It’s generally not a good idea to get too excited about anything early in an NFL season, especially when many teams are without starters in the preseason.
But the Atlanta Falcons had a really strange Week 1.
The Falcons ran an offense that no one expected and didn’t run in the preseason, lining up almost exclusively in pistol or shotgun formations. They say it has nothing to do with the health of their 36-year-old quarterback who is coming off a torn Achilles tendon, though that’s hard to believe.
A lot of offenses struggled last week, but in the Falcons’ 18-10 loss what became abundantly clear was that Kirk Cousins wasn’t moving at all and the Falcons were making sure he didn’t have to.
“I feel like Kirk is healthy,” Falcons coach Raheem Morris said. He said on Monday“He’s been healthy since he’s been here and since he came back.”
Maybe that was the plan for Week 1. Maybe the Falcons will go back to running what would appear to be their normal offense in Week 2, or maybe the pistol/shotgun is what they want to use and it will simply look better in Week 2. It’s hard to believe Cousins’ health hasn’t had anything to do with their approach. And if that’s the case, it seems unlikely to change in a week or a month.
The Falcons had a predictable offense
The Falcons’ offensive struggles were different from other teams because their offensive game plan was so unexpected.
The Falcons lined up with pistol or shotgun on 48 of 50 plays, According to ESPN Stats and InfoIn the shotgun, the quarterback lines up about 4 yards behind the center with the running back behind him. That means the quarterback doesn’t line up under center and doesn’t have to drop back or move to a spot to hand off the ball. And the Falcons were surprisingly predictable. The Falcons had no designed runs on 22 shotgun plays and ran them on 81% of their shotgun plays. Any NFL team can figure out that pattern.
This was also concerning: The Falcons did not run a play-deception play. They are the only NFL team that didn’t, according to Yahoo Sports’ Nate Tice. It becomes much easier to stop the run when there is no threat of play-deception.
That offense is not the one they showed in the preseason. In the first game of the preseason, which was Michael Penix Jr.’s only game, the Falcons did use a lot of shotgun in passing situations. But it was a standard offense under center on early downs, with regular play-action passes. When Taylor Heinicke entered the game, the offense was the same. The only time the shotgun was used came with Penix in the game, near the goal line.
It may not have been entirely unexpected, though. New Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson came over from the Los Angeles Rams, who used the blaster last season and continued to use it heavily in Week 1. It could have been the Falcons’ plan all along and they simply didn’t want to play their cards in the preseason with a new coaching staff. Cousins didn’t play in the preseason anyway. Morris said it was simply a strategic decision against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“It’s all going to be situational to the game plan for whoever you’re playing,” Morris said, via the team’s site. “When you go out there and put those guys into what we do and how we want to play and try to put those guys in good positions to block them, the aliens that the Pittsburgh Steelers have, you’ve got to try to figure those things out.”
Whatever the reason, it didn’t work against the Steelers. And no team’s pre-snap alignment will be studied more in Week 2 than the Falcons’.
What will Atlanta look like in Week 2?
It’s not a huge surprise that Atlanta will have to make some concessions to Cousins and his health. He wasn’t the most athletic quarterback in the NFL before tearing his Achilles, but if he can’t move even a little bit, that’s a tough problem to solve.
Cousins hasn’t looked great, and we’ll see down the road whether that’s due to his health or him being rusty after not playing in the preseason. Either way, the playcalling with zero play-action passes and a predictable split between shotgun passes and pistol runs has to change. If it can’t change because of Cousins’ health, then Atlanta might have to think about changing its quarterback.
If Cousins doesn’t look better, there will inevitably be lawsuits for Penix Jr., whom the Falcons selected with the eighth overall pick, and they will be justified. Right now, you have to worry that the Falcons spent $180 million on a quarterback who has no functional mobility and will have to rework their entire offense around that.
The Falcons’ second game will be against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, with the whole world watching. Maybe the Falcons will run the same offense, just a little smarter, and Cousins will look better with a game under his belt. But if the Falcons struggle again with a statue at quarterback and return to Atlanta with an 0-2 record, the panic will ramp up a bit.