To clarify, “obvious passing down” doesn’t mean you pass 100% of the time. But I’d be willing to bet that passing on 2nd and 13 is easily the norm for any team in the modern era. I think it’s also worth pointing out that calling a pass play, when you have quality scramblers in Mariota and Daniels, means more options vs calling a run play.
It is interesting though when you factor in incompletion percentage… your odds of not gaining any yards are surely a fair bit higher on a pass play, as well as the idea that you might gain more yards than average running in an obvious passing situation. Again though, I can’t fault calling a pass play on 2nd and long.
Overall though, I don’t (necessarily) disagree with the idea that Kliff has tendencies, and maybe more importantly, I find it a bit concerning that he sometimes gets away from the ground game and that DQ talked to him last year about the importance of sticking with it even if it’s not having a great deal of success. Chewing up clock, resting your defense, keeping the opposing offense on the bench, allowing your oline to dictate, keeping defenses honest, tiring defenses out, opening up play action… I mean, there are just so many reasons to run the ball.
The Green Bay game was kind of baffling - the run game was working, Daniels was getting hit way too often, and frankly, his accuracy was just plain off. And yet, we didn’t even try to lean on the ground game.
Versus Atlanta though, chances to run the ball were reduced by penalties, the int, lack of possessions, etc. So it’s hard for me to fault Kliff too much when we scored as much as we did, especially considering the number of starters that were unavailable.
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