The proliferation of the read-option offense is spawning plenty of copycats. It’s also forcing teams to prepare better to defend against that attack.
Count the Falcons among the franchise hoping to improve.
“I think all defensive coaches . . . will spend time this offseason on it,” coach Mike Smith told D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I know that our coaching staff is going to spend a whole lot of time on it because it could be the wave of the future. I’m not saying that it will be, but that it could be. More and more college teams are running that style of offense and you’re going to have to be prepared to play it.
“We are going to play it again next year. We are playing [every team in] the NFC West and we play it twice in our division. It’s something that we want to make sure that we have a very good understanding of.”
For teams that don’t have a starting quarterback who runs the read option, it’ll be important to get at least one mobile quarterback on the depth chart (or the practice squad) for purposes of running the scout team when a game is coming up against a team that uses the NFL equivalent of the crane technique.