Live from the Dome: It’s a Matty Ice anniversary!
Matt Ryan delivers against the Titans one year ago. (AJC photo by Curtis Compton)
It was a year ago that the course of the Falcons changed. It was the third exhibition of the 2008 preseason that told the new administration what it had suspected since the April draft: That it could go with a rookie quarterback as its starter and get away with it.
We forget now, in the light of a rookie of the year award and a 11-5 season of the highest giddiness and even a playoff turn, how bold that decision was. The Falcons had drafted Michael Vick No. 1 overall in 2001, and he hadn’t started as a rookie. But this was a different time, a different rookie.
We look back and we see it as a no-brainer: You have Matt Ryan and you have Chris Redman and D.J. Shockley — who else are you going to start? But we forget how perilous the state of the Good Ship Falcon was in August 2008. They were widely projected as the NFL’s worst team, and they were coming off the most depressing season in the history of North American team sports. (Quarterback in jail, coach in the Ozarks, et cetera.)
It took guts just to draft Ryan No. 3 overall — the consensus, local and otherwise, held that Glenn Dorsey was the better choice — but it took more to say, “He’s our starter in Week 1 of Year 1.” NFL teams had all but gotten away from that, preferring to nurture, preferring to cover their assets in case a big-name draftee flopped. (Tim Couch, Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, et alia.) But that’s why Matt Ryan wasn’t just a good pick: He was the perfect pick at the absolute proper moment.
We on the periphery looked on the Falcons’ unassuming offensive line — considered the NFL’s worst by some observers, lest we forget — and said knowingly, “Putting a rookie quarterback behind those blockers is just one more indication why the Falcons are bush league.” But the new Falcons had seen two things in mini-camp and then in summer drills that we outsiders couldn’t quite grasp.
1. That Matt Ryan was a different sort of rookie.
2. That this offensive line, under the tutelage of Paul Boudreau, could hold up its end.
We should never underrate the second part. Indeed, on the way into the Dome on the night of that third exhibition last year, Thomas Dimitroff told a reporter that the key to starting Ryan would be the Falcons first having convinced themselves internally they could protect him. The first two exhibitions had given them an indication, and the third — a 17-3 victory over Tennessee — was the clincher. Ryan threw 21 passes, completing 15. (Here’s my column from that night, if you’re so inclined.)
The Falcons named Ryan the starter the next day. He threw a touchdown pass to Michael Jenkins on his first delivery of the regular season. He took a frightful beating in the second week in Tampa Bay but played better in the second half than the first, and that was when the Falcons knew beyond all doubt they’d made the proper choice. The kid was a keeper. The kid was a kid by no measure other than age.
We forget now how major that decision was: Say the line had broken down and Ryan had thrown 32 interceptions — Peyton Manning did as a rookie — and the season after going 4-12 the Falcons had gone 3-13 and their No. 1 draft pick had been a first-year bust. Would we Atlantans have washed our hands of NFL football altogether?
We’ll never know. All we know is this: On Saturday night the Falcons were to play another third exhibition of another preseason, and there’s no reason to feel bad about them or their future or their brain trust. Or their quarterback.
(OK, folks. I’ll be here all night, chatting and cracking semi-wise. If you’d care to join me, I’d be obliged. It’d get mighty lonely in the big ol’ Dome without you.)
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511 comments Add your comment
Bad News
August 29th, 2009
11:25 pm
FROM ESPN:
Posted by ESPN.com’s Pat Yasinskas
Long ago, I learned not to read too much into preseason games. I saw Tampa Bay teams coached by Sam Wyche look good in the preseason and then hit double-digit losses in the regular season.
But I am going to take one thing seriously out of Saturday night’s preseason game between the Falcons and Chargers. That’s the Atlanta defense.
It didn’t look good at all and that’s a growing reason for concern. We all knew the Falcons would be entering this season with five new starters on defense and that means there is going to be some transition.
But shouldn’t we be seeing some positive signs by now? Probably. But we haven’t. In the only preseason game that really matters (because the starters play a fair amount), Atlanta’s defense struggled. Yes, San Diego has a good offense, but LaDainian Tomlinson wasn’t even playing. It didn’t matter because the Chargers barely ran the ball.
