Falcons need to make Kyle Pitts the focus in the red zone

For as good as Kyle Pitts was during his rookie season, his touchdown numbers were extremely underwhelming and much of that is due to the Falcons coaching staff.

Kyle Pitts caught the first and only touchdown of his career against the Jaguars in London, for the fourth-overall pick to only have one touchdown on the year is simply ridiculous and Arthur Smith needs to make sure that does not happen again.

Kyle Pitts should be the focal point of the Falcons’ offense in the red zone at all times

The Falcons need to, first and foremost, put Kyle Pitts in the best situation for him to succeed. And that should mean being the top target for the offense and that also needs to continue inside the opponent’s 20-yard line

There is no excuse for a six-foot-six tight end, who has some of the best receiving skills that the NFL has ever seen, to only be able to come down with a single touchdown in 17 games.

Despite only having that one touchdown, Kyle Pitts actually did get the highest percentage of targets inside the 20 on the team. Still, for whatever reason, Matt Ryan and he could not connect on most of them as they had a 37.5 completion percentage.

Even though he had the highest percentage of targets on the team, it was still not high enough as he accounted for 18.6% of the team’s red-zone targets.

When Arthur Smith was calling plays for the Titans in 2020, Jonnu Smith was their leader in percentage of red-zone targets with 24.36%. I think we can all agree that Kyle Pitts is the better player and is a better threat in that specific area of the field, and any part of the field for that matter.

Pitts should be getting around one-fourth of the targets near the end zone, he is too good to not throw him the ball, even if sometimes you have to force it. Arthur Smith needs to call more fade routes for Pitts, and put him in a position to use his size and strength to snag the football. It should not be that complicated.

In fact, go look at when Kyle Pitts scored in the Pro Bowl, sure the players were not exactly going full speed but all they did was throw a quick slant route to him and he was able to score. Simply put, more plays need to be called that allow Pitts to score, he should not always be used as a decoy like Julio Jones was for much of his career.