There's a simple truth involved anytime a group of men work as a team, no matter if the men make up a football team, a construction crew, or an infantry squad, and that truth is, to a man, every last one of them must believe 100% in what their leader is selling them as the best way to do the job in order to be successful as a team.
I knew after the '98 Super Bowl that his offense was going to have a hard time beating good defenses from that point on. Shannahan did a masterful job of pointing out the flaw in Reeves offense, in terms so simple and clear that even a person like me, that has never played or coached above Pop Warner level, could easily see.
Motivated by the desire to show his old coach, and the rest of the league that he and Elway were right when they tried to get Reeves to change his offense years ago, Shannahan forever silenced those who accused him and Elway of railroading Reeves out of his Denver job, demonstrating the predictability of Reeves offense on the Super Bowl stage for all the world, and the league's coordinators, to see.
This falcon team knows this. Some have played for other teams, some have friends on other teams, and they know as well as the league does that Reeves offense is predictable.
But even with this handicap, they came into this season with very high expectations knowing that Vick could overcome the predictability with his speed, and that they had more than a good shot at being very good this year.
When Vick broke his leg, this team took a shot to it's confidence, but still had the will to overcome the obtacles it faced in order to succeed. ALthough they knew their task was made a lot tougher with Doug Johnson at qb, they believed, like I did, that he was good enough to keep them afloat until Vick returned.
But, this team had a small shred of doubt in it's mind about Johnson being able to overcome the predictability of this offense. When the Washington game blew up in the falcon's faces, that small shred of doubt quickly turned into a complete loss of faith into what their leader was selling them as the best way to succeed, and their play for the next seven games is absolute proof of that.
Before the Washington game, Johnson, a qb molded under Spurrier, had performed well when given the chance to play. In his four seasons, he had mastered Reeves playbook, done well at reading defenses. Coupled with his height, and a very strong, accurate arm, Johnson has all the tools of the prototypical NFL pocket passer.
Ironically, Johnson's old coach was standing on the opposite sideline as the coach of the Redskins in that blow up game. And that was a contributing factor to Johnson losing his confidence in this system.
After the falcons had shut down the Redskins offense by blitzing down after down, he saw Spurrier make a mid game adjustment by going to the wide receiver screen. The very first screen the Redskins threw, which was right after the series that saw the falcons throwing the ball three straight downs with a 17-0 lead , five minutes to go till half, and a missed Feely field goal, caught the falcons blitzing, and allowed the redskins receiver to break off a long play barely getting tackled inside the falcons five yard line.
After that play, Spurrier stuck to that wide receiver screen play after play, taking away the falcons blitz, and subjecting the falcons defense to play after play of 40 yard wind sprints chasing down the sideline screen for about ten straight plays. I watched Johnson and Spurrier use this same strategy against my beloved Georgia Bulldogs, with Donnan standing on the sideline with the same look on his face that Reeves had when watching Spurrier use that screen force his defense to run itself to death.
Point is, Johnson and the falcons watched as Spurrier made a mid game adjustment that helped his offense go from useless to productive, putting them in the best position to win the game. On the other hand, they watched Reeves abandon the running game with a big lead, and call passing plays every down, which the Redskins shut down with blitz after blitz. And they knew no adjustment would be made.
What makes the falcons downfall this season even worse looking on Reeves, is like the Redskins game, there were 5 losses this year with a common thread: Going into halftime with leads, but losing the game. In all of those losses, the falcons were able to move the ball on offense in the first half, but had series after series of three and out offensive possesions in the second half.
Like the Washington(17-14 was once a 17-0 lead) game, the falcons had halftime leads in the Eagles(13-10), Titans(21-14), Vikings(20-12),Saints(20-3) games.
In every single one of those games, Dan Reeves abandoned a running game after building leads. A running game that was helping his young qb move the offense, building those leads. A running game that gave him no reason to stop.
Even when Reeves would run the ball, back to back runs were rare to see. Think about that, Reeves stopped doing the one thing giving his team a chance to win with the young qb they had, after it had helped him in building early leads.
My falcons are on, so I'll be back to finish this later.
But read what I've posted above so far, think about it, and my basic answer is yes, what happened during the Washington game, continued on through 6 games this year that I listed in the previous post that the falcons played well, built leads, and then blew the leads in the second half.
All of those games were lostIMO, what the end of the season and the hiring of Mckay have proving to be Reeves trying to keep his job by showing that his system is really superior like he has claimed from the day he got here.
I've never saw Reeves call plays that prolong, and not kill off game time. I've never saw Reeves abandon the run leading late in games before this season.
If the 98 Falcons had been the team up 17-0 on the redskins with five minutes to go till half, Reeves would've run Jamal down after down, maybe mixing in a short throw to keep the defense honest.
The thing is, before the Redskins game, I have not once saw occasion to criticize Dan's play calling, or felt right talking about what I knew to be a predictable offense to my football buddies. He had done well with it, and I kept my mouth shut.
I've seen enough bad play calling this season, that after the blown Minnesota game, the results became as predictable as Reeves offense.
I've seen many series that the falcons were either leading or leading big, that were three throws and out.
I've seen many series that start with the running game putting us in third and less than five situations, and in the vast majority of those, Reeves calls another seven step drop, progressive read, and throw. What one of my favorite sportswriters, ESPN Len Pass the Jelly, calls the stop, drop, and flop, the description of Reeves passing offense than Len used when the word Reeves was coming to Atlanta broke.
