Everyone goes through a patch in their life when they date a crazy person after a string of steady borings with ambition, direction, and thought-out plans for their lives. That’s about what happened to the Colts when they signed wild-man Carson Wentz in 2021. The problem was this came at a critical time in the organization’s life when everything around the quarterback position was blooming. Things were really looking up. The defense came together, Michael Pittman and Jonathan Taylor stepped up as weapons, and the offensive line was scary good. They almost couldn’t screw it up at quarterback. They just needed to scroll through the bios for a QB at the dating app level of “My driver’s license is no longer suspended” and that would have been good enough. But they went ahead and threw caution to the wind anyway with Carson Wentz. And wouldn’t you know it, a season long roller-coaster bender with Wentz left the Colts without a drip of adrenaline left to absorb any further stimuli. The only play after all this was to find a man incapable of eliciting any form of excitement for better or worse. Only the most boring of the dull would work for 2022.
Enter Matt Ryan. You can’t possibly get more boring of a quarterback in every single sense of the word. What can you even say one way or the other about Matt Ryan? He’s not bad, he’s no longer really that good, he’s just… I don’t even know. I mean, for fuck’s sake his last name isn’t even edgy enough to be any more than just another run-of-the-mill first name. And let me tell you, things don’t get any better when he speaks. Nothing this guy has ever said contains any indication of the presence of a personality. Google “memorable Matt Ryan quotes” and watch your computer’s OS automatically go into sleep mode.
I think you get the point here, but I’m not quite ready to move on. Real question to think about: do you recall anything this guy ever said ever in any press conference ever? He’s been in the league for 14 years and I literally can’t think of one quote that ever left his mouth. Fair to say the toughest job in the world was easily an Atlanta Falcons beat reporter from 2008 – 2021:
Media Reporters: “Hey Matt, not sure if you noticed but in the 4th quarter of that Super Bowl you guys really sorta blew it in all-time fashion, what are your thoughts on the game?”
Matt Ryan: “You know, I’m really proud of our team and credit to the Pats for making the plays down the…”
Media Reporters: *walks out rolling eyes and muttering in disappointment.
Do you get the point I’m trying to make here? Job well done by the Colts for finding the flavorless seltzer water they so desperately needed to recover from Wentz. I’d say they hit a home run but it’s really more of a sac-bunt type play; it’s the right move, but it’s so boring no one will cheer for it even if it works. How middle-of-the-road safe is Matt Ryan? Last year, he was just above the league average in touchdowns thrown on the season, but he evened this out by being just a little bit over the league average number of interceptions. He was also 12th in the league in first downs thrown which is basically middle of the pack among other brands of flavorless seltzer water like Ryan Tannehill, Jimmy Garappolo, Kirk Cousins and Mac Jones.
Not only is Matt Ryan safe, but he’s also dependable come playoff time. He can be counted on to start strong and wait until the game is well in hand before slacking off. Other QBs wait until it’s too late like a college kid pulling an Addy night to finish a term paper. This would never happen to Matt Ryan because he is easily the last person in the NFL that would know anyone with Adderall. So he gets his points in early. How many points? My math says 28 is what you need by midway through the 3rd quarter – let’s call it 8:31 left – to be reasonably sure you can slack off the rest of any playoff game. Especially if you have already scored 28 points. Out of the 32 playoff teams since 1999 scoring 28 points or more at the 8:31 in the 3rd quarter mark, 27 of them won and there’s no need to even focus on the few that lost:
Seriously though, Matt Ryan is a top-5 quarterback in yards per attempt and TD/INT ratio for playoff games from start of game to this critical 8:31 left in the third quarter:
If your a Colt’s fan, I think you have to be OK with this given the state of your defense. They are solid. It’s really not Matt Ryan’s fault that the Falcons defense shriveled into a hole in the Super Bowl so there’s really no reason to complain about the vanilla wafer you’ll have under center in 2022. On the other hand, if you’re an Indianapolis Colt’s beat writer looking for anything remotely construable as engagement on social media this year:
