Matt Ryan Played Like an MVP in 2018... and NO ONE Cared

one of the many aspects that makes it football so fun to follow year after year is the fact that no matter what happens in a single season the talent in each locker room maintains enough parity to keep even the worst teams just a few roster moves away from success even if your squad has suffered multiple years of basement-dwelling every year a new slew of players break out and make a significant impact on their team that pull them closer to the Super Bowl whether it's a rookie that's way more Pro ready than expected or a veteran that just meshes perfectly within a new system but in that same regard where things can fall into place to highlight a player's talent they can also disintegrate into pure chaos and manage to cover up the success of any players that might be playing at their best right in the eye of the storm when looking back at the 2018 season I can't find a better example of that than the year of Matt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons who played an elite level despite the fact that all of his success was buried beneath the mountain of issues that plagued the Falcons season as a whole but before we get into how Ryan's season was overshadowed by the lack of success around him I'd like to take a second to thank today's sponsor over at Cove audio as a guy who's bought and used a good number of Bluetooth speakers over the years I can tell you that if you want a lot of high quality sound out of a portable unit The Cove commuter is seriously as good as it gets it connects to whatever smart device you want to listen to and this thing lasts for eight hours on a single charge it even comes equipped with its own X based subwoofer and specialized indoor and outdoor settings so you can maximize your listening experience whether you're out at the beach or just relaxing in your room if you're in the market for a speaker of your own Kovas actually come through with a great offer for you guys if you go down to the link below and use my code set the edge you'll get hit with a 65% discount that brings the price all the way down to $70 which is a great deal for a speaker of this quality having used it for a couple of weeks now I really can't recommend this thing enough so if you're interested in checking it out and maybe even getting one for yourself or as a gift make sure to use promo codes set the edge to get that whopping $130 discount so in order to understand why so many people were quick to overlook or discredit Matt Ryan's performance through the 2018 campaign let's take a look at his track record over the years as an NFL quarterback Matt Ryan came out of college with high expectations to make a splash in the NFL right off the bat being selected third overall by the Falcons the 2008 draft has the heir-apparent to replace a suspended michael vick to add to that pressure he immediately became the fourth highest-paid quarterback in the whole league before even playing a single snap so it was instantly clear how much the falcons were investing in their new franchise centerpiece ever since that 2008 season Matt Ryan has been the only constant for the Falcons missing just two games in his 11-year career with Atlanta regardless of whatever your personal opinion is on how he's played at quarterback let's take a look at some stats through the first 11 years of any quarterbacks career ever no one has accumulated more passing yards than Matt Ryan has and he's led the Falcons to six playoff appearances in 11 of those seasons despite the fact that on average in those years his defense finished as the 26th rank unit by d vo a per foot ball Outsiders despite those constant issues on the other side of the ball and lack of a 1,000 yard rusher for 6 of 11 seasons Matt Ryan has consistently kept the Falcons afloat while simultaneously receiving the majority of the blame when the team falters but despite the testy relationship he's had with NFL fans and the National media's narratives he was also the youngest player to ever eclipse 40,000 passing yards and he's already ranked 12th in total career yards as the youngest player among any quarterback in the top 20 if Ryan were to play until he's 40 which is how old Drew Brees is right now and he maintains his career average in passing yards over those years he finished with 72,000 203 which would be more than Peyton Manning Brett Favre and Tom Brady at number two all-time behind the affer mentioned Drew Brees with all of those yards and being as reliable as they come with the fifth highest streak ever of consecutive games started why on earth is Matt Ryan regarded as a fringe top-five quarterback when his stats stack up as one of the greatest to ever play the game well there's always been a key factor to QB career evaluation that doesn't hold as much statistical weight as it does emotional weight but when you think of the top tier of quarterback talent in all of NFL history you're drawn towards a propensity to excel in big-time situations it's why you hear the term clutch gene thrown out time and time again to assess a player's legacy when the game is on the line the success you've had before that moment doesn't mean a thing and unfortunately Matt Ryan's track record or perceived track record has been less than glamorous in those situations even despite the fact that he's got the highest postseason passer rating among all active quarterbacks he's got a four in six record in playoff games across the six years that the team has made the playoffs but despite the fact that his nickname is Maddie ice he's let some of the biggest moments in his career slip right through his fingers to the point where the thing he'd be most remembered for if he retired today would be the greatest collapse in all of NFL history while I'm personally not in the camp that the Super Bowl loss was Matt Ryan's fault it's very hard to argue that that hasn't been the defining moment of his career so far and when you've got a fatal flaw to your career arc like that people start searching for ways to discredit your ability overall leaning on the fact that he's always had great weapons like roddy white and julio jones and that's just the start of the argument the point is if Atlanta can't make it back and win it all with Matt Ryan under Center 2016 would simultaneously go down as his best statistical season and also as a stain on his legacy so in a year where no one knew quite where to pin expectations for the Falcons how did Matt Ryan play in 2018 and how did the team around him perform to try and get themselves back to the playoffs for the third consecutive year it certainly wasn't a dream season for Atlanta in fact it was barely a season at all that 7 & 9 finish looks even worse when I