SANTA CLARA — This is what Greg Roman said about the Pistol Formation Thursday in the media tent.
Q: I don’t remember you guys practicing the Pistol too much during training camp. Is that something that you’ve really started doing over the last month now that Kap’s been in?
ROMAN: We’ve done some Pistol in training camp. We did it at Stanford some. It’s just another formation and it’s really all it is, just another formation.
Q: How much time did you spend with University of Nevada head coach Chris Ault, talking about it?
ROMAN: Yeah, did spend some time with Chris. About three years ago, made the trek to Nevada and visited with him and his staff. 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 that was very accommodating. So, it was good.
Q: So you’re watching the film, watching you’re quarterback now, back then.
ROMAN: I was, yeah, matter of fact, yeah.
Q: Your impressions then of him?
ROMAN: That’s a long time ago. Productive.
Q: We saw the Redskins running the Pistol the other night. Are there other teams besides you and the Redskins that run it? Do the Panthers run it?
ROMAN: I believe the Panthers. I have seen the Panthers get in that formation, yeah. But the Redskins probably do it more than anybody. It’s just another formation. There’s a lot different ways you can build formations and rebuild formations. But, it’s just another formation. I think the Redskins definitely do it more than anybody and we’re just kind of starting to tap into it now.
Q: Do you call it the Pistol when you have the three guys in the backfield or do you call it something else internally?
ROMAN: “We don’t call it the Pistol, no. It’s two syllables. We just use one syllable. It’s a ‘Q’ formation.”
Q: Have you talked to Chris Ault at all on Nevada just to pick your brain?
ROMAN: A couple of years ago. Yeah, probably three years ago, three or four years ago, leading into the, what was it, before the 2010 season.
Q: What can you gather by talking to a guy face-to-face as opposed to just watching the film?
ROMAN: Oh gosh, I think you can gain a lot if they’re willing to tell you. You can gain a lot with an upside, the downside, what other teams do to try to stop it. When they do that, what do you do? Every little nuance, it’s just so much in terms of how you might sequence things, the downside, the upside. And definitely what people have tried to do to combat it or defend it, and then the next logical step for them. So, great information.
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I can respect a man who is willing to lay his ego aside and seek out a college coach for offensive wisdom.
/from the timeing, he was a college coach at the time
The Packers and Steelers both used it in Super Bowl XLV. What does make the 49ers Q package different at this point though would be that I don’t believe any other QB/RB tandem have the skill sets to run it as well as Kaepernick and LMJ.