Tag: Play Caller

How does Russell Wilson feel about Klint Kubiak calling plays?

“He’s a tremendous coach,” Broncos QB Russell Wilson said of new play caller Klint Kubiak. “He’s a great offensive mind.”

The Denver Broncos are sticking with quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak as their offensive play caller this week after he was promoted to that role in Week 11.

So how does quarterback Russell Wilson feel about Kubiak and his play calling?

“He’s a tremendous coach,” Wilson said Sunday. “He’s a great offensive mind. He’s in the QB room every day coaching us up every day. We’re always talking. Throughout training camp, he [has] called plays too, especially in practice and stuff like that.”

Wilson only had positive things to say about Kubiak, but he was also diplomatic in his response and made sure to also praise coach Nathaniel Hackett (the former play caller) and offensive coordinator Justin Outten.

“Justin Outten can call plays too,” Wilson said. “Obviously Coach Hackett too. We have three guys that can call our offense for us, and they mix it up in practice. I thought this week Coach Kubiak really did a great job of doing it throughout practice.

“And Coach Hackett [did], too — just communicating what we wanted to do and I thought we executed most of those things tonight for sure. With all of the guys, like I said — the offensive line, the receivers, all that. [Those] guys did some really good things [on Sunday].”

It doesn’t seem like Wilson would vocalize it even if he didn’t like the play caller, but his public stance is that Kubiak did a good job, and Hackett seems to agree because Kubiak will continue calling the team’s plays.

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Klint Kubiak will continue calling plays for Broncos this week

Klint Kubiak will call plays when the Broncos face the Panthers on the road.

After getting the nod to call plays against the Las Vegas Raiders last week, Denver Broncos quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak will keep that role for Sunday’s showdown with the Carolina Panthers.

“I thought that everything went really smooth,” coach Nathaniel Hackett said Sunday. “I thought Klint did a good job working with Justin [Outten], getting the plays that they wanted to get in. The operation was fine.”

Denver lost to the Raiders 22-16 in overtime on Sunday and while the offense struggled in the second half, 16 points was a slight improvement from their season-long average of 14.7 points per game.

Hackett gave up play calling last week, presumably with the hopes of saving his job.

“For me, I want to do whatever I can to help this team,” Hackett said. “We’re so close, we continually talk about this over and over again. A couple plays here and there, and there’s a lot of different outcomes.

“I have to look at myself first, to see if there’s something that I can do to give some kind of spark to the offense. So I thought it would be good if I stepped away from that, let Klint get upstairs to be able to see it from a bird’s eye view up in the box and see if that would help us.”

Kubiak has one year of experience as an offensive coordinator with the Minnesota Vikings. Sunday marked his first time calling plays for the Broncos, and it went well enough for him to continue another week.

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Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett turns over play calling to QBs coach Klint Kubiak

Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett has turned over play calling to QBs coach Klint Kubiak.

Denver Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett has turned over play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak, NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero first reported on Sunday morning.

Kubiak, 35, will make his play-calling debut for the Broncos against the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday afternoon. He is the son of former Denver coach Gary Kubiak, who led the team to a Super Bowl 50 victory in 2015.

Hackett’s offense has struggled this season, scoring a league-low 14.6 points per game. If the offense improves with Kubiak calling plays and Hackett managing the overall team, Hackett will undoubtedly hope this decision could save his job.

Kubiak served as the Minnesota Vikings’ offensive coordinator last year and Minnesota scored an average of 25.0 points per game, which ranked 14th in the NFL.

Kubiak got his start in coaching as an offensive quality control coach at Texas A&M in 2010. He later held a similar role with the Vikings from 2013-2014 before a one-year stint at Kansas and then a three-year run with the Broncos as an offensive assistant.

Kubiak returned to Minnesota in 2019 and worked his way up from QBs coach to offensive coordinator. Kubiak was not retained after the Vikings fired former coach Mike Zimmer, and he landed in Denver this spring.

Kubiak will now aim to help the Broncos turn their offense around.

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What does accountability look like for Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett?

Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett said accountability for the team’s struggles “starts with me.” So now what?

When the Denver Broncos hired Nathaniel Hackett this offseason, he was dubbed an offensive mind who could help turn around the team’s underwhelming offense.

