Matt Ryan's Mistakes Will Cost the Atlanta Falcons a Playoff Berth
The then-29-year-old quarterback threw for 4,694 yards with 28 touchdowns and 14 interceptions despite playing behind one of the least effective offensive lines in the NFL. According to Pro Football Focus, Ryan was pressured on 35.3 percent of his snaps last season, 11th-most often in the league.
While that number doesn't seem too high, the impact of that pressure was pushed to greater heights in the context of the Atlanta Falcons offense.
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Julio Jones was playing, but he clearly wasn't 100 percent in his return from a serious injury the previous season. After years as one of the better receivers in the league, Roddy White's decline was evident. The Falcons running game was also inefficient, so Ryan had to carry the offense.
To make matters worse, Ryan was playing on a unit that didn't create easier reads and throws for him. He was consistently being asked to throw the ball to intermediate routes and make difficult downfield reads to make the offense function.
When Kyle Shanahan arrived, that was supposed to change.
Shanahan became the team's offensive coordinator when Dan Quinn took over as head coach. Shanahan had gotten the most out of quarterbacks less talented than Ryan by using heavy play fakes and simple reads.
Many expected this to be Ryan's most productive season in the NFL—and for good reason. The offense Shanahan was asking him to execute was so much simpler than the ones he had previously thrived in that it was the only logical conclusion. Alas, the NFL isn't always logical.
Instead of thriving, Ryan has played well for the majority of his snaps but allowed a minority of awful plays to ruin his season—and those mistakes will likely cost the 6-6 Falcons a shot at the postseason.
After throwing 14 interceptions over a span of 16 games last year, Ryan has thrown 13 interceptions in 12 so far in 2015. It's not just the quantity, though, it's when and where Ryan is making these errors that makes them so egregious.
Not only have all five of his fourth-quarter interceptions come in one-score games, but Ryan also led the league in red-zone interceptions as of Nov. 29.
Ryan is tied with Blake Bortles for second in the NFL in interceptions. Only Peyton Manning (17) has thrown more, and Manning was supposedly playing hurt before he hit the sidelines. In an offense that was supposed to simplify his assignments, Ryan's miscues have been inexcusable.
Over the past two weeks, his mistakes have played a major role in costing the Falcons victories.
Against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this past weekend, the Falcons defense conceded a lead with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. This set up Ryan and the offense in a difficult position. They were down by four, 23-19, so they couldn't settle for a field goal.
Even though it was a difficult scenario, it wasn't an impossible one. The offense had over 90 seconds and a timeout to work with.
As Ryan drops back in the pocket on 1st-and-10, he has time to survey the field. His left tackle begins to give up pressure, but Ryan adjusts adequately to give him better leverage while creating more time and space to work in for himself.
From the beginning of this play, Ryan locks in on Jones, who is running a deep in route from the left side of the field.
Even as early as this point in the play, Ryan should know Jones isn't an option. He should understand the game situation and realize he doesn't need to force the ball into an impossibly small window. The quarterback should come off Jones and look for one of his other options.
Ryan has two open receivers, and it's reasonable to expect him to locate both within the time span of the play. The first is on the same side as Jones in the flat. This is a short throw, which isn't ideal in this situation; but a good, well-timed pass would have given his teammate a chance to turn upfield or get out of bounds.
The second option is leaking out of the backfield toward the other side of the field where there is space. Ryan could have come off Jones and flipped the ball to that receiver in space for a good gain.
After either throw, the offense would have had to hurry up to the line to conserve time ahead of the next play. That was going to be the case for the majority of this drive regardless of where Ryan threw the ball, so his complete focus on the downfield attempt was bizarre.
The throw to Jones should not have been an option because the underneath linebacker was sitting in the passing lane from the onset of the play. Ryan would have had to have thrown the ball over him to get it to Jones, but he couldn't do that without pushing the ball into the hands of the safety behind him.
With a third defender coming from the middle of the field, Ryan couldn't even lead Jones further in-field to get away from the clogged passing lane.
The end result was a game-ending interception by Lavonte David.
By any measure, this was a terrible decision from the quarterback—an inexplicable one that shouldn't be pushed off on anyone else. There was some pressure in the pocket, but not enough to justify a rushed decision. It wasn't even about scheme comfort, because this was an elementary mistake.
Rookies, backups and declining veterans stare down their first reads and disregard the defense. In other words, bad quarterbacks do it. Ryan hasn't been a bad quarterback over the course of his career, and even this season, he's still better than a large percentage of starters. But he isn't playing up to his usual standards.
If this was a play he was making once or twice over the course of the season, it wouldn't be an issue. But it's been a recurring problem every week for the past three games.
Over that span, Ryan has thrown six interceptions. He only had one against the Buccaneers but had three against the Indianapolis Colts and two against the Minnesota Vikings. Of those teams, only the Vikings are problematic.
A lack of awareness has been a consistent factor in Ryan's interceptions. He is throwing the ball to defensive backs because of his decision-making rather than his accuracy.
