The 2020 version of the Atlanta Falcons, much like the 2020 version of most things, are very, very bad. While most of this badness is centralized in the Dan Quinn/Raheem Morris defense and Ben Kotwica’s special teams, the offense has not been without fault through Atlanta’s 0-3 start to the season. Last week, I called attention to Koetter’s overly-conservative tendencies on second down. This week, we’ll look at another similar problem with the offense: running the ball on 2nd-and-long.
The 2nd-and-long run has been one of the most consistent boogeymen of the analytics community.