Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan discussed the team’s audible system on Wednesday.
Under the former offensive coordinators Mike Mularkey and Dirk Koetter, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan had wide-ranging audible authority.
He has an audible option – to check a run into a pass or vice versa at the line of scrimmage – on maybe 50 percent of the plays, according to Shanahan.
Because of the team’s outside zone running style, Shanahan is not afraid to run into eight-man fronts in order to keep a defense honest.
“Not all of them,” Shanahan said when asked about Ryan’s audible authority. “A lot of them you do. You don’t want to get into that game all of the time. Then the sky is getting too bad.
“Sometimes you need to run the ball into a bad look to slow down the (defensive) line. Sometimes you’re getting an eight-man front all game and if it’s all run-pass-check, you’re going to throw the ball every play.
“If you do that, you’re going to have trouble blocking people. I would say on half of them he has a chance to do that. Some of them are just called as runs.”
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