Published by the NY Times
Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Dwayne Ledford thinks about that a lot.
Lee, the world’s most famous martial artist, was talking about the value of mastering basic skills. Ledford, the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive line coach, has been practicing the same kick for the last three years.
“I love that Bruce Lee quote,” he said. “The more I can do that one thing over and over, and I feel like I’ve got it down pat and it doesn’t matter what the defense does, then there is that belief that, ‘It doesn’t matter what they show, we can do this.’”
For the last three years, the Falcons’ one kick in the running game was the outside zone, and under former head coach Arthur Smith, they might have run it close to 10,000 times counting practice repetitions. Ledford and Smith drilled it over and over, emphasizing the precision and the devotion to detail that they believe separates a good running game from a great running game.
Atlanta ran outside zone on an NFL-high 49 percent of its run plays the last two seasons, according to FTN Data (which has charted run concept data for the last two seasons). No other team ran it more than 36 percent of the time.
Bruce Lee would have been proud.
“I think there’s a lot to that (idea),” Ledford said. “There’s a balance in doing too much and being just OK at a lot of things versus being great at something. That’s the balance that you always have to strive for and try to find.”
But the Falcons have a new head coach in Raheem Morris and a new offensive coordinator in Zac Robinson and new offensive DNA. Robinson has spent his entire five-year NFL coaching career working under Sean McVay with the Los Angeles Rams, most recently as passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Rams. The McVay system has been less devoted to the outside zone than Smith and company were in Atlanta.
The outside zone will remain a part of the Falcons’ run game, but it may not be the backbone it has been the last three seasons. What exactly will be kept and added and changed is part of what Atlanta’s coaches are still determining in training camp, and they’re not interested in talking in much detail about it.
“Without giving away anything crazy, we (the Falcons) have had a lot of success running the outside zone. We’ve got a lot of history with that with Dwayne Ledford and the starting offensive linemen,” Morris said. “Obviously, that was a part of our system in L.A. and D.C. (when Morris coached in Washington), but you always have to be able to sprinkle in some of your other runs, whether it be gap schemes, your downhill runs, inside zone, whatever it may be. You’re always going to have a bread and butter. That’s going to be what you rely on, and then you have to have your changeups.”
Morris won’t commit to whether the outside zone will still be the Falcons’ bread and butter.
“We’re going to run some wide (outside) zone, we’re going to run some mid zone, we’re going to run some gap scheme,” he said. “We will have a plethora of all of it in there. Our identity will come out.”
The Rams ran outside zone 14.8 percent of the time the last two seasons, the ninth-lowest rate in the league. They had a better success percentage on the concept than Atlanta (42.2 percent compared with 41.4 percent). The Falcons’ success rate on its outside zone concepts ranked 13th in the NFL the last two years, according to FTN, a sign that league defenses might have been catching up to the plan.
Second-year Falcons running back Bijan Robinson has seen more variety in the run game so far this year, he said.
“Now we have so much other stuff,” he said. “We’re trying to spread it out, not be predictable and let the defense figure out what we’re going to do.”
One of the reasons the Falcons drafted Robinson with the No. 8 pick two years ago is they thought his vision and cutback ability would make him the perfect fit for an outside zone scheme even though it’s not what he was familiar with at the University of Texas. He has enjoyed, he said, moving back toward his college roots.
“If you can do a lot of things really, really well, then the sky is the limit,” he said. “You can do one thing really well, but if they scheme up what you’re doing. … If we can do other things really, really well, they don’t really know what to expect. That’s how I think the run game will get to where we want it, and be No. 1 in rushing.”
Ledford had opportunities to leave Atlanta for other jobs after Smith was fired, and Morris retained him in part by adding run game coordinator to his title. Coordinating that run game along with a new offensive coordinator has made for an energizing offseason, Ledford said.
It involved a lot of time in the film room watching the Rams’ run game and the Falcons’ run game and deciding which pieces fit best together.
“It was real fun,” Ledford said. “You’re talking through a lot of things. I love working with Zac. He’s got a great mind. The way we’ve been working together is awesome.”
Ledford has done this before. When he moved from Gardner-Webb University to Appalachian State, he went from a pro-style run game to a spread option attack under current Cincinnati head coach Scott Satterfield. Then he went to NC State, which ran a different system under current Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz.
“It’s a process,” Ledford said. “It takes some days and weeks to hammer things out of how you want things to look and knowing what’s best for the players on the roster. It’s where a lot of good conversations come up, and once you get done with it, you look back on it and think there are some really good things that come out of it.”
The biggest factor in picking the right running style is personnel, Zac Robinson said. The Rams ran man and duo concepts on a league-high 37.4 percent of rushing snaps the last two seasons, according to FTN Data.
“You’re always evolving and adapting to your personnel,” he said. “In 2019, it looked a lot different than last season based on personnel. You are always constantly evolving and adapting to what your guys do well as well as what’s going on around the league.”
The Falcons’ 2024 run game “is coming together,” he said.
“I think you always have to be open-minded with your changeups, and they always have to evolve because you have to stay ahead of people because people in this league are very smart,” Morris said. “They do a great job of taking your strengths away so you have to have changeups to keep people honest, to keep people in place. That’s what we’ll do.”
Ledford said he has no doubts about Robinson’s commitment to the run game whatever the particular play calls are. In McVay’s seven years as head coach, the Rams are 15th in the league in rush percentage (42.1 percent) and 12th in yards per carry (4.3 percent), according to TruMedia.
The Falcons ran the ball on 51.4 percent of snaps the last two seasons. Only the Chicago Bears (52.2 percent) were more devoted to the ground game. Atlanta’s 4,877 yards on the ground in that time were behind only the Bears and Baltimore Ravens.
Falcons right guard Chris Lindstrom, a two-time Pro Bowler, thinks his new coaches and his old coaches are doing a good job integrating their styles.
“There’s great cohesion right now, and I think that’s one of the best things the staff has done is marry those things,” Lindstrom said. “The way that it’s taught to us, it’s so easy to pick up on. I don’t think we’ve taken a step back on the mental side. There’s always differences and nuance differences, but the identity aspect hasn’t changed. Speed off the ball, toughness, finish. That’s never going to change.”