Don't be fooled by Matt Ryan's lack of postseason success

Friday June 01, 2012 - 6:43 AM

Ryan's playoff failures have earned him the snarky nickname 'Mr. Regular Season.' (US Presswire)

Regular-season king. Can't cut it in the playoffs. He's oh-for-three as a playoff quarterback.

They said those things once about Peyton Manning.

They're saying them now about Matt Ryan.

Manning proved his skeptics wrong in a big way.

Ryan will, as well.

Manning went on to win a Super Bowl and four MVPs, but as Ryan readies for his fifth season as the starting quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, you would be hard-pressed to find many who would dare mention him in the same sentence with Manning.

Postseason failure is to his regular-season canvas like a big handful of mud thrown at a fancy painting.

It takes away the pretty.

In his four seasons with the Falcons, Ryan has amassed a 43-19 record, led the Falcons to three playoff berths and thrown 95 touchdown passes against 46 interceptions. But he's 0-3 in the playoffs, and in those games he has three touchdown passes, four interceptions and didn't throw for 200 yards in any of those losses.

That has earned him the wise-ass nickname of "Mr. Regular Season."

"I don't think about it too much," Ryan said this week when I asked him about the playoff failures. "My focus is to try to become a better player, doing the things I need to do. It's not about winning playoff games. It's about winning championships."

When a quarterback doesn't get it done in the playoffs, it's on him. That's the nature of the beast. Forget everything else that goes wrong. And when it does happen, it often becomes something that gets blown out of proportion. Don't you remember what they said about Manning after losing his first three playoff games?

"It's the NFL," Ryan said. "They make too much of everything."

It's hard not to when your offense fails to score a point in a postseason loss, which is the lasting image of the Falcons' 2011 season. The Giants beat them 24-2 and then went on to win the Super Bowl. It was the second successive season the Falcons lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion, losing at home to the Packers after the 2010 season. Losing to the eventual champion doesn't make the pain any less for Ryan.

"There's no consolation," he said. "One team has success, and 31 others have failure. That's the way it is in this league."

Only five quarterbacks threw more touchdown passes than Ryan in 2011 when he threw 29. He also threw for a career-best 4,177 yards, but none of that mattered after his third playoff failure.

So what to do about it?

For starters, the Falcons will have a new offense. Coordinator Mike Mularkey left to become head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and his replacement is former Jaguars coordinator Dirk Koetter.

The Jaguars were known as a run-heavy team under Koetter, but that was because that's the way then-coach Jack Del Rio wanted it. The Falcons are expected to be more vertical with Ryan throwing to Julio Jones and Roddy White on the outside.

I recently spent 18 holes on a golf course in the same cart with Koetter and, aside from our shanking shots here and there to ruin any chance of winning the tournament, we spent a lot of time talking about Ryan.

Koetter raved about him.

The feeling is mutual.

"He's a great teacher," Ryan said. "There are some different concepts from what we did in the past, but we just have to focus on getting better every day. We did some good things last year, but we didn't do anything great."

Ryan has always been a gym rat, the kind of quarterback who lives at the facility and works out like players at other positions. That's a lot like Manning, whom he has been compared to in the past.

To help prepare for this season, Ryan changed the way he trained. He said he dropped four or five percentage points of body fat while adding five-six pounds of weight.

"It's good, solid weight," Ryan said. "I feel strong in practice. It will help with the no-huddle when we go to it."

That no-huddle offense seemed to be when the Falcons shined in 2011. Koetter plans to use more of it, and Ryan likes that idea. It puts more on his plate, calling plays at the line of scrimmage, but it also gives the Falcons a chance to dictate tempo. With Jones and White outside, why not let it fly?

"I love it," Ryan said. "It's something we've had success here with the past four years."

With the new move to open things up some, and Ryan now in his fifth season, with Jones and White and Tony Gonzalez, expect Ryan to bounce back from his latest playoff failure to put up his best numbers yet.

That won't be good enough to get the doubters off his back. Quarterbacks are defined by playoff success, and Ryan knows that as well as anyone. He's just not going to be consumed by it.

But the idea that he isn't any good because of the playoff frustration is just stupidity.

They said the same things about Peyton Manning. How did that turn out?

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Ten-Point Stance: Ryan's bravado losing charm, may cost him his job

Rex Ryan has drawn criticism for the way he dealt with Tom Coughlin leading up to Week 16. (US Presswire)

One NFL assistant coach on the Jets' Rex Ryan: "Very smart guy ... good coach but he is quickly becoming a caricature of himself."

And another: "You can see how smart he is by what happens on film. He does some innovative stuff but there's no question he's starting to take things too far."

