NFL fans will never be happy with play calling, nor should they be

The 2020 NFL season was unprecedented and nothing football fans have ever seen. No fans in the stands, facilities being closed due to COVID-19 and mid-week games are just a few examples of many anomalies this season has resulted in.

One common theme during the 2020 NFL season that remains constant, however, is the suspect offensive play-calling throughout the league. There are too many offensive coordinators on this list who have failed at some point during the season and who have irked fans.

Being an offensive coordinator in the NFL is by no means easy. It takes creativity, innovativeness and sometimes ingenuity. Your average, die-hard NFL fan is by no means qualified to obtain such a position, which is why there are only 32 of them in the world.

Being able to call plays successfully also takes years of experience, in most cases. This is much easier said than done. Of course, as fans sitting on our couches every Sunday screaming at the TV and scratching our heads at sometimes suspect play-calling at best, we expect more and we expect better.

One name that comes to mind is/was Dirk Koetter of the Atlanta Falcons, who mercifully retired after coaching for 39 years. His lack of situational football intelligence and knowledge the past two seasons contributed to his vanilla play-calling and obsolete schemes.

Calling run plays up the middle with a smaller running back when everybody knows what’s coming (especially opposing defenses), to running two wide receiver sets on third-down passing situations with no creativity whatsoever, are just a couple of abstract examples of his ineptness.

It doesn’t just apply to Koetter, though. Almost every offensive coordinator in the league, at one point or another, has more than likely cost their team in the red-zone with questionable play-calling.

Fans want their teams to score touchdowns in the red zone, not kick field goals. Again, this is easier said than done. As fans, we understand that not every possession whether it is in the red zone or not is going to result in a score, regardless of whether it be a field goal or touchdown.

From the perspective of a frustrated fan, we want to see creativity. Sprinkle in more play-action, bootlegs, sweeps and counters, when the situation calls for such. Predictable up the middle and off-tackle runs resulting in a non-conversion for first downs can be extremely maddening for us fans and leave us to wonder if we can sometimes do a better job of it.

There will never be a perfectly called game by any NFL offensive coordinator. This is just the reality of it. Although, as diehard fans, we expect at the very least an aggressive, creative and eclectic offensive gameplan to be called and drawn up. This would make a lack of execution somewhat easier to accept and less frustrating to watch every Sunday.