Making the Case for Matt Ryan

He’s 4th in Pro Football Focus’ QB rankings; after only Rodgers, Brees and Brady. The criticism of him isn’t really warranted in my view.

4300 yards would be a new single season franchise record. He’s already number 2 in career TD passes, will be number 2 in career yardage by the end of the year. Yeah, I know, says more about previous falcon QBs than him. Does say something about him as well.

He’s a top ten QB in every important stat except YPA, and since the Oline was fixed after the bye, he’s had a YPA of over 9. He’s also had 3 game winning/tying TD passes just dropped, half his INTs are tip drills off WRs or mis-run routes. He could easily have 1-2 more wins, 3 more TDs & 3 fewer picks and have his numbers be looking much more elite.

Man is only going to get better over the next few years. Consistency, esp. w/ the deep ball will come, as will playoff wins.

We’re watching a QB become elite before our eyes and too many people are nitpicking his game and not enjoying the ride.

Ryan is just in his 4th year and is doing pretty good with the OL he has to work with. Other Problem this year has been Turner on first downs. Turner,so far has been worse than last year on 1st downs, this is putting Matt in 3rd and long situations and it doesn’t help when your No1 Receiver is leading the league in the drops.

I have been hard on Ryan.

But I need to remember that he is in his fourth year, and he is playing with turnstiles at times. Honestly, given the circumstances, he is having another fabulous year.

The only thing, IMO, that he has to work on is the deep ball. He still overthrows his guys a bit.

Other than that, he has the potential to be a great qb… he is already a very good one.

At I think 33(or was that before last week) on the year that is 10 above the league average. With just 10 more completions his numbers( and probably our wins) look much more impressive.

How many has Brady thrown this year? If I recall right, he isnt a long baller either (or was that just early in his career?)

Chicago and Houston, I really don’t think he has really played badly. The Tampa game was a fluke and he was getting killed by our Oline, which is a recurring problem (and one I hope gets addressed this off-season).

I think some of the issues can be addressed to a philosophical change in the offense and learning a new receiver (without the benefit of camp). I don’t believe Matt is a deep ball QB, he has the arm strength, just not the deep accuracy of some other QBs in this league. It’s not a shot at him, just what I’ve seen. What he lacks in deep accuracy he makes up for in understanding of the game, defenses, work ethic, etc. Julio is not a deep threat receiver, he is a big play receiver. Give him a few yards of space and look what he can do. The same with HD, maybe one day he will develop into a vertical threat, but right now he is more of a Wes Welker type. Roddy is still our best vertical threat right now because Ryan is most comfortable throwing to him.

Ryan can hit 4000 yards and 30 TDs this year. And it’s not entirely out of this world to imagine him not throwing anymore INTs. Those stats would put him up there with what the analysts like to call “Elite”.

I can be as hard on him as anyone, but that comes more from seeing what he has already done in this league, and not what I want him to do. At times he has played as well as Manning and Brady, and at other times he looks like a rookie 3rd rounder. Once he works out his consistency issues, and we address the Oline, he will be getting mentioned with Brady, Brees, Rodgers, etc.

I began being a Falcon fan near the end of Bartowski era, there were no Falcon fans up here in Canada at the time. Through the Miller, Hebert, Tolliver years and then the George, Chandler and MV years I could only dream of having a QB like Ryan. Although I enjoyed watching all the above mentioned QBs with varying degrees of success and failure. Matt Ryan has brought leadership, toughness, intelligence and selfless play every time he suits up for the Falcons. There is no doubt in my mind he CAN lead this team to and WIN a Superbowl for Falcon fans everywhere. Is he Manning, Rodgers, Brady or Brees? NO, and probably never will be, but he’s an very good QB in a NFL with a lot of average to bad QBS. Baltimore or the Jets with Ryan as QB would have probably won a Superbowl or 2 already ala Big Ben when he was drafted into the perfect storm. No QB wins a Superbowl on their own. Given a better OC and little stingier defense and

then we’ll see. But this is the best 4 year stretch of QB play in the franchise history and it’s just beginning. I look forward to the next 10 years with Ryan under center win or lose.

we’re all spoiled from the immediate success he had as a rookie that we expect more success right away and seem to forget he’s still a young qb. Its only his forth year and despite not winning a playoff game he is still considered a top ten qb. All of the elite qbs have at least five years. just imagine how good he will be the next couple of seasons………….

Ryan has yet to show that he can beat you deep consistently and he has yet to show he can take command in big games against top flight opponents. This guy makes an awful lot of money and needs to add the deep ball. He gains an awful lot of yards with the underneath game. Having said all this I still believe fully that he is a true franchise QB and that he will eventually take the team to places they have never seen. Julio Jones is another Larry Fitzgerald in the making and when the Ryan Jones combo is really clicking they will put lots of points on the board,

This is a very good article that clearly shows the stats proving that Matt Ryan is still a very good quarterback. However, two of the stats you mentioned helps explain why the Falcons (and Ryan) are not doing as good as they should and why they are so inconsistent this year. The fact that Ryan is in the top 10 QB’s for being sack and that he is in the top 3 QB’s hit this year says it all. Even if we had Brady as our QB, we still would not be playing any better than we are now. Your quarterback can’t make great throws when he is on his back most of the game. This is somewhat of Ryan’s fault for not being very elusive, but I blame our crappy OL (both players and coaches) for this. I also think there is one more stat that needs to be brought up. That is the number of dropped passes Ryan’s receivers have this year. It has been better as of late, but I’m sure Ryan is very frustrated that when he is finally able to get a good throw off to see his receivers dropping the ball. Tough year for a very good quarterback!

No question he’s a franchise QB. How many teams would consider him an upgrade over their current QB situation? 25 at least?

I fear, though, with the way things are going for this team overall, the elusive playoff win might not come this year, and we’re going to hear more and more about it. With that said, the guy seems pretty unflappable, so I think he’s going to be fine, a long term winner, and will be top 3 at some point and win a ring.