The Falcons were a good-to-great offensive team for nearly all of quarterback Matt Ryan’s first seven seasons. Then offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan showed up. Suddenly the Falcons are not a good offensive team, and Ryan is having his worst season since he was an NFL neophyte. Shanahan must the problem.
Obviously it’s not that simple because there are lots of variables that go into offensive success. Also, the Falcons’ offense was good this season before it became bad.
But Shanahan is the new coordinator, so he’s taken a lot of criticism from those who see the Falcons flailing on offense as they’ve lost five games in a row after a 6-1 start. Shanahan said he understands the narrative even as he rejects the notion that the Falcons are a bad offensive team.
“Any time you go on a losing streak like we have and are not scoring points, I totally understand people are going to question it. It’s part of the job,” Shanahan said Thursday. “But I think we have done a lot of good things this year.”
Among the evidence Shanahan cites to make the case that the offense isn’t all bad are its league rankings in third-down percentage (second), first downs (third) and yards per game (fifth). He also points to the offense‘s performance during the 5-0 start, when the Falcons averaged 32.4 points per game.
“To say that we are bad, I don’t think would be accurate,” Shanahan said. “But the bottom line is we’ve got to figure out how to score more points.”
That’s been the issue for the Falcons during the losing streak.
Over those five games the Falcons have averaged 17.2 points. They scored have scored only seven touchdowns, with one of those during garbage time against the Vikings. The Falcons scored touchdowns on only seven of 16 trips inside their opponents’ 20-yard line in those five games, including six of their 11 goal-to-go opportunities.
As he has for most of the season, Shanahan points to turnovers as the crux of the problem. Coach Dan Quinn agrees with that assessment, but also added that the Falcons could be more committed to running the ball.
During the losing streak, Falcons running backs have 99 rushing attempts compared with 212 passes by Ryan, a split of 68 percent pass to 32 percent run. That’s in spite of the Falcons never facing a large scoring deficit, with the exception of the one late drive against the Vikings.
“We will always keep chasing the things we do great,” Quinn said. “Are there some games where we want to have more run attempts? Yes. We think that’s more of the (chances for) play action and more of the shots going down the field. We are always searching for that balance.”
It’s up to Shanahan to guide the offense to better results. Even with the fast start, the Falcons’ offense and Ryan have regressed overall from last season to this season, as illustrated by the Defensive-Adjusted Value Over Average metric developed by Pro Football Outsiders.
DVOA measures team and quarterback efficiency by evaluating every play and adjusting for situation and opponent. The Falcons rank 19th in DVOA this season and Ryan ranks 20th. The Falcons ranked 10th in DVOA in 2014, 14th 2013 and 12th in DVOA while Ryan ranked 10th, 15th and sixth.
“I’ve always said you either get better or you get worse,” Shanahan said. “I think in all areas we’ve gotten worse since the beginning of the year. We need to step that up not just in passing, but in the run game also. There are some times we’ve done good, but I think we’ve taken a step back, and we need to change that this week. We’re up to the challenge.”
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