Davis’ run-and-shoot offense lives on in semipro obscurity

Time was running out in the first quarter, and the SoCal Coyotes out of Palm Springs and the New Mexico Titans from Albuquerque were locked in a scoreless tie in a showdown for the semipro football championship of the world - or something to that effect - at Rancho High School on Saturday night.

(Both teams had arrived wearing black jerseys and pants, because, well, these things happen in semipro ball.)

Darrel "Mouse" Davis - yes, that Mouse Davis, mastermind of the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking, love-making, legendary run-and-shoot offense (with apologies to Mr. Springsteen and the E Street Band) - looked at the scoreboard and frowned.

Where were the points?

He started telling a reporter about this game in 1980, when there was just about this same amount of time remaining in the first quarter - and Portland State led Delaware State, 41-0.

Davis' quarterback, Neil Lomax, already had thrown for six touchdowns. Then Delaware State fumbled. Lomax threw another TD pass, and then it was 49-0. In the first quarter.

After four quarters, it was 105-0.

So Davis figured the Coyotes should have had some points by now.

SoCal quarterback Nate Lewis, who had played some Division II ball at Fairmont State in West Virginia, and who at 6 feet 5 inches and 230 pounds appeared to be the biggest player on the field, recognized a coverage and made a read - just as Lomax did, and June Jones before him, and Andre Ware and Jim Kelly after him - and uncorked a long TD pass. Only it waffled a bit, like one of Billy Kilmer's.

It was 77 yards, or thereabouts. For this was semipro ball, where sometimes statistics are rounded off before they are embellished at watering holes long after the whistle blows at the foundry or the textile mill.

Mouse Davis sort of winked, and went back to telling football stories.

■ ■ ■

He is 80 now, fit and healthy save for this little prostate thing that flares up now and again. Mouse Davis hasn't coached football since 2009, when he retired after returning to where it really all started, at Portland State, where the second time around he served as Jerry Glanville's offensive coordinator. It made for a good story, he and Glanville.

On this night, he had been lured back to the sidelines by J. David Miller, a former editor and writer for SPORT magazine and, like Davis, a former resident of Las Vegas.

(Davis lived in the Scotch 80s, an established upscale, master-planned community near Rancho Circle with lots of carports and swimming pools. Mayor Oscar Goodman lived down the street. When Beverly Davis, the coach's wife of 46 years, died, Davis moved back to Oregon.)

Miller wrote a story about Davis for SPORT in 1985 called "The Pro Offense of the Future." Now he's working on an ESPN-type documentary with a working title of "The Mouse that Roars." Miller also is the coach of the semipro Coyotes, and, having adopted the run-and-shoot, dedicated the team's season to its innovator.

After the Coyotes outscored their collective opponents 251-90, winning by scores such as 50-0, 58-8, 48-22 and 49-35, Miller invited Davis to return to Las Vegas, as guest coach. He was given a black coaching shirt and black coaching pants and a black cap embroidered with his name.

But mostly, it appeared the primary responsibility of the guest coach was posing for photos with the players at halftime.

Which was fine. Because instead of focusing on choice routes and switch routes and slide routes - three of the pass patterns on which the run-and-shoot is predicated - it left Davis more time to tell football stories.

He had lifted the double-slot offense - two wide receivers, two slot backs, one running back, no tight ends, one cool-as-a-cucumber quarterback with loads of intelligence - from Glenn "Tiger" Ellison, coach at Middletown (Ohio) High School.

That's just what Davis called it - the Double Slot with Motion - until Dwight Jaynes, a Portland sports writer who covered Davis' teams at Hillsboro and Sunset and Milwaukie high schools, said that was boring, and thus was born the run-and-shoot.

Davis said at first he didn't like the name, because it suggested an offense that was reckless and undisciplined, and the run-and-shoot is anything but.

Compared often to some of pro football's greatest offensive minds - "Mouse Davis should be on the Mount Rushmore of the modern passing game, next to Paul Brown, Don Coryell and Sid Gillman," Miller says - Davis never got a chance to be a head coach in the stodgy NFL. As for his legacy, well, when Bill Belichick says Davis' offense changed the way the game is played, that's praise enough.

"I'm OK with it," Davis said. "Somebody else will have to come up with the words."

The three he used more than once during our chat: "Football is football."

And so it should not come as a surprise that he would be in Las Vegas, enjoying a semipro game on a sultry Saturday night. Because if you discount the jobs at the foundry and the textile mill - and the unkempt facial hair - semipro football is a lot like high school football. It's just a bunch of guys playing the game for love of the game.

There were seven seconds left to play when No. 13 on the Titans - game programs being a frivolous expense in semipro ball - kicked a game-winning 35-yard field goal, then ran the length of the field before jumping into the arms of a bunch of other guys who were playing only for love of the game, too.

"We're some of the poorest dudes in New Mexico," Ray Armijo, No. 13 on the Titans, told me afterward. Armijo, who has a job programming election voting machines, did not play a down of competitive football at West Mesa High in Albuquerque - he referred to himself as a soccer player who received too many red cards.

And now he was a hero to his teammates and about 60 people who made the trip from New Mexico and were jumping up and down in the bleachers on the other side of the field.

When I told Mouse Davis the story about Ray Armijo, No. 13 on the Titans, he sorta winked and smiled, because football is football.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.