Both of his interceptions against the Vikings came when he seemingly looked right at a defensive back and didn't acknowledge his presence. The second came after he broke the pocket in the third quarter, but the first was far more egregious.
Once again, this play came in a situation where the offense was hurrying but not in desperation mode.
Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer is a smart defensive coordinator, and in this situation, he understands Ryan won't want to hold on to the ball for long. As such, he rushes just three defenders after the quarterback. Of course, since the Vikings edge-defenders are better than the Falcons tackles, they still get pressure.
That pressure comes off both edges, forcing Ryan to step up in the pocket. He moves into a huge pocket of space where he has time to settle and survey the defense.
He fails to do that, though. Instead, he locks in on one receiver once again and forces the ball to him. Ryan was looking for his receiver over the middle of the field, where he was running a double move. His pass would have had a chance if he had thrown the ball on time, but he was late to let it go.
This meant that it arrived perfectly in the defensive back's chest for an easy interception.
This came at a point in the game when the Falcons were losing 7-3 with less than two minutes left in the first half. They were already in Vikings territory with three timeouts to use, and it was 2nd-and-3, so once again, there was no reason for the quarterback to force his throw.
Six of Ryan's interceptions this season have come either within 20 yards of the opposition's end zone or within 20 yards of his own. His worst of the year resulted in a defensive touchdown for the Colts in Week 11.
What Ryan saw before the snap was important on this play. He motioned his receiver from the right into the left slot, trying to get the defense to show its hand. The cornerback to that side of the field didn't follow the receiver, but the defense did rotate its safeties to hint at man coverage.
Ryan likely recognized this and made a determination from it.
When the ball is snapped, the defense shows man coverage against the slot receiver, who is running a slant route. However, Ryan had to turn his back on the defense initially to carry out the play fake to his running back.
As Ryan was turning away from the coverage, the Colts linebackers were reacting to the play fake.
The play was predicated on drawing up the underneath coverage with the fake so Ryan could find the shallow crossing route in behind. The Falcons only sent two receivers into routes downfield because they were expecting the fake to give Ryan an immediate option.
If he didn't have one, as was the case on this play, then Ryan would be sitting behind seven blockers with time in the pocket to hold on to the ball. This is where the quarterback made his mistake. He didn't understand that he had time in the pocket and panicked because he was in his own end zone.
Ryan threw the ball straight to D'Qwell Jackson. The linebacker underneath hadn't bought heavily on the play fake, meaning he was waiting in the passing lane when Ryan tried to lead his receiver running the crossing route across the field.
His lack of patience in the pocket led to a lack of awareness downfield.
After Jackson caught the ball, he easily ran it into the end zone for the score. This throw came early in the fourth quarter, when the Falcons were leading the Colts, 21-14. It was a mistake that set up the Colts offense to secure an unlikely victory.
Too often the quarterback alone is given credit for victories and the blame for losses. Ryan hasn't lost or won a game for the Falcons all season, but his mistakes have made major contributions to losses that could easily have been victories.
After starting 6-1, the .500 Falcons have fallen into the wild-card race, and there's little reason to think they should be favorites in that scrum.
With Ryan playing the way he has in recent weeks, the franchise has little chance of making the playoffs this year. That shouldn't be seen as too big of a disappointment overall because of where Atlanta is in its rebuilding process.
Quinn inherited a bad roster, one that needed to be rebuilt. He is still in the early stages of that rebuild, so the more surprising results this season came when the Falcons were winning games.
But that's still tough to comprehend when the team is losing with Ryan making so many miscues.
For all the flaws on this roster, Atlanta's starting quarterback was supposed to be its greatest strength. Ryan was supposed to be excelling under Shanahan's guidance.
Shanahan may take the brunt of the blame, but this collapse could actually help the Falcons keep him around for longer than expected. The coach himself doesn't seem too concerned about his relationship with Ryan moving forward, per Vaughn McClure of ESPN.com:
"I feel like when you're comfortable with someone, you can be yourself. I'm a very fiery guy. I think Matt is, too. ... I argue with my close friends, my parents, and my wife probably more than anyone on this planet because we all genuinely love each other and we're tight. We know who each other are.
I want the same thing with players. If a player thinks I'm messed up, I would love for him to tell me. He doesn't have to do it on the field in front of you guys or anything, but I'd love for (the player) to come up to my office and have a talk. That's never been an issue with Matt. Matt and I have a real good relationship.
"
There is always a transitional period when moving from one scheme to another, but Ryan's struggles feel more like confirmation bias than actual problems with Shanahan. He was playing more efficiently earlier in the year when he showed greater poise in the pocket and more awareness of what was happening downfield.
It's always easy to blame the coordinator, especially when he's new, but it looks more coincidental than anything that Ryan is struggling so much.
Sometimes it's not about explaining something through X's and O's. Sometimes it's simply about the inconsistency of a human. No player is perfectly consistent. Even the greats deal with occasional inexplicable performances that can only be attributed to a lack of consistency.
That is where Ryan is at right now, and the Falcons won't be a playoff team if he stays there.
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