tell you that the team had to win their last three games to get to that mark meaning they were sitting in an awful 4 & 9 by week 14 so what exactly went wrong well from the very start it was ugly and there's nothing that can leave an impression in your mind quite like watching a sloppy performance in the game that kicks off the entire season of football for you which is exactly how Matt Ryan and the Falcons came into their 2018 campaign in week one they faced off against the Eagles and ended up losing in a muddy 18 to 12 slugfest where everything that could go wrong for the Falcons did they lost to Pro Bowl defenders to injury in safety Keon O'Neal and linebacker Deon Jones as well as seeing the start of what would be a frustrating string of ailments for running back Devonta Freeman that would eventually cost him the season despite the fact that the score was close and it even went down to the final play Matt Ryan gave one of the worst performances in his career throwing for an abysmal 57.4 passer rating with 251 yards no touchdowns and an interception just for good measure it didn't take long for the legion Matt Ryan doubters to pile on one after another and he was even kind of amusing to see how quickly everyone had determined that he was just a snake oil salesman that had duped everyone into making him MVP just two years prior but people writing unflattering articles were hardly the biggest concern for the Falcons because their injury woes did not slow down they lost their other starting safety in week three and eventually even both of their starting guards later in the season leading to a situation where Matt Ryan was sacked the second most times in his entire career and even received the third most quarterback hits in the entire NFL so when you combine a running game that doesn't have your running back a passing game that doesn't include your pass protectors and a defense that doesn't include your best defenders is anyone gonna care if your quarterback plays well at all well judging by the 2018 season no no one will I'm sure you remember the insane 2016 campaign for Matt Ryan where he blew the doors off the NFL by leading the league in passer rating completion percentage and passing yards well what if I told you that he had almost the exact same statistics in 2018 and the team won four less games and missed the playoffs entirely because that's exactly what happened Matt Ryan's passer rating was only nine points lower than it was in 2016 he threw for twenty fewer passing yards three fewer touchdowns and dipped in completion percentage by just half a percent those were all top four in the entire NFL and not a single person cared for God's sake Mitchell true Biscay was selected to the Pro Bowl over Matt Ryan and I'm a believer in Mitch but that disrespect is just otherworldly Matt Ryan became only the second player in NFL history to post a passer rating of above 108 but still not make the playoffs we're talking about a historically great season for a quarterback on a historically incompetent team in other words 80% of Drew Brees is career and speaking of Brees to understand how much Matt Ryan was held down by the team around him you don't have to look much further than his matchup with the New Orleans Saints and Drew Brees himself in week 3 Matt Ryan put on a clinic with 23 of 35 passing for 375 yards five touchdowns and no picks the Falcons scored 37 points that game and they still lost by 6 then he turned around the very next week posted 419 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions and the Falcons still lost 36 to 37 and that was against Andy and Bengals sometimes you just can't ask for much more from a quarterback and though there were some rough patches here and there that Ryan definitely deserves the blame for the feeling I get is that there's no quarterback that could have saved his team from total chaos no matter how well a QB plays if a team as a whole just can't keep it together unfortunately none of it matters now you can argue that the only reason Ryan stats are so high are the fact that there was no running game and there was also no defense so he was frequently playing from behind but even with those circumstances playing to his favor even the advanced metrics place Ryan at an elite level for how he played in 2018 per Football Outsiders he ranked fourth in both d vo a and dy a are ahead of players like Andrew Luck Tom Brady Aaron Rodgers Big Ben and Jared Goff to put it simply it's hard to find a player who carried his team more than Matt Ryan did only to be crushed by injuries on his own squad and then opposing 300-pound linemen when there was no one left to block them but now that the dust has settled on a catastrophic 2018 season what's next for Ryan and the Falcons well considering how many injuries plagued their entire run last year I think it's fair to try and forget it ever happened which appears to be what everyone's already done so that's a start the offense did sputter under Steve Sarkisian later in the season and that led to him losing his job at offensive coordinator so despite the fact that Ryan became more comfortable in his second year within that scheme the team felt that was necessary to make a change a switch to X Bucks head coach Dirk cutter should be able to provide him with a system that he can excel in as he already had a successful 4,700 yard season in 2012 when cutter was the Falcons offensive coordinator since Ryan is typically struggled to mesh with new systems in his first year with them bringing back cutter will hopefully allow for an immediate reintegration that will keep them in the conversation as one of the league's best quarterbacks as we approach the 2019 season Atlanta's receiving corps is already one of the best in the entire NFL after the emergence of Calvin Ridley last season and if the defense is able to remain healthy throughout the year you might even be looking at a dark horse to make a deep playoff run come next January but even if the Falcons remain in complete disarray and missed the playoffs for two straight years at this point the odds are it won't be because of Matt Ryan [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] you

Channel: Set the Edge

Views: 404,323

Keywords: matt ryan, matt ryan mvp, matt ryan 2018, matty ice, matt ryan played like an mvp in 2018... and no one cared, matt ryan highlights, matt ryan julio jones, atlanta falcons, falcons wasted season, matt ryan micd up, matt ryan 2018 highlights, set the edge, matt ryan fantasy, atlanta falcons collapse, atlanta falcons injury, atlanta falcons preview, atlanta falcons predictions, american football, nfl, nfl stories, set the edge matt ryan

Id: EYBRl6KEJqQ

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2019