FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. – A new coaching staff always brings a degree of change to a football team.
But the Falcons offensive line has had more than it’s share of adjustments through the offseason. For starters, for the first time since 2004, the linemen have decided to grant interviews to the media instead of working as a silent group.
Now it’s a little easier for the offensive line to express the system changes that came with the hiring of Head Coach Bobby Petrino.
It’s challenging, but they’re excited about the possibilities.
“Right now we’re just getting started up front,” starting center Todd McClure said. “We have a long ways to go… I can let you know more as we get closer to opening day.”
Petrino and his staff, which includes former Louisville offensive line coach Mike Summers, inherited one of the best offensive lines in the NFL when they arrived in Atlanta.
The Falcons led the league in rushing yards last season (183.7 yards per game) and totaled 86 rushes of 10 or more yards (5.5 yards per attempt). The offensive line also led the way for six 200-plus rushing yard games – tops in the NFL.
But that was under a different scheme that focused more on zone-blocking.
The Falcons are looking to run a more complex scheme this season with many different blocking techniques.
“We employee a lot of offense and, involved in that offense, are pull schemes, trap schemes, base schemes and zone schemes,” Summers said after Monday’s practice. “It’s a complicated offense with a lot of different techniques and it takes time for them to be able to adjust to that because of the variety of what we do.”
The coach last ran the offensive live at the University of Louisville, which cleared the way for prolific success.
The Cardinals ranked 12th in Division I in rushing last season averaging 185.1 rushing yards per game. That total ranked better than some teams with some of college football’s best running backs including Ohio State (Antonio Pittman), Northern Illinois (Garrett Wolfe), Rutgers (Ray Rice), Michigan (Michael Hart) and Penn State (Tony Hunt).
The team averaged 5 yards per carry and finished third in the nation with 35 rushing touchdowns.
Louisville also finished seventh in the nation in passing offense (290 yards per game) and second in total offense (475.3 per game). Both were also good for the top spot in the Big East Conference.
This is the third offensive system as a pro for McClure and he’s certain the team will pick it up and see similar success.
Learning the system has presented its challenges, according to Summers, but the team has time to perfect the new plays. In some cases, training camp is a third time to go over parts of the offense.
“It’s tougher to learn than any other system I’ve had to learn but I think it’s going to be really good for us once we all get it down,” McClure said. “It’s getting us in some good plays against some bad defenses that are coming at us. It looks good and the more we practice the better we’ll get at it.”
“I think everybody’s focused on what to do and the complexity of what we do is markedly increased over what they’ve done here in the past because of the amount of offense that we run,” Summers said. “The thing we have to do is overcome the number of plays that we have and the number of techniques that we have. It's early in camp and time will be the answer for that.”