One more assistant: "I like him but it's hard to defend him sometimes."

And, finally, this from a head coach: "The way he treated Coughlin was just flat wrong."

Ryan might be the most talked about coach in football right now and maybe the last few years. No coach generates more discussion -- particularly true within his own community. A handful of coaches were asked their thoughts on Ryan and in a profession where there often is no consensus on anything, there was on Ryan.

The unanimous opinion seems to be the following: Ryan is bright, still well liked and respected but he's rapidly losing some of that respect because, these coaches believe, his attacks are beginning to become more numerous and personal.

One coach put it this way. Ryan has allowed his rhetoric to get so out of control that each quote must be more extreme. This, he said, is a highly dangerous trap.

Where some coaches say Ryan went too far was in his dealings with Tom Coughlin last week before the Jets played the Giants. Indeed, that seems to be the line of demarcation for some in the profession.

When Ryan bragged how the Jets weren't the Giants' little brothers, the Jets were the better of the two franchises and all but stated he'd beat Coughlin, it put increased pressure on the Giants coach. Now, to most people, they don't care if Ryan's bragging put more pressure on Coughlin. This is the big time. So what if Coughlin has to deal with Ryan's mouth.

But in the coaching community Coughlin is highly respected. In that world, outside of the staff firings that are done out of necessity because of performance, you don't mess with another coach's job. You certainly don't use the media in a way that can cause harm. Everyone in the sport knows Coughlin is fighting for his job.

"Did you see Coughlin that week say a word about Rex Ryan until Rex said something about him?" asked an assistant coach.

It should be noted the coaches respect Ryan (as do I) but believe Ryan is irreparably damaging his image and can't possibly live up to his constant bragging.

Should Ryan change? It's almost a moot point because he won't.

"When I leave this job, 10 or 15 years from now, I'm going to be true to myself," Ryan said this week according to the New York Daily News. "And you know maybe it's not the traditional way of doing things or whatever, but for me this is who I am, this is how I believe. I made the statements and like I said before, I'll stand by everything I said."

Ryan won't change and neither will the opinions of his fellow coaches.

2. The San Francisco 49ers released wide receiver Braylon Edwards. Few receivers in such a short time had the kind of rapid decline in skills as Edwards. Dropped balls didn't help, either. Edwards had 15 catches for the 49ers. The price tag: $1.6 million.

3. John Elway may have given his vote of confidence to Tim Tebow too soon. That's called premature confidation.

4. ESPN said its love everyone/love everything analyst Jon Gruden plans to stay at Monday Night Football. They cite his contract. Remember: the contract Gruden signed in no way prevents him from returning to coaching, according to a person familiar with the contract's language. He could depart tomorrow with no penalty. The language in the contract is more about preventing Gruden from leaving for competing networks. The prevailing belief among league officials remains that Gruden will end up coaching next season in San Diego or St. Louis. I also would not rule out Jacksonville. The new owner of the Jaguars is prepared to pay top money for a coach.

5. Even if the Cowboys lose to the Giants, many in football don't expect Jerry Jones to fire Jason Garrett. They do, however, expect Jones to do something otherwise humiliating to Garrett like force the coach to fire several members of his staff.

6a. Champ of the week: Jim Schwartz. Got a joke of a franchise into the playoffs. Finally, the wreck, the curse, the plague that was Matt Millen is dead.

6b. Chump of the week: Jeff Triplette. Easily the worst game official in all of sports. Again, during the Monday night game, he showed why with a rash of unnecessary, inconsistent and wrong penalty calls.

6c Tweet of the week: "I'm convinced the only guy who may be able cover NFL TE's, the Gronk, Graham and Finely is @RajonRondo." -- Boomer Esiason

7. Pro Bowl voting results are out. Yawn.

8. There remains very little interest in Donovan McNabb, who is a free agent. Ironically, McNabb's one-time nemesis, Terrell Owens, has drawn even less interest. The careers of both men might be over.

9. One reason why the Chargers are struggling. The team let Drew Brees walk. Well, that happens. Great players go to other teams. But the Chargers haven't done a good job of restocking their talent. A good example is Clemson linebacker Anthony Waters, a third round pick While Brees honed his skills and developed into a Hall of Fame thrower, Waters struggled. He missed all of his rookie year in 2007, had just three tackles in 2008 and was waived by the Chargers in 2009.

10. From Packers blogger Aaron Nagler: quarterback Aaron Rodgers' six interceptions are a record low for a quarterback with more than 4,000 yards passing in a season. That's pretty damn impressive. Brees threw for over 5,000 yards and had 13 picks. That's not terrible either.

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