The Baltimore Colts' Answer to the 49ers' Shotgun—Use Big Daddy as a Cover Linebacker

 By John Turney 

In 1960 49ers coach Red Hickey introduced his "shotgun" formation in late November against the Baltimore Colts in Memorial Stadium.

Interestingly the TV announcers called it the "double wing" and one paper called it a "Freakish Spread" but Hickey called it the shotgun. 

Hickey's reasoning was that his steam could not match the strength of the Colts, "Standing out there on a straight T, charging toe-to-toe with the Colts can be suicide. So I gambled that the formation - I call it 'the shotgun' - would go, figuring we had the right people to operate it."

John Brodie was the "right person" and then Bob Watters who finished the game was a "right person", too as the 49ers won 30-22. 

The shotgun had been around a long time, but teams didn't use it much through the 1940s and 1950s. However you can see examples of it, but the 49ers made it work in beating the World Champion Colts.

What was interesting is the counter the Colts used to defend it.

They'd shift their usual 4-3 defense to a 3-4 on the fly - now they'd call it stemming - and they would have Big Daddy Lipscomb, their defensive tackle, play inside linebacker - even covering a zone downfield.

When the 49ers came up to the line of scrimmage and the Colts would be in their usual 4-man front and if the 49ers shifted to the shotgun Bid Daddy would move to left inside linebacker and the middle linebacker would move to the right inside position. 

Here you can see the shift and the big defensive tackle drop into a hook/curl zone and even make a play on the ball. After the play, you can see big #76 get up and walk in front of the screen.

Here is another example, this was not an interception it was ruled incomplete but at the end of the play Big Daddy gave a shot to a 49er—

If the 49ers remained in a pro 4-3 set the Colts would stay in the pro 4-3 (often called a 6-1 now)—

Other teams followed suit. Here is a clip of the Rams doing a similar shift. However, they chose to move right defensive end Lamar Lundy to the right inside linebacker position and the middle linebacker, Les Richter moved to the left inside 'backer spot—

Back to Lipscomb. 

In that era, he could be seen as an inside linebacker in a 3-4 defense on occasion against usual spilt-back formations. He'd play right inside linebacker, using his sideline-to-sideline range to chase down

running plays, mostly. It was tantamount to a stand-up defensive tackle.

Here is one shot of that, also from 1960—

But this alignment wasn't just a "BigDaddy" thing, whoever the right tackle was would sometimes step off the line. Here it is Don Joyce who is spelling Lipscomb doing a similar thing—

Prior to joining the Colts, Lipscomb was a Ram and once in a while (not much) they'd run a 3-4 but they put him at nose tackle (then called middle guard), not as a linebacker—

With the Colts he'd play nose-in in the nickel/prevent defense—

The 6-6, 285-pound (300-plus pound?) could move for a big man and the Colts' coaches took advantage of his athleticism to play him off-the-ball.

Playing on the nose in an over or undershift (not shown) or in a 3-man nickel or a 3-4 like he did with the Rams is to be expected. Countless defensive tackles did that.

Few men his size could drop to a spot, pick up the receiver in his zone and defend the pass.

The Bid Daddy could.

True, the 49ers won the initial "shotgun game" but it was kind of a fluke. On the play, Big Daddy was in coverage and the initial play was stopped but Dee Mackey lateraled to R.C. Owens and he took it into the end zone, chased by Lipscomb.

It proved to be the game-winner.

So, score the win for Hickey and the shotgun but also give some credit to the Colts for trying something creative—a (likely) 300-pound cover linebacker.