RYAN’S CLOSING ARGUMENT FOR MVP PROVES TO BE QUITE PERSUASIVE
Just in case there are still undecided voters out there, Matt Ryan made a pretty good case for NFL MVP.
Ryan was about as good as a quarterback could be in the first half Sunday, throwing for four touchdowns and completing all but two of his 19 attempts. He threw to seven receivers, mixing short tosses with a couple of air-it-out passes.
It didn’t matter what the New Orleans Saints dialed up defensively, Ryan found a way to exploit it. Every drive was the same steady march forward, ending in the same place — the end zone — as the Atlanta Falcons scored touchdowns on all five of their first-half possessions.
“It was just special,” said Mohamed Sanu, one of the four players who caught touchdown passes along with Tevin Coleman, Julio Jones and Justin Hardy. “It was great to be a part of it.”
When the 70,000 fans at the Georgia Dome broke out in chants of “M-V-P! MV-P!” it was hard to argue with them.
“A pretty cool moment,” Ryan said, dropping his usual restraint for just a moment. “It felt pretty good.”
While the first half was otherworldly — Ryan’s QB rating of 157.8 was just shy of the perfect mark — the Falcons quarterback has been playing at an elevated level all season. While Ezekiel Elliott, Tom Brady and, in the last few weeks, Aaron Rodgers have gotten the headlines, Ryan has been coolly efficient.
His completion rate is nearly 70%, and there have been only four games in which he’s had a passer rating below 100. Though the Falcons have five losses, he’s really only had one bad game, that 24-15 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in which he was sacked twice and threw one of his seven interceptions.
“Numbers don’t lie. Look at his numbers,” said Devonta Freeman, who broke free for a 75-yard run for Atlanta’s other touchdown in the first half. “It don’t get better than that.” It does, actually. Impressive as Ryan’s numbers are, they’d mean little if the Falcons weren’t winning. But the 38-32 victory — which looks a lot closer than it really was — locked up a first-round bye for the Falcons.
It is the first playoff appearance since 2012 for the Falcons and the fifth in Ryan’s nine-year career.
“We’ve given ourselves a chance,” Ryan said. “We have an opportunity in front of us now.”
Ryan was talking about the postseason, but he could have been talking about the overall season, too.
This was the second year with Kyle Shanahan as his offensive coordinator, the second season he has played behind this offensive line. They’ve developed a cohesion that’s allowed Ryan to make the most of the physical skills everyone’s known he’s had since the Falcons made him the third pick overall in the 2008 draft.
“Your second year in a scheme, you know what to expect more. You can play really fast,” said center Alex Mack, who came to Atlanta from the Cleveland Browns. “We started (the preseason) at an earlier spot and we were further ahead, so we were able to fine-tune.”
That was evident in that first half, when Ryan and the Falcons played with seamless precision. There were no wasted plays, no gambles or gimmicks. Ryan knew exactly what he wanted to do on every single play, and the offensive line, the receivers and the running backs made sure it got done.
Now, the whole game didn’t go like that. The Falcons would get only a field goal in the second half, as they got just seven first downs and 142 yards. That kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde performance won’t cut it in the playoffs, and Ryan, who has one career playoff win, is well aware of that.
“You have to have that mind-set to keep the foot on the pedal and keep going,” he said.
In other words, be steady — just as Ryan has been all season.
Ryan might not be the most dazzling or explosive player, but voters aren’t being asked to pick the prom king. This is the MVP and, after Ryan’s display Sunday, it’s hard to argue that anyone’s better.