6 Defining Atlanta Falcons storylines heading into team's 2024 bye week

Play-Calling

Similar to the quarterback play the play-calling has been very up-and-down.

Outside of the horrendous showing in Week 1, Zac Robinson has been a solid to good signal caller. Falcons fans need to keep in mind this is just his first year calling plays, so there will be a lot of things Robinson is still getting adjusted to.

Early in the season, it was clear that Robinson was learning from each game, specifically each loss. After Week 1 where Cousins operated primarily out of the pistol, Robinson had him under center on the first play of the game. The Falcons also utilized play-action, something they did not do a single time in the first game of the season.

In Week 3 he tried forcing the ball to Bijan Robinson who had under 2 yards per carry against the Chiefs. This ultimately cost the Falcons the game as they ran an outside run on a 4th and short which the Chiefs stopped easily.

In Week 4 Bijan Robinson was not getting much against the Saints, so he switched to using Tyler Allgeier in the 4th quarter and it ended up working.

Weeks 5-6 the Falcons offense was humming, averaging 37 points per game. Since Week 6 the play-calling has been up-and-down, but there has been a lot more good than bad. For example, the 4th down play-call against the Cowboys which led to a wide-open Darnell Mooney touchdown was a brilliant play-call.

The issue is Robinson's insistence on calling screens. He calls them far too often and more often than not it simply does not work out.

In 11 games this season the Falcons have scored 30+ three times, in 54 games under Arthur Smith the Falcons scored 30+ three times and one of those occurred in Week 18 against a Buccaneers team that did not play their starters the entire second half. Robinson has also utilized his weapons better than Smith ever could. The Falcons have five players with 450+ yards from scrimmage (Drake London, Darnell Mooney, Bijan Robinson, Tyler Allgeier, Kyle Pitts) most in the NFL. Even the Lions have not done that this season and they currently have arguably the best offense in football.

Fade out the WR bubble screens and this play-calling is good. One huge issue is that a lot of times drives stall out due to the Falcons' penalties. In the Falcons' first matchup against the Saints, they scored 0 offensive touchdowns, however, Bijan Robinson had a screen which he took to the house which was called back due to a holding call. Similarly, in that same game, the Falcons were lined up to go for a 4th-and-1 which they did not get to attempt due to a false start.

The Falcons have 65 offensive penalties thus far, which is in the upper half of the league. Definitely something Raheem Morris and company will want to clean up coming out of the bye week.