Breaking down the problems with Dirk Koetter’s offense

Despite a very impressive performance from the defense on Sunday—Atlanta’s undermanned, much-maligned unit held the reigning Super Bowl champions to just 17 points—the Falcons once again managed to lose in the final minutes. The team put together just two scoring drives in the entire game and had a third fall short when star kicker Younghoe Koo missed the game-tying 39-yard FG attempt.

It’s honestly becoming comical at this point, as the Falcons seem to be exhausting all the normal ways to lose and are forced to come up with increasingly creative ones every week. We all know Atlanta can’t protect leads, but against the Chiefs they could barely move the ball at all. In this week’s Falcons Film Review, we’re going to take a closer look at Atlanta’s offensive struggles and find out who deserves the blame.

It’s Dirk Koetter.

In this week’s video, I break down Atlanta’s opening drive—where the team got out to a hot start on a big play to Todd Gurley, only to put up negative yardage on the ensuing 3 plays and punt from the Kansas City 49. It was a perfect encapsulation of all the problems with Koetter’s scheme: ineffective runs on early downs, incredibly conservative playcalls on 2nd down, and high-difficulty plays on 3rd and long.

I plan to do another video getting into more of the stats that illustrate Koetter’s schematic issues, but this is a good example of some of his worst tendencies and shortcomings as a playcaller and offensive designer.

I hope you enjoy this week’s film review! Please leave your (preferably constructive) comments below and let me know what other types of breakdowns you’d like to see. If you haven’t already, be sure to Like the video and Subscribe to our YouTube channel!