Falcons' Ryan accepts Bert Bell Award at Maxwell Club dinner

ATLANTIC CITY - As a tuxedoed Matt Ryan settled smoothly into his seat for the Maxwell Club awards dinner Friday night, his eyes widened while he scanned the Tropicana Casino's showroom.

There to accept the Bert Bell Award as 2016's pro player of the year, the Penn Charter graduate found himself surrounded by quarterbacks - past, present, and future - both in the flesh and on TV screens and banners.

"It's amazing to look around and see some of the quarterbacks who are here, people like Roger Staubach, Ron Jaworski, and Steve Spurrier," he said. "And then when you read the names of all the great ones that the Maxwell Club has given awards to, it's really pretty humbling."

The two top awards of the Philadelphia-based football club, whose president (Jaworski) was himself a quarterback, have always been biased toward signal-callers.

From Johnny Unitas in 1959 to Ryan this year, 35 of the 59 Bert Bell winners have been quarterbacks. So have 34 of the 80 Maxwell Award winners, from Davey O'Brien in 1938 to this year's recipient, Louisville sophomore Lamar Jackson.

"That's true," said Spurrier, honored at the 80th annual Maxwell dinner for his contributions to football. "I did some research this morning and what's funny is if you look at Lamar, he kind of reminds you of some of the running-passing single-wing quarterbacks who won the Maxwell early on."

Even if running isn't big in Ryan's repertoire, the NFL MVP's numbers this past season were the equal of any quarterback's ever.

The 31-year-old Exton native threw for 4,944 yards in leading the Falcons maddeningly close to victory in Super Bowl LI. He completed 69.9 percent of his passes, threw 31 more TDs than interceptions, and finished with a quarterback rating of 117.1.

"He had a spectacular season," said Jaworski. "And he carried that over into the postseason."

At least until the end of the last game. His Falcons squandered a 25-point lead in their overtime loss to New England, a defeat the even-keeled Ryan hasn't completely shaken.

"I'm still disappointed that we didn't do it," he said, noting that a fourth-quarter sack he took still stings.

"Should have thrown it away," he said, the same words he used immediately after the game last month. "We got down to their 20 but didn't come away with any points on the drive, and that was ultimately the difference."

Nonetheless, the statistically spectacular season has finally pushed Ryan, who was accompanied to the ceremony by a cadre of family and friends, into the top tier of NFL quarterbacks.

"You've got to put him very near the top," said Spurrier. "From what I could see, he did very little wrong all season."

Among the other quarterbacks he encountered Friday were two collegiate honorees, Jackson and Penn State's Trace McSorley.

The quicksilver Jackson added the Maxwell Award to his Heisman Trophy. He deflected questions about whether he might enter the NFL draft next season.

"I'm just focused on helping us win football games next year," Jackson said, not for the first time. "I can't take anything for granted. We're in the ACC, and the ACC came within a play of winning the national title last season."

McSorley, named the Brian Westbrook Tri-State Collegiate Player of the Year, cut short a spring-break Dominican Republic vacation to attend the black-tie affair.

"I was happy to do it," he said. "To get an award from such a prestigious organization is a thrill."

For Ryan and Staubach, who was honored as a football legend, last night's awards weren't their first from the Maxwell Club.

Ryan was named the tri-state area's top high school player in 2002. And when he was a Navy all-American in 1963, Staubach won the Maxwell Award.

"Roger's just coming tonight so he can finally get a trophy," Jaworski said . "Back in the '60s when he won here he got a cigarette case. He's been joking about coming back to get a real trophy ever since."

ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com

@philafitz