Football 301 Playbook: One big question for all 16 losing teams in NFL Week 1

The NFL is back. That means people and teams are winning. That also means we have the correlated losers, too. For this week’s edition of the Football 301 Playbook, I looked at the 16 losers of Week 1, and one question that I have for each team. Some big, some small, some about players, some more arbitrary. Onto the words.

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Result: Lost 18-10 vs. Steelers
Question: Is everything OK with the offense?

I mean, there are a lot of questions to ask, most of them Kirk Cousins related. What I want to focus on are the ramifications of Cousins not being able to move. Like at all.

First were the obvious tendencies that ESPN’s Field Yates tweeted Sunday night, with the Falcons passing the ball every single time they aligned in a shotgun formation.

Interesting note from @ESPNStatsInfo:

The Falcons were in pistol or shotgun on 96% of their snaps today.

Of the 22 snaps out of shotgun, the Falcons had 0 designed runs.

Of the 26 snaps out of pistol, the Falcons ran the ball on 81% of their plays.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) September 9, 2024

There is also the move to pistol sets, which is a way to get to under-center plays, including the play-action plays that have been a key to Cousins’ success in the NFL (and really the whole reason you sign Kirk Cousins). Cousins, notably coming off an Achilles injury, did not have a single play-action dropback in his first game as a Dirty Bird. Sure, you can throw the ball without play-action, and it’s not exactly the magic wand that people may think it is. But it was supposed to be a big part of this iteration of the Falcons’ offense. Get the Sean McVay guy, get the play-action quarterback, run the ball (in the Falcons case, outside zone to the left over and over) and bootleg off those plays to create explosive plays through the air. Cousins is good at it, and offensive coordinator Zac Robinson knows the drill, let’s do this thing.

The first week can lead to overreactions, but this game…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/football-301-playbook-one-big-question-for-all-16-losing-teams-in-nfl-week-1-140100255.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-09-12 14:01:00

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