Tommy Rees unlocked the Falcons' offense by channeling his inner Joe Brady

Across the first two weeks of the season, Falcons fans were already preparing to turn against new OC Tommy Rees. After two weeks, Atlanta was near the bottom of the NFL in virtually every offensive category, as they averaged just eight points per game with Cooper Rush starting, which makes it tough for any play-caller to find ways to move the football.

It looked like the decision for Kevin Stefanski to go buddy-buddy with his OC hire was not smart, and was even more confusing that he was calling plays over Stefanski. But ever since Michael Penix Jr. returned, Rees has done his best Joe Brady impression and this Atlanta offense has been humming.

The Falcons are averaging 40 points per game across their last two games and lead the NFL in total yards amid two straight 21-point victories in Weeks 3 and 4.. Part of that is Rees being able to call plays without a hand being tied behind his back, but he's playing into Penix's strengths as a passer.

According to ESPN's Bill Barnwell, the Falcons dialed up play-action nine times in the 45-24 victory over the Saints. And on those plays, Penix went 7-for-9 for 164 passing yards and a touchdown--which was a beautiful throw to Jahan Dotson. He also averaged 18 yards per attempt on play-action.

That's Rees finally being able to open up the playbook now that he has a quarterback capable of making all of those throws. But his play-calling deserves credit. He started with the run game and short passes in order to get his QB in a rhythm, but once that happened, he wanted to circumvent the defense's expectations and dial up the deep shots--an area where Michael Penix Jr. excels.

Tommy Rees is finally starting to dial up play-action with the Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons were never really a team who ran play-action last year or let Penix line up under center, and that was frustrating. Even through the first three weeks of this season, the Dirty Birds ran play-action just 10% of the time. But against the Saints, he logged just 20 pass attempts. And with nine of them coming off of play-action, they ran play-action 45% of the time for their highest total of the year by a wide margin.

This should be a lesson Rees picked up from Brady given how successful things have been for the Bills. According to Sharp Analytics, Joe Brady and the Bills run play-action at the highest rate (22.8%) in the league, which makes life tough on opposing DCs because of all that they have to account for.

This is the sort of offense we want to see. If the Bills can be successful running play-action with Khalil Shakir and Josh Palmer as their primary deep threats (plus Dalton Kincaid, James Cook and DJ Moore plus Allen's mobility), Atlanta can do more with better weapons at their disposal like Drake London, Kyle Pitts, and Bijan Robinson. And the primary deep threats are likely London, Pitts, and Jahan Dotson. In fact, they also have the lowest three-and-out rate this year and the Bills are second.

Throughout the first couple of weeks, the Falcons weren't generating any sort of explosive plays, so Rees instead decided to take things into this own hands. Atlanta wants to play physical smash-mouth football and win at the line of scrimmage, and even though the run game turned heads at the Superdome, they want to use the run-heavy approach to set up the passing game.

With Joe Brady calling plays, the Bills can beat you in so many ways. But it's easy to be aggressive calling plays when you have the best QB in the sport, but the 34-year-old is doing this with Michael Penix Jr., a guy with upside but someone still fighting to prove himself as a franchise quarterback.

Tommy Rees is showing he's one of the better up-and-coming offensive minds in the sport, as his ability to play to Penix's strengths as a play-action and intermediate passer is proof the key to succeeding with this Atlanta Falcons' offense was simple.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow