Matt Ryan will reach next level with a Super Bowl win
HOUSTON - Matt Ryan must have heard the phrase one in a million whenever he told anyone what he had written in his eighth-grade yearbook at Sts. Phillip and James in Exton - that his aspiration was to play in the NFL.
HOUSTON - Matt Ryan must have heard the phrase one in a million whenever he told anyone what he had written in his eighth-grade yearbook at Sts. Phillip and James in Exton - that his aspiration was to play in the NFL.
That he would accomplish the feat is probably not a complete shock to those who knew him as a child and teenager and watched him play football at Penn Charter. But the odds were always steep. If anyone had said he would become one of the best quarterbacks in the league, they would have drawn a blank gaze, like one of Ryan's patented stares whenever a reporter asks him a question he doesn't like.
But here he is, arguably one of the best currently playing the position, one of only 59 quarterbacks in the history of the game to play in the Super Bowl, and yet, that is not enough. Sure it's enough for any pragmatist. If Ryan had played only a down in the NFL it would have sufficed.
But that's not how sports and our Darwinian thirst for every athlete to attain greatness works. That's not how Ryan is wired. The Falcons quarterback has been elite for years, but he has fallen short of the pantheon at the position. Even if he triumphs Sunday and beats Tom Brady and the Patriots, he will still have those who say he needs to do more.
Even Ryan would say one is not enough. But when he has spent so much energy on getting over the hump for the first time, it would be completely out of his nature to consider those prospects.
"I understand that, as a quarterback, you're judged by postseason success, et cetera," Ryan said after one of the many times he was asked this past week about finally winning a Super Bowl. "But it's about winning this one game and finding a way to get it done on Sunday. That's where my focus is at."
Ryan's focus since the end of the 2015 season has been unwavering. The end of the season - his first with coach Dan Quinn and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan - left a bitter sting. And the 31-year-old has pursued that goal with robot-like precision.
"When you're a really good player, to get to that next spot, that's tough," Quinn said. "There's another ceiling you have to break through to get there, and he put the work in. That's why I've been so impressed by Matt."
Ryan had the best of his nine seasons in 2016, and for his efforts was named the NFL's most valuable player on Saturday night. His performance in the playoffs has been equally MVP-worthy. But to leap into that rarefied air where only gods such as Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Ben Roethlisberger reside, he must first win Sunday.
"Obviously he's in the category that says he can carry his team to the Super Bowl because he did that. All year long, this was about Matt Ryan playing well and he got his team here," Super Bowl-winning quarterback Kurt Warner said. "So he at least steps into that second category. . . . I think it's yet to be seen if he can be that other guy."
Over the hump
There have been 50 Super Bowls played and thus 100 starting quarterback spots in those games. Of that 100, 46 have been made up of the same 12 guys, as Warner, who was one, noted. They were Brady (6); John Elway (5); Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Jim Kelly, and Peyton Manning (4); and Troy Aikman, Bob Griese, Fran Tarkenton, Roethlisberger, and Warner (3).
Taken one step further, with the addition of those who appeared in two Super Bowls, only 20 quarterbacks have accounted for 62 of the 100 spots. The other 38 were one-and-doners. Many won, of course, and even a few who lost, like Dan Marino, still deserve mention among the greatest.
But no position in team sports is as defined by championships won. Ryan has been close to the final game before. The Falcons went to the playoffs in four of his first five seasons, but in almost every game, he failed to rise to the occasion.
In particular, there was the pick-six that helped give the Packers a divisional round victory in 2010, and two years later there was the last-second defeat to the 49ers in the NFC championship game, when an interception and a fumbled snap helped blow a 17-point lead.
"Matt has been really good for a long time," Warner said. "But he was a guy that you always thought, 'I don't know if when the game's on the line two or three weeks in a row, if he makes those plays to get his team over the hump.' "
For three years, he couldn't even help get them into the playoffs. The Falcons' slide in coach Mike Smith's last two seasons was hardly all on Ryan. The roster had been depleted, particularly up front on both sides of the ball, and after the 2014 season Smith was fired.
When Quinn came in, Ryan had to reinvent himself. He had played in the same drop-back, pocket offense for seven years, and here came Shanahan, with his version of his father Mike's West Coast offense. There were quarterback rollouts and bootlegs and the Shanahans' patented outside-zone running scheme.
The Falcons won their first five games, but then hit a wall.
"You learn who people are when you go through adversity," Shanahan said. "We started out 5-0 and then we lost six games in a row. You lose two games in a row in the NFL and it's Armageddon. We lost six."
Ryan tossed nine interceptions in the last seven games. Shanahan's offense was diverse and the players were often not on the same page, according to wide receiver Julio Jones. There was speculation that Ryan and Shanahan had butted heads. Both deny there was a problem, but Ryan had to be open to leaving his comfort zone.
"He's got the passion and the determination," Shanahan said, "that he doesn't mind you challenging him."
New training
Ryan challenged himself, as well. He worked out in the offseason with noted quarterback trainers Tom House and Adam Dedeaux in Irvine, Calif., for six weeks, using their biomechanics and fitness testing to build up his arm strength. When he returned to the team, Jones said, Ryan's passes were coming in at a higher velocity.
"I felt like that really helped me train the way that I needed to," Ryan said.
The Falcons, meanwhile, did their part to help their quarterback. They signed free agent center Alex Mack and added receivers Mohamed Sanu, Taylor Gabriel, and Aldrick Robinson. In March, after free agency was over, Ryan invited 27 Falcons to join him in Miami for three days of route running.
All the offseason changes paid off. The Falcons had the league's most prolific offense - a modern-day version of Warner and the Rams' "Greatest Show on Turf" - and Ryan was at the center of it all.
"To play at the level Matt Ryan played this year, you have to play great as a quarterback," Warner said. "And so, I don't care what else goes around you, it still comes down to making decisions, making throws, handling pressure, handling big-time situations, matching guys score for score, and that all falls back to Matt Ryan."
There were a few lulls. The Eagles held the Falcons to 15 points in a November loss. Ryan tossed a "pick-two"-point conversion to Chiefs safety Eric Berry that he took 98 yards the other way for the game-winning points. But Ryan mostly delivered on a week-to-week basis.
"I think what impressed me most," Warner said, "was to make the critical play at the critical moment over and over again."
Ryan threw for 4,944 yards and 38 touchdowns, and his 9.26 yards per pass attempt was the highest in NFL history. After he tossed 14, 17, 14, and 16 interceptions, respectively, in the previous four seasons, he threw only seven in 2016. His 117.1 passer rating was a career high.
Only four quarterbacks in NFL annals had a higher rating - Rodgers, Manning, Brady, and (gulp) Nick Foles.
"Now the hope is, OK, I never saw that from him before, I saw that this year. Now is this who he's going to be for the rest of his career, and now he has a chance to ascend into something really special?" Warner said. "Or is this one of those one-year runs where everything goes right and you really play and then you go back to the other guy?"
When you've already scaled the heights Ryan has, does the distinction really matter? Of course, it does. Most quarterbacks hate labels, and Ryan certainly ascribes to that. But there is elite and there isn't, and in the large majority of cases, you need to win a Super Bowl to be among the former.
"I feel confident," Ryan said.
Will that be enough?