my only thought would be maybe our playbook in that formation isn’t fully developed yet? ie you might now want to run it all game and let them see the same plays multiple times if you don’t have the variety to keep them off balance? But to be honest, given the misdirection and option looks I’m not sure that theory is valid. I’m all for using it until the opponents stop it, as you suggest.

Just looking around college football, you see that the best offenses are well-oiled machines. Paul Johnson’s teams run the flexbone every single play masterfully; ditto the read-option teams; ditto the air-raid spread teams. On the other hand, every time you read about a struggling offense (Auburn every year under Tuberville comes to mind, also CU) introducing “elements” of the spread or whatever, it usually fails because the commitment is half-assed and the coaches don’t really know what they’re doing.

Any of these simple-yet-deceptive systems are substantive enough to work exclusively. In the Pistol, if the running game stalls, it means the qb is probably making the wrong decisions on whether to keep the ball or not, or it means we should be throwing it. It doesn’t mean we need to throw a power I at the other team, just do a better job of reading the options.