What happened in the game last night?
Great thread.
What are your thoughts on both lines seemingly getting manhandled up front? Is that a physical/technique issue that may be hard to fix? Or do you think it’s more of an outlier?
Could be a little of both, though I'm gonna go back to crowd noise. So on the offensive side, the silent count means that the OL is not getting the jump on the DL that they usually get. Like the DL, the OL is now keying ball movement, whereas in a less noisy environment, the OL knows the snap count and the defense doesn't.
Which is exatly what the Saints defense was dealing with on the other side. If they're at home, they're able to tee off the way the Falcons defense was.
That said, the Falcons were definitely more gap sound on both sides of the ball. They looked like they had really repped the zone run game heavily and targeted the Saints fronts, focusing for instance on "this is how we're gonna combo the 3-tech up to the backer" vs. the 2i vs. the 1-tech, etc. I think having that snap count jump, coming hard off the ball, and the Saints being on the smaller side inside really worked in their favor. Also, as I said before, they were just running zone all game with some fomrational and backfield window dressing. Narrowly focusing a gameplan like that also works in an offense's favor... so long as the point of focus is executed effectively, which it was (if it's not, then you haven't repped the other stuff so you may not be as sound if the opponent throw some different looks at you).
If your zone reps during the week aren't being shaved away by reps of power or counter or whatever else during the run periods, then you have more time to perfect it and cover more situations. It worked really well for the Falcons. But I do think it will be a much different game in New Orleans, where the Falcons won't have those same structural advantages.