used extensively in the West Coast offense. Spreading the ball to all potential targets can create mismatches, often between a running back and a linebacker, or perhaps the tight end and a linebacker. By forcing tighter coverage between the safeties and offensive players, the West Coast offense can pull the safeties toward the line of scrimmage without running and thus it can set up the long pass play with shorter passes or allow a WR to break a tackle for a long gain.

By throwing lots of short passes, the West Coast offense gets the ball to the faster players in open space more frequently. The notion of yards after catch (YAC) was invented for west coast offense players. Twenty yard pass plays used to mean long deep out or deep in patterns with a strong armed quarterback but now more frequently the twenty yard play involves a six yard pass to a talented receiver who made a couple of good moves—and perhaps got a block downfield from a fellow receiver.

The West Coast offense, at its best, annoys a defense into foolishness. By consistently completing short passes, it encourages the defensive backs to move closer to the line of scrimmage, increasing the chance that a receiver will break a big play. The quarterback releases the ball so quickly that the pass rushers are tempted to complacency. Further, it gives the offense confidence. A combination of these factors afford the offense a good opportunity to throw deeper passes.

The San Francisco 49ers won their first super Bowl under Bill Walsh with one of the league's worst running games due to the West Coast Offense's ability to control the clock using passing. This is not to say the West Coast offense abandons the run. Like any offense, a running game complements the West Coast Offense because short passes naturally set up situations when the run is more favorable. With the West Coast Offense, the level of commitment to the run varies by head coach, but like the run and shoot is usually not a high level of commitment.

In essence, though, the West Coast offense is more of a philosophy and approach to the game than it is a set scheme that demands exact formations, plays and reads like many of the other offenses discussed here. It stipulates that an offense should pass the ball to spread the defense horizontally to set up the run, not the other way around. This was revolutionary in the 1970s when Don Coryell and Bill Walsh began tinkering with this concept because football until then had been primarily a 'run to set up the pass' game.

Today this philosophy dominates most coaches' thinking and planning, and every team in the NFL and most teams in College incorporate some aspects of the West Coast offense into its scheme. Though formations, play calling, pass protection packages and personnel combinations will vary wildly from team to team, the basic tenet of the West Coast Offense, the "pass to set up the run" mantra, is accepted Gospel. More and more high schools are moving towards this approach, too, though the lack of 17-year-old quarterbacks with the necessary arm strength, experience, vision and overall football maturity will keep this growth slow.

Note: although this is the current usage of the term, the actual West Coast Offense was a term applied to the Don Coryell offense run by the San Diego Chargers the late 1970s and early 1980s. More properly, the above should be called the Walsh offense, as it was perfected under Walsh in San Francisco. The misnomer arose when a wire reporter incorrectly transcribed a Paul Zimmerman article that quoted Bernie Kosar, who was referring to the roots of the 1993 Dallas Cowboys offensive philosophy. Kosar went on to explain, "Oh, you know, the West Coast Offense... Turner and Zampese and Don Coryell and Sid Gillman. That thing." This was later incorrectly attributed to Bill Walsh. The actual San Diego West Coast offense under Coryell involved much longer timing routes and bore little resemblance to the above.

Paul Brown also deserves mention in any discussion of the origins of what is now known as the "West Coast Offense." The system was developed by Brown and Walsh and implemented by the Cincinnati Bengals before Walsh's departure for San Francisco. The Walsh-Brown version found success in San Francisco, but would more aptly be named the "Ohio River Offense."