Hackett has done just the opposite.

Denver’s offense is even worse than before Hackett arrived, as the team has scored just 14.6 points per game this season, fewer than any other team in the NFL. With merely a component offense, the Broncos could be in the NFL’s playoff picture, but Hackett’s unit is holding the team back.

After a 17-10 loss to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, Hackett admitted that accountability for the team’s struggles falls on him.

“It’s about accountability,” the coach said. “It’s about holding myself accountable first, the coaches accountable and the players accountable. As long as we point the things out that we can correct and get better on, and everybody understands what that is and what we need to do to be able to go on a run at some point during the season.”

What exactly that accountability looks like remains to be seen. During his media availability on Monday, Hackett was asked if accountability will lead to consequences for poor results.

“I think we are evaluating everything,” Hackett said. “First, it starts with me. We have to make sure that the play calls are the right play calls and the ones that are going to put the guys in the right position to be successful. We will evaluate that. We will evaluate everything that we do.

“We are 3-6 and we are not where we want to be. Nobody is accepting that, and that’s not the standard that we want to be. We are not scoring enough points. It’s that simple. We have to find a way to do that, so we will evaluate everything and every person across the board.”

One notable way that Hackett could accept accountability is by admitting that his play calling has not led to positive results, and a consequence for that could be handing over the playsheet to another coach. There’s been no word that Hackett plans to do so, at least not yet.

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Preseason games bring a big opportunity for Saints QB coach Ronald Curry

Last week’s preseason game brought a big opportunity for Saints QB coach/passing game coordinator Ronald Curry, who got to call plays for the first time in the NFL:

How many NFL teams are putting a quarterbacks coach on the headset during their preseason games? The New Orleans Saints are in that number, with head coach Dennis Allen having chosen to give play-calling duties to Ronald Curry in their second exhibition game this summer. This was Curry’s first NFL experience in that role after working with the Saints as a position coach since 2016.

It’s an interesting development for Curry, who this offseason added another title to his job description: passing game coordinator. That gives him greater influence on the offense and more interaction with both his quarterbacks and the receiving corps (a position he coached for five years in New Orleans, prior to shifting focus to quarterbacks), with Pete Carmichael Jr. still on top of things as offensive coordinator.

Allen said that the reason Curry was given play-calling duties against the Green Bay Packers was to get him some experience should he be needed in an emergency — which makes sense given all of the random absences the team has had to deal with the last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. The end result of that game (a 20-10 loss) doesn’t matter. What’s key is that Curry was able to test his instincts and play-calling process in a live game, evaluating how to best approach a variety of different situations.

But here’s where I’m putting on a tinfoil hat and speculating. Maybe something bigger is in the works. Carmichael was set to take a less-prominent role with New Orleans this offseason after Sean Payton stepped down as head coach, but the team was able to convince him to stay in this role after interviewing a couple of replacement candidates. At the same time, Curry was promoted to passing game coordinator. Possibly as a step towards naming him the offensive coordinator in a year or two, putting him in position to learn more closely from one of the longest-tenured OC’s in the league.

Maybe that’s not the case, and this is just a natural progression in Curry’s coaching career. But it feels like a real possibility given Carmichael’s reluctance to stay in this position. Getting him to return for one more year as the OC while training his successor might not have been a hard sell. But again, that’s just my speculation. Time will tell if there’s anything to this theory.

At any rate, it’s cool to see Curry get this opportunity. His players and peers have raved about him as his upward trajectory has taken off, and Allen is right to point out the importance of preparation. Should Carmichael miss time for any reason, Curry now has a better idea of what his in-game responsibilities may be with the call sheet in hand.

As for who’s calling plays on defense: Allen has spoken before about how this would be a collaborative process, and how he isn’t eager to essentially hand over his baby to someone else. Naming co-defensive coordinators Kris Richard and Ryan Nielsen didn’t exactly clarify things. But so far in preseason it’s been Nielsen on the mic, which checks out given Richard’s past experience as a defensive play caller with the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys. That’s not something Nielsen has done much before, so these preseason games are a good opportunity for him to learn on the job. Allen is expected to hold onto that gig during the season, but as is the case with his offense, there’s no harm in preparing a backup plan.

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