Proud to be a Falcon...Offense

We have all wondered during this winning streak what would happen if BG didn't have lock down defense and had to play from behind and score points....and if the running game was not working...would we be able to move the ball in the air, because little in the past month or so has suggested that we could.

Kent created that situation yesterday.  They were determined that BG was not going to run the ball on them.  That's what I would do against us and that's what you would.  You'd make the passing game beat you.

For a good portion of the game, that looked to be working.  BG lived on big plays and short fields, and had really sustained only one drive (54 yards, missed FG).  BG finished with only 83 rushing yards on 31 attempts.  Coach said in his post-game presser that it became evident that BG was going to have to open it up and when they did, they did find something there.

The issue was that Kent was blitzing Schilz like crazy, which is also something I would do if I was playing our team.  He was only sacked once, but he was under a ton of pressure for much of the game.

I thought our offensive coordinator responded with really good playcalling.  They rolled Schilz out, they managed the protection, and they gave him the time to throw.

And for all the heat Schilz has taken, he really played pretty well.  He missed some throws, but he made a bunch of them too.  He had showed his ability on the deep ball (which is as good as any QB we have had in a long time, in fact), and made the shorter passes too.  He moved around in the pocket effectively to create additional time to throw, and on one last play he actually broke two tackles to get a throw off.  Again, it wasn't a perfect game but he played a very good game when we absolutely had to have it.

Similarly, our WRs have taken a lot of heat and it is probable that some of the heat that ended up on Schilz should have been on the WRs.  Stokes was unable to play due to injury, and with previous injuries that left BG down 3 WRs on a  thin corps to start with.  Chris Gallon really stepped up.  He had a monster game, was open constantly and got yards after the catch.  Kent had no answer for him (10-213-2) and he certainly deserves credit for that.

Also, as mentioned, Shaun Joplin had a huge TD catch earlier in the game and then was all over the place on the final drive, snatching balls out of the air.  He has been largely a forgotten man over the past few weeks but he was showing the skills he has in the final drive.

Note:  Coach said he hoped we could be more balanced in the future on offense.  Let's keep in mind that BG has 1 and maybe 2 more games to play.  Our passing game has those opportunities to build on this confidence and make us all that much harder to beat.

The ultimate demise of the offense was something that is familiar to Falcon fans, and that is an inability to score in the red zone.  It has been much better this year.  In fact, while BG is last in red zone percentage in the conference, we have a high proportion of the scores we did get as TDs, which means BG is actually 5th in red zone points per trip.  In addition, we have 5 missed FGs in the redzone, which can't be put on the offense.  We have been stopped on downs 7 times in the redzone...the next highest is 4...this, too, is an artifact of the kicking game.  In general, the redzone game has been pretty decent this year.

In this game, however, BG had 3 points to show for 3 red zone trips and that was really the difference in the game.  I understand that the dynamics of the game are that those last two are kind of linked, but the point is that BG had 3 shots inside the 20 to get the points they needed, and despite the ability to move the ball down there, when the spaces got tight we had nothing to work with yesterday.

I give our guys credit.  Our opponent shut down our strength and we adjusted to it and it was almost enough.  One more completed pass--the Bayer pass will haunt us for the summer, I suspect--and it is a completely different story.

One note on that, however.  BG was only driving to tie the game, and Clawson made it clear by inference that he would have kicked the point to tie the game.  Even if BG scores on those last drives, the game is only tied, and in overtime, they still have Dri Archer.  I think we feel like we were driving for a win but it isn't necessarily so.