Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan is going from working with Cleveland Browns quarterbacks Brian Hoyer and Johnny Manziel to working with three-time Pro Bowler Matt Ryan.
Yeah, he’s pretty excited about his new gig.
“There’s a lot of good quarterbacks on this planet, but there’s probably only five, maybe eight (in) a given year that people aren’t trying to replace,” Shanahan said Tuesday.
Ryan, 29, who’s set to enter his eighth season in the NFL, guided the Falcons to five consecutive winning seasons and the NFC Championship game after the 2012 season. The team regressed the past two seasons and posted a 10-22 record that led to the dismissal of coach Mike Smith.
Shanahan will be Ryan’s third offensive coordinator. He also played for Mike Mularkey and Dirk Koetter.
When Koetter took over in 2012, he taught himself the Falcons’ verbiage and tweaked the playbook accordingly. Shanahan is coming in with a completely new outside-zone-blocking scheme and a system that requires much more movement from the quarterback.
“Matt Ryan fits into everybody’s offense,” Shanahan said. “When you have a good quarterback like Matt, he’s done little bit of everything whether it’s drop-back. Whether its play-action.
“He hasn’t done a lot of movement stuff, but he has athletic ability to do it. I’m really excited to deal with Matt.”
Shanahan, 35, the son of former longtime NFL coach Mike Shanahan, received his break at age 28 when he became the offensive coordinator of the Houston Texans. His career includes bumpy stops in Washington and Cleveland.
Shanahan’s offenses, which tend to bog down in the red zone, have enjoyed some success in piling up yardage.
In four of his seven years as a coordinator, Shanahan’s offense finished in the top 10 in the league in yardage. His offenses ranked third in overall yards in 2008, fourth in 2009, fifth in 2012 and ninth in 2013. They ranked 18th in 2010, 16th in 2011 and 23rd last season in Cleveland.
The Texans led the league in passing in 2009 with 290.9 yards per game.
Behind the rushing of Alfred Morris and Robert Griffin III, the Redskins led the league in rushing in 2012, with 169.3 yards per game.
Shanahan’s units have consistently struggled in the red zone. In six of his seven years as a coordinator, Shanahan’s units finished in the lower half of the league in red-zone percentage with rankings of 26th, 12th, 19th, 29th, tied for 22nd, tied for 20th and 24th.
“You want to get your best players involved down there,” Shanahan said. “It’s changed with every team. I don’t know all of my numbers or what they’ve been in the red zone over the years. I’m sure that we’ve had good ones … but it depends on your team.”
Shanahan’s scoring rankings are equally unimpressive: 17th, 10th, 25th, 26th, 4th, 23rd and 27th.
Shanahan met Ryan last week. They will not start working together until the offseason program. He believes they’ll be able to bond and improve on those red-zone and scoring numbers.
“Players want to be coached,” Shanahan said. “It’s as important to them as it is to you. They want to do as good as they can. You want a quarterback to believe that you can help him. So you work as hard you can to put guys in a situation to be successful.”
Shanahan’s attack relies on being balanced and having a potent rushing action. He has not fully evaluated the running backs on the roster, but he mentioned Steven Jackson and Devonta Freeman.
“Any type of back can succeed in the system,” Shanahan said. “The type of guys that you want are the type of guys who can put their foot in the ground and get downhill. You want guys who can create arm tackles and run through them. I’m not looking for a guy that you have to give 30 carries to get 100 yards.”
Shanahan wants his running backs to average 4 yards per carry. Jackson averaged 3.7 yards per carry, Freeman 3.8 and Jacquizz Rodgers’ 3.7 last season.
“I don’t have a set opinion right now because I haven’t watched enough tape, but Steven is a guy who I’ve been a huge fan over his whole career,” Shanahan said. “Devonta is someone that I loved coming out of college last year. Then the guy from Oregon State (Rodgers), I loved him coming out of college.”
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