They were throwing it and throwing it very well. In the first half, the Chargers had somewhere around 250 passing yards. That’s not good news for any defense and every offensive coordinator the Falcons face in the regular season will be watching the video blueprint of how to carve up Atlanta’s defense.
The Falcons aren’t going to go out and blow up their defense at the end of the preseason. They’re going with what they’ve got and that’s a little scary. They could have gone out and grabbed some blue-chip defensive backs in the offseason. But they didn’t.
They’re going with Brent Grimes and Chris Houston as their starting cornerbacks and Erik Coleman and Thomas DeCoud as their starting safeties, for better or worse. If the Falcons are going to make the best of this, they need to do some of the same things they do with their offensive line. They don’t have a tremendous amount of talent there, but they make the most of it because they hide their weaknesses.
They need to do the same thing with the secondary. The best way to do that is with a pass rush. They’ve got an elite rusher in John Abraham, but they need more than that. They need third-year pro Jamaal Anderson to step up from the very start of the season. Anderson was a top 10 pick in 2007 and he’ll be on the bench if he doesn’t start quickly.
The Falcons have Chauncey Davis, Lawrence Sidbury and Kroy Biermann as alternatives to Anderson. One, or some combination, of all those defensive ends will have to step up or the secondary really might be in trouble.
Goldenglove002
August 29th, 2009
11:28 pm
TD and Mike Smith and Co. are going to have one hell of a time trying to sort out which recievers make this team if they keep playing like they were tonight. Bergeron, Weems, Ferguson, Booker all looked great, and thats in addition to White, Finneran, Jenkins.
Harry Douglas who?
Traver
August 29th, 2009
11:41 pm
Didn’t we end last year blowing a 3rd and long? They shredded our defense. I am sorry but still have zero confidence in BVG. I know it is just preseason and we are young but converting a 3rd-10, 3rd-17, and 3rd-24 in the same half of football shouldn’t happen period. We could wake up week 4 and be 1 and 3 if we don’t get that straightened out. No easy ones this year.
Injury Report
August 29th, 2009
11:43 pm
Questionable – J. Norwood (ATL): Hit by Tito Santana flying forearm
Mark Bradley
August 29th, 2009
11:50 pm
Back from the locker room: No updates on Norwood or William Moore.
Smith was obviously displeased with his starting defense but stressed it’s a team defense, not just the defensive backs. And he said he was actually encouraged by the play on first and second downs. As for third down … he said an offense will be happy to complete 10 percent of its throws on third-and-10-plus, and Rivers/Volek seemed to complete all of theirs.
Live from the Dome: It's a Matty Ice anniversary! | Mark Bradley | Latest Information
August 30th, 2009
12:43 am
[...] Read more at http://blogs.ajc.com/mark-bradley-blog/2009/08/29/live-from-the-dome-its-a-matty-ice-anniversary/?cx... [...]
Twitter Trackbacks for Live from the Dome: It's a Matty Ice anniversary! | Mark Bradley [ajc.com] on Topsy.com
August 30th, 2009
6:46 am
[...] Live from the Dome: It’s a Matty Ice anniversary! | Mark Bradley blogs.ajc.com/mark-bradley-blog/2009/08/29/live-from-the-dome-its-a-matty-ice-anniversary – view page – cached Mark Bradley of the AJC writes that it was a year ago the Falcons convinced themselves they could get away with starting rookie Matt Ryan at quarterback. — From the page [...]
America's Best, UF
August 31st, 2009
7:01 am
It looked like DeAngelo (Toast)Hall was back in the Falcons secondary! Pitiful! Sorry excuse for professional atheletes! Dimitrioff is a smart guy. Surely he understands that you win with Defense. You put fans in the stands with exciting OFFENSE.
Overly Optimististic
August 31st, 2009
10:39 am
A late comment for bigeasy830:
Your right, most great QB’s were never one and done in the playoffs,
because most great QB’s didn’t make the playoffs in their rookie year.
NP though, because your 4-12 prediction establishes your level of bias in the matter.
Chargers Game Live
September 1st, 2009
8:03 pm
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The Hot Button: Who's the biggest dud in local sports? | Mark Bradley
September 3rd, 2009
10:32 am
[...] — or blame, as the case may be — for this entry. This tangent arose on Saturday’s live chat off the Falcons’ defensive collapse, and I thought it would make a nice Hot Button. (Or Cold Button, as the case may [...]