The Veer and Shoot in 2024
It's a big year for the offense which is now recognized by that moniker in EA Sports' College Football video game.
As the guy who coined the “Veer and Shoot” term for the collegiate offenses within the Art Briles coaching tree, you’re welcome EA Sports.
I’ve described the offense already in this article:
The Veer and Shoot: Part I
A recent episode of “the audible,” a podcast by “The Athletic” featuring Bruce Feldman and Stewart Mandel, the latter a frequent and clearly oblivious target of mine, mentioned me and a term I once made up.
As you can see, the headline example is Josh Heupel’s Tennessee Volunteers. We could have a debate on which is the premier Veer and Shoot program in the game today. I think the Vols have a pretty good grip on the top slot but if you want to count Ole Miss within this stream then you definitely have a battle. The Rebels are a little less known for the V&S specifically since Lane Kiffin has a longstanding reputation from before he started using the framework of the offense.
This last week we had some relevant Veer and Shoot showings and this coming week we’re going to get some more, including between Tennessee and Oklahoma. The Sooners installed the system in 2022 with Jeff Lebby and are now attempting to run it without him.
After a few quiet seasons in which many of the Art Briles acolytes were subdued or working their way back owing to the scandal which took down the godfather of the scheme, it’s been absolutely roaring to life in the last few seasons and is now littered across the SEC of all places. Here’s the most recent state of the coaching tree:
Today we’ll get into some of the details in this tree, particularly the right side and how it’s developing and branching off.