The Pittsburgh Steelers still hope Kenny Pickett is their guy at quarterback, and they hope that former Atlanta Falcons head coach Arthur Smith is the guy to get it out of him as his new offensive coordinator. Smith found success as offensive coordinator with the Tennessee Titans before struggling to a 21-27 overall record in Atlanta.
But he comes along with questions about his resume, questions he won’t be able to answer for many months. One of the chief criticisms Smith received as the Falcons head coach is that he failed to maximize his skill players on offense. ESPN’s Falcons reporter Michael Rothstein doesn’t necessarily agree with that.
“The not using his playmakers is enough is kind of an overblown thing”, he told Ron Cook and Joe Starkey on 93.7 The Fan on Thursday. He said that some of the criticism was a backlash from fantasy football spheres, of which Smith spoke critically.
He also noted the game in which RB Bijan Robinson was barely used despite being absent from the injury report. The NFL ultimately fined both Arthur Smith and the Falcons for not noting an ailment on the injury report. Rothstein believes that while there were some valid criticisms about usage, especially in the passing game, much of it stems from specific narratives lacking nuance or context or which later changed.
Would you believe, for example, that Robinson had the 10th-most yards from scrimmage in the entire NFL last season? He also finished with the 12th-most touches and scored eight total touchdowns. It’s not as though Smith shackled him to the bench.
“Some of the criticisms in the first half of the season last year were valid, especially Bijan Robinson’s usage in the red zone”, Rothstein admitted. He noted that Smith, however, wanted to preserve the Falcons’ rookie running back for the long haul. A lot of head coaches, including Mike Tomlin, ration their young players’ snaps to avoid the rookie wall.
Another interesting observation he made pertained simply to play volume. The Falcons ran the seventh-fewest total offensive plays in the NFL last season. They struggled to sustain drives, making it more difficult to have volume receivers.
WR Drake London still caught 69 passes for 905 yards. TE Kyle Pitts still caught 53 for 667. It’s not like they had bad years or that Smith ignored them. So why didn’t they score more? “Some of it was not-great play calling, to be very blunt”, Rothstein said, “but some of it, too, was the fact that their quarterback, Desmond Ridder, turns the ball over a ton and turns the ball over in the red zone more than any other quarterback in the NFL”.
“There’s only so much that Arthur Smith can do about that”, he said of the former Falcons head coach. While there were “definite questions” about the passing game, part of the answer to many of them was the quality of play at the quarterback position. And Smith called the plays, but he had an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
