Like most of you, since the Seahawks hired Gregg Knapp, I heard some grumblings about the Knappkin offense in Atlanta and its “Warrick Dunn right end, Warrick Dunn left end, Vick incomplete pass, punt” offense so I got bored this weekend and I thought I’d take a look at the 2005 season as a sample and see if it held true.  And then I figured I’d post it on here and see I could bore the hell out of FielGulls.  Hey, if I had to suffer digging this stuff up, I’m taking others down with me.  I used 2005 because they already had a year of Knapp to institute his offense and in 2006 they had a bunch of injuries and distractions.  Note that on the run plays I made no distinction between who was the running back, unless it was Vick as it is impossible, without watching the games, to say if the Vick runs were planned or scrambles.  Also, I made no distinction on who was making the passes, I went by pure playcalling, so Matt Shaub’s passes are included.

Might be kinda silly to see if a very arbitrary myth holds true, but like I said, I was bored, and all this waiting for the draft is driving me nuts.

So, this is what I found from going through all the games in play-by-play mode from NFL.com:

6 - Examples that are exact fits
3 - Examples that ended in field goals rather then punts
2 - Completed pass short of first down
1 - Ended in a sack

So out of 16 games that’s 12 total examples, only half of which fit the run run pass punt scenario perfectly.  Less then once a game.  Conclusion based on the 2005 Atlanta season: greatly exaggerated myth.

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