David Levine
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Joined: 7/14/2007
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The Big Thing: Week 1 panic meter
Caleb Williams and Bo Nix: It's probably fine
Williams was not good against the Titans on Sunday, no two ways around it. The Bears' rookie quarterback missed shallow and deep throws he should have hit, panicked in the pocket when it got a little bit messy and let mistakes compound. The game seemed too fast for him at times. It was an extremely rookie performance.
This is certainly disappointing for a No. 1 pick who had a great preseason. Excitement in Chicago was towering, and this feels like a huge letdown even after the Bears escaped with the 24-17 victory.
But because many of Williams' mistakes were classic rookie blunders, I'm not overly concerned. In fact, when Williams wasn't in his own head about reads, pressures and downs and distances, he had some flashy moments. I particularly liked this throw on the move to DJ Moore. You can't teach a guy to generate this much power on the move, especially with such a lightning-fast release.
Nix did fewer "Holy smokes!" things than Williams, but he has always done fewer "Holy smokes!" things than Williams -- that's not his game. Nix is a quick distributor who takes what the defense gives him and relies on his playmakers to run after the catch and create explosive plays.
And that was always going to be a shaky approach considering the Broncos don't have the league's most dynamic pass catchers. It can work if Nix is super accurate on intermediate throws he gets within structure, but that wasn't the case Sunday, a 26-20 loss to the Seahawks. Nix was late on most of his pass attempts, which didn't burn him on running back swings but certainly hurt him when attacking tight windows between zones downfield. Nix was 1-of-9 throwing between 11 to 20 yards against the Seahawks for a shockingly poor minus-45.8% completion percentage over expectation, per NFL Next Gen Stats. One of those nine throws was this interception, which was so late and poorly placed that color commentator Adam Archuleta could not hide his dismay.
As the game slows down for Nix, he'll hit those throws more consistently -- and he'll give his receivers that additional half-second of time needed to turn upfield, break a tackle and create more after the catch. The ceiling in such an approach is obviously low, but that's what Broncos coach Sean Payton wants from his hand-selected first-round quarterback. It might take a few weeks to get Nix up to speed, but I'm confident he can get there; it's just a matter of how effective the offense will be once he does.
It is important, as always, to calibrate rookie quarterback expectations -- especially after a season like the one C.J. Stroud just produced. Stroud's success can create biases toward higher rookie expectations this season. ESPN's Bill Barnwell did an excellent job detailing this. Most Week 1 starts for rookies are bad.
Kirk Cousins: It's probably not fine
When a 36-year-old quarterback coming off an Achilles injury takes his first snaps of the season in a new offense, expectations should be tempered. I have to remind myself that I always expected Cousins and the Falcons' offense to be flat in Week 1, then find their stride as September went on. But I did not expect Cousins to be this flat.
There are two wildly concerning stats from the Falcons' 18-10 loss to the Steelers on Sunday. The first is from ESPN Stats & Information, via NFL Next Gen Stats: The Falcons were in pistol or shotgun on 96% of their snaps Sunday. On 22 snaps from shotgun, they had 0 designed runs. On 26 snaps out of the pistol, they ran the ball 21 times (81%).
It is unacceptable to have an offense this siloed. You are tipping your hand to the defense so clearly that there's no way to recover. Check out this pistol snap and keep an eye on Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen.
Queen is stepping down into the B-gap even as the ball is snapped because he's supremely confident that a handoff is coming. Even the behavior of edge rusher T.J. Watt (who was knifing inside against pistol all game to blow up run plays) and linebacker Payton Wilson (not as fast to step down as Queen but still pretty fast) tells you that the Steelers knew what they were getting from the Falcons' offense.
But why were the Falcons so siloed? If I had to guess, it's because Cousins' mobility is still drastically limited. Here's the other concerning stat, from NFL Next Gen Stats: Cousins moved an average of 3.1 yards per dropback in this game, which is the least dropback movement he has had in a single game of his career by more than a full yard. That's beyond "pocket passer." That's statuesque. That's petrified.
This is why the Falcons were in pistol instead of under center -- because the path to the handoff on under-center dropbacks is far longer. The play-action dropbacks are correspondingly longer as well, and the Falcons did not want to (or could not) ask Cousins to take those paths.
Pistol isn't inherently bad, of course. Offenses have been wrinkling in pistol snaps for the past few years, with the Rams leading the charge in 2023 while now-Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson was on staff. But while pistol can provide new angles in the run game, it is not meant to fully replace under-center runs and play-action passes. The timing of runs is different and less effective, and the play-action menu is much smaller, too. (In this case, the play-action menu was as small as possible. For the first time in his career, Cousins did not attempt a single play-action pass.)
But that's exactly what the Falcons tried to do in Week 1. Look at the percentage of Cousins' passes that came from under center and pistol alignments in his career, along with the percentage of throws that came on the move.
There is another concern with Cousins' Achilles besides dropback movement and quarterback alignment, and it's far simpler and more glaring: Cousins doesn't look comfortable driving the football just yet. Watch the mechanics of this throw on third-and-15. See how Cousins' back foot isn't connected to the ground at all and is just drifting forward as he tries to generate enough velocity to hit this tight window? That's the leg on which he popped the Achilles, and this sort of rep indicates to me he doesn't trust it just yet.
I'm confident this can and will get better for the Falcons and Cousins. The question is, how much better?
The first improvements are easy and come from the running game. Atlanta was dominated in the run game by the Steelers' interior defensive line, achieving a success rate of only 38.4% on runs between the tackles. When the Falcons started getting outside the tackle box, that number jumped to 75%. So long as they're a pistol and shotgun team, their running game should probably look more like the 49ers' run game (which is very good from the gun/into the boundary) than the Rams' run game this coaching staff left behind (which wants to live between the tackles). The Steelers are one of the best run-defending fronts Atlanta will face all season, too. Things will get easier, especially as this team starts to integrate some shotgun runs.
An improved running game will lift the onus from Cousins to carry the team early and hopefully keep the Falcons' offense afloat until he gets his sea legs under him. The problem is the early hole the Falcons dig for themselves might be too tough to escape. Atlanta faces Philadelphia and Kansas City in its next two games, and of the 247 teams to start 0-3 since 1966, exactly six have made the playoffs. Atlanta better find a way to make its offense work ... fast.
One final note on Cousins' recovery and subsequent play style: I have been very critical of the Michael Penix Jr. pick in Atlanta. I thought it showed hubris and short-sightedness rather than foresight. Many of the justifications that the Falcons' brass have made for the selection have failed to change my read on the situation. But let me draw a hypothetical universe for you -- one in which, somewhere between the mid-March signing of Cousins and late-April drafting of Penix, the Falcons became a lot more concerned about Cousins' long-term health than they had been previously.
In that universe, I would find the Penix pick remarkably more defensible, even though I didn't and still don't like the prospect that much. Of course, there would be new questions to ask about the process of courting, signing and evaluating Cousins, and we're not even sure that this hypothetical universe is the real universe. But if the Falcons were seeing then what we're seeing now, I could start to understand the Penix pick a little better.
Daniel Jones: I don't know what you expected
Can one truly panic when there was no hope remaining to lose?
https://www.espn.com/nfl/insider/story/_/id/41194302/nfl-week-1-ben-solak-lessons-stats-predictions-mailbag-panic-meter
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