The Falcoholic
Atlanta’s gearing up for a critical six game stretch.
The bye week is over, and the Atlanta Falcons intend to look like a very different football team in Week 13 and beyond.
The proof will be on the field, but what was the team saying about their bye week improvements, and what were they not saying? Here’s a little Monday rundown after Raheem Morris and players met with the media.
One of the more baffling subplots of the early season was a lack of play action usage for Kirk Cousins, who is regularly touted as one of the league’s best play action passers. The first week or two when the Falcons were feeling out how well Cousins could move, that made sense. Once his lasting limitations became more apparent, the Falcons did start to roll out play action, but not to the extent I think any of us would have anticipated.
The Falcons are currently 30th in play action passing attempts and 26th in yardage, and Kirk Cousins is 31/50 for 374 yards. For the sake of perspective, on non-play action passes, Cousins has thrown zero interceptions or touchdowns, but somewhat crucially has just one sack on 50 dropbacks versus 22 sacks on 310 non-play action passes, which should tell you something about his comfort level getting rid of the ball quickly in that scenario.
Cousins’ historic comfort with play action and solid results this year even with his glacial movement indicate the team should be trying to use it more often, and Raheem Morris promised Monday that the team would.
It’s fair to ask why it has taken until eleven games and a bye have gone by to determine this, but better late than never with a divisional title still within reach. I wrote after the Week 1 debacle that a heavy reliance on shotgun and pistol did not necessarily play to Cousins’ strengths, but that’s an essential part of what Zac Robinson wants this offense to do. Chances are that having seen the way the passing game is trending and how uncomfortable Cousins has looked at times, the Falcons took a look at the offense during the bye week and determined trying to ramp up Kirk’s bread-and-butter might get them out of the funk they’re mired in.
That will hopefully be the result. I wouldn’t expect this time to suddenly start running play action all the time for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is an upcoming slate of capable pass rushers that make Cousins having his back turned to the defense a bit of a dicey proposition. A handful of additional snaps per game to try to get Cousins on track, though? Reasonable and welcome.
Morris saw the same thing we did throughout the season, but I’m certain going back and watching every game really illuminated just how deadly penalties have been for this team in the red zone. The number of times...
