Tom Laundry didn't perfect the shotgun.
History[edit]
The shotgun evolved from the single wing and the similar double-wing spread; famed triple threat man Sammy Baugh has claimed that the shotgun was effectively the same as the version of the double-wing he ran at Texas Christian University in the 1930s.[2]
In the latter part of the 1940s, the Philadelphia Eagles, under Hall of Fame Coach Earl "Greasy" Neale, implemented the shotgun formation in their offensive attack with quarterback Tommy Thompson.
The formation was named by the man who actually devised it, San Francisco 49ers coach Red Hickey, in 1960.[3] John Brodie was the first NFL shotgun quarterback, beating out former starter Y. A. tle largely because he was mobile enough to effectively run the formation.
The New York Jets briefly experimented with the shotgun during the middle of the Joe Namath era to give the bad-kneed and often immobile quarterback more time to set up plays by placing him deeper in the backfield.
But the formation was not used on a regular basis until the 1975 season, and then only by the Dallas Cowboys, who used the shotgun frequently with Roger Staubach at quarterback. The Cowboy shotgun differed from the 49er shotgun as Staubach generally had a back next to him in the backfield (making runs possible), where Brodie was normally alone in the backfield.
Since no other NFL teams used the formation during this time, some believed it had been invented by Tom Landry. Instead, Landry simply dusted off the old innovation to address a pressing problem: keeping Staubach protected while an unusually young and inexperienced squad (12 rookies made the 1975 Cowboys roster) jelled. However, three years before Staubach ushered in the modern era of the shotgun to the NFL, Joe Theismann of the Toronto Argonauts regularly employed the formation north of the border in the CFL. [4] The Cowboys ended up in the Super Bowl that season, in no small part due to its new use of the old formation. The shotgun became a "signature" formation for the Cowboys, especially during third down situations.