USA TODAY International Edition
RYAN ARMED, READY
QB confident in Falcons offense
Matt Ryan insists he’s not approaching the NFC Championship Game as a personal arms race against Aaron Rodgers.
That sounds good enough, coming from the NFL’s presumptive MVP.
But here’s the reality: It’s a duel of gunslingers, whether Ryan wants to acknowledge that or not.
With Rodgers quarterbacking the Green Bay Packers on the other side, the Atlanta Falcons can’t get enough points from Ryan and the league’s highestscoring offense.
“I really feel like we’ve had that mind- set the entire year, that regardless of how games shake out we feel like we need to score every time we touch it,” the Falcons quarterback said Friday. “It’s not going to happen every time, but we have that belief that every time we touch it, we can put points up there.”
As hot as Rodgers has been in recent weeks — he has thrown for 21 touchdown passes with just one interception during Green Bay’s eight- game winning streak — Ryan has sizzled similarly. The Falcons will carry a five- game winning streak into Sunday, and Ryan has passed for 14 TDs and zero picks during that span.
So maybe the quarterback matchup is a wash. The trip to Super Bowl LI could come down to the last gunslinger with the ball in his hand. Or maybe the first team to score 50. Duel on? “Not really,” Ryan, who led the NFL with a 117.1 passer rating during the regular season, said of the subplot pitting him against Rodgers. “He’s a great player. You know he’s going to make plays during a game. That’s what great quarterbacks do. My focus the entire week, and on Sunday, is on what we as an offense has to do against their defense. I don’t spend too much time thinking about how we’re going to stop them. Our defense has done a great job.”
That final point is debatable. Atlanta entered the playoffs as the only team that had allowed more than 400 points. The unit has benefited from a high- scoring offense that often has it playing with a lead, which in turn allows for more aggression.
That’s classic complementary football, which will be put to a test with Rodgers coming.
And you can believe that Rodgers has a comfort zone at the Georgia Dome. In four games in the building, he has completed 75% of his passes and averaged 338 passing yards, with a 10- 0 TD- to- INT ratio.
It’s no wonder Falcons coach Dan Quinn maintains, “Defense will be a factor in the game.”
It had better be. Sacks. Turnovers. Third- down stops. With heavy doses of nickel and dime packages, defense looms as the ultimate swing factor.
On each defense, though, challenges persist. Atlanta’s defense is the youngest left in the playoffs. Seven starters have experience of two years or less, including three rookies. Green Bay’s defense is undermanned, bruised and battered all season. The secondary is reeling, with safety Morgan Burnett added to the watch list with a thigh muscle injury.
Packers safety Micah Hyde summed up the challenge as such: “You’ve got to pray.”
But at least that goes both ways.
Then again, with a shootout waiting to happen, maybe offense will wind up as the best defense — as in long, clock- consuming drives that keep the ball away from the other offense.
“That helps every week,” Falcons tackle Jake Matthews said. “If we can string out a 12- play drive, it can help keep our de- fense fresh.”
Matthews wouldn’t get into any projections about how many points it will take to win.
“It could be 6- 3,” he said, thinking of a potential final score. “As long as we score more than them.”
A 6- 3 game would be an outlandish way to break a pattern. The Falcons averaged 33.8 points per game during the regular season. During its current winning streak, Green Bay is averaging 31.3 points.
Then there’s another trend to consider: A team that led the NFL in scoring hasn’t won a Super Bowl since the New Orleans Saints, after the 2009 season.
The Falcons would like to try their hand at ending that Super Bowl streak. But first things first: Somehow, they have to put up more points than a Packers team armed with Rodgers.