More than any other factor, more than Reeves predictable passing offense, the most responsible factor for this offense blowing the lead in 6 games this year, and this season going to hell, is the play calling that instead of getting more conservative with small leads, or lining up with a two tight end offset eye and outright beating teams into submission with down after down of 250 pound TJ Duckett, in games with big leads like the Skins(17-0), Siants2(20-3), and Tennessee(20-3).
WHen I first heard of the Mckay-Gruden fued afew weeks ago, I knew then why Dan had all of a sudden went from the coach that in seven years has not once made a play calling error, to the one this year that brought back horrible flashbacks of the run and shoot, Glanville, June Jones, and the price that the falcons paid for it's part in running an offense that had no business living in the NFL as long as the falcons ran it. For the run and shoot years, and for the crime of forcing people to watch football under a roof, the game punished the falcons by taking away one of the best qb's of all time, Brett Favre, and giving him to the storied Packers, bringing them out of the depths of last place back to their past glory. You know the rest of the story.
For most of this season, I argued with a local AJC sportswriter via e-mail about this season. Me saying it's Reeves and his offense, the writer sticking to bashing these players.
I've known all along why the team was losing, what befuddled me was why. When the Mckay-Gruden thing first surfaced a few weeks ago, right before Vick returned,it all made perfect sense.
Reeves has taken the oppurtunity when given leads built by running the ball, and playing smart, move the chains offense with some short, quick throws mixed in, and cost his young, fragile team games when he tried to show Blank, and what he knew would be Mckay as the GM, is that his passing offense was so superior, that even a young qb with little experience could win games throwing the ball.
I saw the same team that beat Dallas, and dominated Washington for a half, in the first half of almost all the games this year that they built leads in. The offense moving the ball, and the defense playing well.
Then, like a flip of the switch, out the team comes for the second half, and Reeves starts trying to throw the ball fifteen yards down the field every down, trying to force Johnson to move the ball and win games under the hardest possible pass play to complete at a percentage high enough to sustain long, clock killing drives.
I know that if I were a coach with a young, but talented qb like Johnson that had little NFL game experience, two backs that include Dunn the speed back, and Duckett, the 250 pound change up for those occasions when it's time to pound a defense, a rookie fullback from Miss State named Griffin thats hit many quick five yard dives, and gotten decent yardage when thrown the ball in the short zone.
Throw in tight end Algae Crumpler(6'7") and receiver Brian Finneran, both are tall, making them easy targets on short to medium yardage possesion type passes in traffic.
Add our blocking tight end, longtime veteran Brian Kozlowski for two tight end power running formations when it's TJ time, and I've got an offense that I'm going to use to run the ball alot, and when I do throw, it's going to be short passes to Crumpler, Finneran, or any one of the three backs that do well catching the ball short, and getting yardage after the catch.
I'd be more than happy to get six yards a play running safe plays that might not get mega yardage, but they don't subject a young qb to the hazards of seven step drop, progressive read offenses, the blitz, and bad decisions resulting in negative plays.
I know Reeves knows this, because this is how the falcons built leads all year, running the ball, and throwing short passes, controlling the ball.
And they blew those leads because Reeves abandoned what was the smart thing to do, and went straight to doing what no sane coach with Reeves experience would do with leads in the later half of games, and that's try and throw the ball downfield every down with a young qb and a predictable passing offense.
It went against what I know from the thousands of games from NFL down to Pop warner level that I have watched since I first fell in love with this game as a young kid in the seventies until this current season, and from what I've seen Reeves do in seven years as falcons coach, what I know to be the surefire way to blow leads in this league, and that's throw a high percentage of high risk, long yardage passes, that don't take time off the clock and aren't the plays that young qb's in predictable offenses can win with.
THere's more to this story, I stayed up late last night writing trying to finish my reply to your question that I never directly answered completely because the falcons game snuck on me before I got around to finishing the point I was trying to make in answering your question in the detailed manner it deserves, in order to understand what happened. Because I know what I saw, and I know that differs from what the media said after every loss this year.
I knew what I saw wasn't the fault of a defense that did more than the offense this year, and would give up points after being forced to spend most games on the field, due to three throws and out offense.
The moment I lost a little something for Reeves, a man that I admired greatly for what he did for my falcons, and what he gave the NFL, which was most of his life as a player or coach, was after a 36-0 beating by the rams, I saw Reeves take the post game press conference podium, and just slam his defense blaming their play as the main factor in a loss that saw the offense do nothing all game, and get shut out.
Hope I answered your question, but I've got to get busy, I'm at work. I've got more to add to this saga, including a game by game breakdown, from preseason till now of each falcon game this year, what I saw, compared with what Reeves and the media blamed for the loss, which always was the players on this team, which have shown an incredible amount of loyalty to Reeves, and the game, by keeping their mouth shut through this whole ordeal out of respect for their old school coach.
I cannot stand by and let the players of this team take the fall for this season, even though Mckay is now here, Reeves is now gone, and as a long suffering falcon fan who suffered through another typical falcon season that went in the toilet, but unlike many falcons teams I had seen go 4-12 due to having no talent, this one was different, and I knew it.
After watching how this team tried, after watching Keith Brooking, who I watched play high school ball at East Coweta high, play the best he could all year with broke vertebrae in his back, and his defense take most of the blame for this season when they more than held their own this year when given the chance, I refused to remain silent, and have typed my fingers to the bone defending them all year.
More later.