Falcons’ Bijan Robinson’s next step to greatness is both boring and telling

FLOWERY BRANCH — As Bijan Robinson starts his third season in the NFL, his position coach said what any Falcons fan should want to hear about the star running back.

Not only does Robinson care about improving, but he is willing to dive into the mundane process of getting better at the small details that few people notice. As running backs coach Michael Pitre put it, Robinson has an open mind and an open heart to being coached and a desire to keep improving.

“And that’s where he’s at right now, is that he wants all the information that he can get,” Pitre said Tuesday after the Falcons’ first of two joint practices with the Tennessee Titans.

Any Falcons fan knows Robinson in the broad strokes — the jaw-dropping highlights and staggering numbers that Robinson has amassed in his first three years in the NFL testify to his gathering greatness.

The No. 8 pick of the 2023 draft has emerged as an elite player in the NFL, a running back with speed, elusiveness, vision, power and a keen sense of how to play the position. Last year, he finished third in the league in rushing yards (1,456), fourth in all-purpose yards (1,866) and tied for seventh in touchdowns (15). He led the NFL in missed tackles forced (117). It earned him his first Pro Bowl berth.

In an NFL Network video touting Robinson as the No. 62 player in the league in its top 100, 2025 rushing king Saquon Barkley called him “definitely the next great one, him and (Detroit’s Jahmyr Gibbs). There’s nobody who’s able to cut like Bijan in the NFL.”

But what Pitre laid out as Robinson’s next step was making habits out of the skills that don’t turn heads, such as his footwork when he releases out of the backfield to go out on a pass route or where he places his hands on defenders when pass blocking.

“Can we do the little things consistently?” Pitre said. “Can we continue to focus on the details that are going to allow us to be great down in and down out?”

Robinson’s eagerness to master those small fundamentals speaks volumes about where he is headed. His care over becoming better at hand placement in pass protection signals how high he wants to reach as a running back. If he wants to improve at that, how much more must he want to excel when he actually has the ball? He’s like a naturally gifted student who has an A grade in the class but still wants the extra credit.

That drive can mean only good things for himself and the Falcons as they try to end their seven-year playoff drought and establish themselves as a legitimate championship contender.

Improving upon Robinson’s established standard is difficult, Pitre said, but “that’s not anything that I’m putting on him. That’s something that he wants, and that’s the part that makes it fun coaching a guy like him.”

They make a good pair. Pitre is a teacher at heart. He began his career intending to be a high school coach and teacher, earning a master’s degree in special education. But his excellence as a coach kept moving him up the ladder. You can hear his understanding of pedagogy in the way he talks about pacing lessons, not to overload his players, and making sure that they master the first skill before going on to the second.

“You’re just slowly building the scaffolding and building that thing so slowly you can pull off a little bit and say, ‘OK, here — now you go because you’re ready to go do it,’ if that makes sense,” Pitre said.

And in Robinson, Pitre has a student who is eager and skilled at absorbing the material. Normally, it’s an athlete’s versatility on the field that earns him or her a description as a “Swiss Army knife.” But that is how Pitre described Robinson’s learning aptitude.

Robinson can take in Pitre’s instruction on the practice field as well as he can by watching a video of another running back flashing a certain attribute or skill that Pitre wants him to develop.

“Well, now then, we carry it on the field,” Pitre said. “Then from the field, he watches himself when we go back in the classroom, and it’s just a methodical process. So he hears it, he sees it, he does it, he sees it. It’s that constant, repetitive, over and over and over again process.”