It's different when you know he won't be playing at all.
Coaching maybe. We saw Kyler play this way over the Kingsbury years at times as well. But Kyler started feasting on alert throws to Hopkins and when he was injured or it didn't work, he struggled.
That's my point I'm making. He cant predetermine before the snap that he's going to throw it to Hopkins who is in man coverage.
This is still such a strange point.
He lost Hopkins when he was playing his best football ever. And even when he was playing his best football ever Hopkins was only averaging
4 catches a game. Once losing Hopkins his play fell off, then he KNEW going into the 2022 he'd have no Hopkins for 6 weeks and played his worst stretch of his career. So he literally went 11 games straight without Deandre Hopkins.
His passer rating was in the mid 80s those 11 games. It was close to
100 the last two years when Hopkins was on the field.
Its coaching. And hopefully keeps taking to it.
Edit: An even stranger point when realizing Will Levis threw 4 tds against this very same Falcons defense because of Deandre Hopkins lol