Falcons rout Packers in NFC title game

ATLANTA >> Matt Ryan and Julio Jones teamed up for a dominant playoff performance, and the Atlanta Falcons ignored all those ghosts from the last halfcentury.

Now, they’re headed to the Super Bowl.

Ryan threw for 392 yards and four touchdowns in another MVP-worthy showing, while Jones shook off a lingering toe injury to haul in nine catches for 180 yards and two scores, leading the Falcons to a 44-21 blowout of the storied Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game Sunday.

Atlanta (13-5) will face either New England or Pittsburgh in the Feb. 5 Super Bowl in Houston. It will be only the second appearance in the Falcons’ 51-year history, the first coming 18 years ago with a team known as the “Dirty Birds.”

They have never won an NFL championship.

If Ryan and the league’s highest-scoring offense keep playing like this, the AFC winner will sure have its hands full in the Lone Star State. The Falcons led 24-0 at halftime against the Packers (12-6), perhaps the league’s hottest team, and essentially put the game away on their second offensive snap of the second half, a play that showed every one of Jones’ remarkable skills .

He blazed down the middle of the field, shook off LaDarius Gunter’s attempt to grab him on a cut toward the sideline, hauled in the pass from Ryan, broke Gunter’s diving attempt at tackle, and defiantly knocked away Damarious Randall’s with a brutal stiff-arm on the way to a 73yard touchdown.

In the final game at the Georgia Dome, Ryan sparked more delirious chants of “MVP! MVP! MVP!” as he carved up an injury plagued Packers secondary that simply had no way of stopping a team that averaged nearly 34 points a game during the regular season and romped to a 3620 victory against Seattle’s Legion of Boom in the divisional round.

For good measure, Ryan also ran for a touchdown.

The Packers, riding an eight-game winning streak and coming off a thrilling upset of the top-seeded Dallas Cowboys, got a taste of what they’d be in for on Atlanta’s very first possession.