It’s Atlanta and New England in Super Bowl
Green Bay looked great up until it faced the full force of Matt Ryan, Rob Longley writes.
In his effort to simplify the final and biggest step on the road to the Super Bowl, Atlanta Falcons head coach Dan Quinn lectured his players about the football — not the game, but the pigskin itself.
Forget about red-hot Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Quinn implored for the past week, and keep it in the hands of your own superstar, Matt Ryan.
The plan worked to perfection in Sunday afternoon’s NFC championship game at the Georgia Dome, a stunning 44-21 Falcons blowout over Rodgers and the Packers.
“The challenge is still in front of us, but it’s so hard to get to this point,” said Ryan, who has been an elite quarterback for much of his nine-year career but was until now unseen on the sport’s biggest stage. “Honestly, it’s so tough. But to string (wins) together and to play your best at the right time … you have to enjoy it.”
Overshadowed somewhat by their opponent’s hot run — an eight-game winning streak that crashed hard in Georgia — and by the Dallas Cowboys’ brilliant regular season, the Falcons should have your attention now.
In the final football game played under the dome that will be replaced by the swanky Mercedes-Benz Stadium next season, they were dominant in every phase of the game. As a result, Ryan and his flock head to Houston with a serious shot at winning the first NFL championship in the 50-year history of the franchise next month.
As he was throughout the regular season, the quarterback they call Matty Ice was brilliant on Sunday, cold-blooded and efficient with the ball in his hands.
The Ryan highlights, accentuated by a wealth of incredible playmakers on the Falcons offence, were multiple.
It’s best to start with the gaudy final numbers, such as his 392 passing yards and 27 completions on 38 attempts. There were four — yes, four — touchdowns through the air, and for kicks, a fifth Ryan trip to the end zone on the ground following a 14-yard scramble.
There was a 73-yard touchdown run-and-catch to receiving maestro Julio Jones on the first possession of the second half to make the score 31-0 and effectively blow the roof off the Georgia Dome. There were 271 passing yards in the first half alone, essentially burying the Packers before Rodgers could get uncorked. There was a precisionlike two-minute drill before halftime that resulted in Jones’s first of two touchdowns, a five-yarder to Matty Ice the game. And throughout, there was the savvy management and killer instinct to take advantage of the Packers’ glaring mistakes.
The Falcons possessed the ball for 11:53 of the first quarter and 22:02 of the opening half.
“He’s such a competitor,” Quinn said of Ryan, who broke a number of Falcons franchise records this season. “He takes shots, but he’s so tough. He keeps battling and I was so proud of him today.”
Green Bay was a team that seemed able to score at will on its memorable streak to get to the NFC’s title game. That they had to wait 5:41 into the third quarter to score their first points — when Devante Adams hauled in a twoyard Rodgers pass for a touchdown — was stunning.
The Packers, who came to the Peach State as six-point underdogs, didn’t help themselves with early blunders. Mason Crosby, who ripped the hearts out of Cowboys fans last week with a 51-yard game-winning field goal as time expired, went wide on a 41-yard attempt on his team’s opening possession, and the Packers never recovered.
There was a fumble deep in Falcons territory that snuffed out one promising drive while the score was still in range and a greedy Rodgers bomb late in the half that led to an interception. Ryan seized the football — and the opportunity — on both turnovers, marching his team down the field for two of their five touchdowns.
Overall, the Falcons scored on four of their five first half possessions to take a 24-0 halftime lead.
When they forced a threeand-out for the Packers after the second-half kickoff then teed up the 73-yard Jones touchdown, the once-explosive Packers were no longer a threat.
The challenge is still in front of us, but it’s so hard to get to this point … Honestly, it’s so tough. But to string (wins) together and to play your best at the right time … you have to enjoy it.
The skill throughout the Falcons’ offence is dizzying, led by Jones, who had nine receptions for 180 yards and those two scores. Overall, Ryan completed passes to eight different receivers, confounding the Packers defence at almost every turn. Atlanta’s offence was forced to punt just once in the first three quarters.
On the other side of the ball, the Falcons’ young, aggressive defence didn’t shut Rodgers down, but they made his life difficult. The Packers quarterback completed 27 of his 45 passes for 287 yards and three touchdowns — modest numbers by his standards.
“With a quarterback as talented as he is and as dangerous as he is, we had to find a way to get him off his spot,” Quinn said.
“We had a good week in practice and were confident in our game plan.”
The Falcons, a team largely constructed by general manager Thomas Dimitroff, who grew up learning football as a high school and university player in Ontario, will return to the big game for the first time since the 1998 season. It’s fitting that the man who will lead them there is the first player Dimitroff drafted, chosen with the third overall pick in the 2008 NFL draft.
For Ryan, his years of hard work and undeniable production have finally taken him to his sport’s biggest stage.
“It takes time, it really does,” Ryan said with a mix of joy and relief in his voice.
“I always felt that we would get to the point where we would play in this game and I’m happy that we’re there.”