Kingsbury's creativity helps Commanders beat Falcons

The Commanders were missing plenty of key pieces on offense, but Kingsbury's creativity helped make up for that

One of the big takeaways from the Washington Commanders victory over the Falcons on Sunday was the creativity of offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury. The Commanders entered the game without their second and third best receivers (Noah and Dyami Brown), their starting right tackle (Andrew Wylie) and one of their top running backs (Austin Ekeler). During the game, they lost starting center Tyler Biadasz and back up right tackle Cornelius Lucas to injury too.

Despite missing all those pieces, the Commanders managed to score 30 points and produce 412 yards of total offense. Obviously, Jayden Daniels had a lot to do with that, but so too did Kingsbury and his offensive staff, who got very creative and helped manufacture some offense to support Daniels where perhaps the supporting cast around him on the field couldn’t do as easily. So I thought I would use this post to highlight some of my favorite play designs from Kingsbury in this game.

Run game

Let’s start first with the run game. The Commanders struggled to run the ball effectively in the first half and had to lean on Jayden Daniels and the quarterback run game to get going in the second half. Kingsbury saw this and wasn’t scared to dial up some unique quarterback run schemes.

This was perhaps the most creative design of the entire game by Kingsbury and his staff. At its core, this is a counter run scheme, with left guard Nick Allegretti pulling to the right side of the line and kicking out the edge defender on that side. But there is a lot more to this than just the basic counter scheme. Receiver K.J. Osborn aligns almost as a tight end to the left of the formation and follows Allegretti to the right side of the line as one of the lead blockers on this play. You do quite often see that variation of counter, though typically it’s with a tight end instead of a receiver.

The Commanders then add another layer. Jayden Daniels is the actual runner on this play. He starts aligned under center and drops back to fake a hand-off, both to running back Chris Rodriguez and then to receiver Olamide Zaccheaus on an end-around fake. Rodriguez fakes taking the ball on the hand off and then becomes the third lead blocker on what is often known as “Super Counter”. Having faked handing the ball off to both Rodriguez and Zaccheaus, Daniels then becomes the running back, running behind his three lead blockers of Nick Allegretti, K.J. Osborn and Chris Rodriguez. Daniels follows his blockers to the sideline where he steps out of bounds for a nice five yard gain.

Kingsbury was very creative with his quarterback run schemes throughout the game, even deep into overtime.

On this play, the Commanders run a quarterback sweep play. The sweep run has been one of the Commanders favorite perimeter runs this season. The tight end and right tackle block down inside to pin the defenders inside while the right guard and center pull to the edge as lead blockers. Typically they would be leading the way for the running back, but on this occasion, Jayden Daniels is the running back and Chris Rodriguez becomes a third lead blocker. Rodriguez helps right guard Sam Cosmi kick out the safety filling on the edge while back up center Michael Deiter wraps around and blocks the Mike (middle) linebacker. Daniels does his best impression of a running back, pressing the run to the edge to get the defense to over pursue outside before cutting back inside on his way to a six-yard gain.

These types of quarterback run schemes aren’t necessarily things that the Commanders want to be using too often. They’re not as safe as the traditional read-option schemes that see Daniels getting to the edge in a safe manner or being able to hand the ball off if he’s at all uncertain. These plays ask him to become the running back and run into or cut back into crowded parts of the defense. It’s not something the Commanders will want Daniels doing often, but in a situation like this, where the Commanders were down so many of their best weapons, three offensive lineman and were fighting to secure a playoff spot, having these types of schemes to pull out and surprise the defense with are extremely valuable and worked out well for the Commanders in this game.

Kingsbury also found ways to be creative without Daniels carrying the ball.