There are several parties to blame when dissecting the Falcons' collapse to the Patriots in this past Super Bowl. Current 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, Atlanta's offensive coordinator at the time, received a good amount of the criticism.
While Shanahan was mostly blamed for being too aggressive late in the game, Matt Ryan added another critique: Lack of timeliness
"Kyle's play calls -- he would take time to get stuff in," Ryan told CBS Sports' Pete Prisco last week. "As I was getting it, you're looking at the clock and you're talking 16 seconds before it cuts out. You don't have a lot of time to say, 'There's 16 seconds, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. Hey, guys, we're going to line up and run this.' You're talking about breaking the huddle at seven seconds if you do something along the lines.
"With the way Kyle's system was set up, he took more time to call plays and we shift and motion a lot more than we did with [former coordinator] Dirk [Koetter]. You couldn't get out of stuff like that. We talk about being the most aggressive team in football. And I'm all for it. But there's also winning time. You're not being aggressive not running it there."
Now with the ball in Shanahan's court after Ryan condemned his former offensive coordinator's time-consuming play calls, he wasn't shy about addressing the complaint from the star quarterback.
"Any play-caller that you talk to that's usually one of the most important things and something I pride myself on a lot, is how quick can you get a play call into a quarterback," Shanahan told reporters Thursday.
"And the quicker you do the more comfortable it is, not just for him but the entire offense. They're not panicked. They're being able to move to the line. And with me as a coordinator personally, I try almost every situation to get it in as fast as possible. And I can be honest, there's sometimes I do better than others. There are sometimes I don't do it as good. There's sometimes I do it real good."
Not only were the Falcons the best offense in the league last season, the high-flying unit was arguably one of the greatest offensive juggernauts in NFL history. Yet, with all of the impressive marks in scoring and yardage, Shanahan was also extremely proud of one particular aspect which highlighted the efficient communication between him and Ryan.
"I was really proud of those guys on offense, which is a lot of credit to Matt and the rest of the guys, that regardless when we did get it in, two years straight without a delay of game and being the only team to even do that one year I think was a pretty impressive task," Shanahan said. "We did a good job of that as a whole."
