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As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > September > 14
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Ryan showed some fight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tampa — Think of this game as a big fat cake. Picture Matt Ryan bending down to inspect the delicacy. Imagine his shock when the top layer flies open and up springs a boxing glove to smack Matty Ice on the snoot.
Only then does he read the inscription on the icing: “Welcome to the NFL.”
Every rookie has this game, rookie quarterbacks especially. Matt Ryan got his in Week 2 of Season 1, and for nearly a half it was as bad as Week 1 had been good. Against Detroit, he’d thrown his first NFL pass for a 62-yard touchdown. Against Tampa Bay here Sunday, his first nine passes were incompletions, and two were caught by the wrong team.
So addled was the guy lauded for his poise that he actually slung the ball backwards for an 11-yard loss at the end of the second quarter. “I was trying to pull it down,” he said, but at that stage he really didn’t know what he was doing.
It was 17-0 after 21 minutes, and it looked for all the world like one of those vintage Bay beatdowns — such as the 34-10 wipeout in 2002, Michael Vick’s first start here, or the 37-3 annihilation of last December. So it was with great surprise that you looked up with seven minutes remaining and saw …
The Falcons down 17-6 with first-and-goal at the 4.
“It looked rough from the beginning,” said receiver Roddy White. “But we did have a chance.”
No, they didn’t win. Matty Ice didn’t throw the big chill on the Bucs in the final reel. But Ryan did, in his first road start against a proud and polished defense, fight his way through what began as an abomination and turn it into just a garden-variety bad game.
White again: “Everything he did today, he’s learning on the run. And [Bucs defensive coordinator] Monte Kiffin always does this to young quarterbacks.”
Young Matt Ryan was buffeted and bewildered like he’d never been before and might not be again, and still he gathered himself and completed 10 of 18 second-half passes, a half in which he drove his team inside the Tampa 10 twice.
“As a rookie, it’s never going to be easy,” Ryan said. “You have to continue to weather the storm and learn from it.”
And he will. He’ll profit from the worst day of his professional life. It isn’t often a team can take solace from a 24-9 loss, but the Falcons could and did. They knew this could have been 37-3 all over again, but their resolve wouldn’t allow it.
Ryan: “You’ve got to keep battling. All our guys are continuing to battle.”
Back to first-and-goal at the 4. The Falcons choose a play that left Ryan running with the ball, which made no sense then and less in hindsight. Mike Smith, the coach, said the play was supposed to be “a run-pass option.” Ryan said it was a straight quarterback draw. It wound up losing three yards and limiting them to a field goal at a time when a touchdown would have made it dicey for the home side. But that, too, is fixable.
The Falcons are starting over, and they’re growing as they go. Standing in the tunnel as dusk fell Sunday, general manager Thomas Dimitroff simply shrugged when asked about Ryan: “A learning experience.”
Ryan was never going to be Tom Brady overnight. Tom Brady wasn’t Tom Brady overnight. Ryan didn’t trip the light fantastic in his second pro start, but he won a few more fans among a famously difficult audience — his peers. Said Lawyer Milloy, the safety who once shared a locker room with Brady: “I saw some fight out of a very young leader.”
There will be more weeks, more years, more visits to Tampa. Next time Matt Ryan will come packing a boxing glove of his own.
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From the land of the pirate ship
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tampa — Gary Shelton, the fine columnist from the St. Petersburg Times, just wandered over and said, speaking of the team he follows, “This could be a long year.”
Then he said, “Of course, you guys know all about that kind of thing.”
Well, yes. It was here last December that the worst season in the history of professional sports reached its nadir. Playing for interim coach Emmitt Thomas, the Falcons managed five first downs in losing to the Bucs 37-3. Chris Redman’s quarterback rating was 0.0. A franchise (Tampa Bay) that had returned 1,864 kickoffs in its history without running one back all the way ran one back all the way.
It was so bad that a guy in the AJC wrote that Roger Goodell should stop the Falcons before they played again, but as it turned out the lost season’s final two weeks weren’t so bad. The Falcons lost in overtime in Arizona and beat Seattle in the finale, which didn’t mean much in the grand scheme but was still better than losing 37-3.
Nine months later, the Falcons arrive with a better record than the Bucs and probably the better quarterback. Brian Griese starts for Tampa Bay in place of the injured Jeff Garcia, and nobody down here seems to believe a Griese-led offense will be able to muster much today.
So does that mean the locals are picking the visitors to win? Uh, no. Three Tampa Tribune writers pick the Bucs in today’s edition, including Ira Kaufman’s forecast of a 20-0 TB victory. And Shelton and colleague John Romano both like the Bucs, sort of, although that rascal Shelton guesses the home side will score 23 points — on 10 safeties and a field goal.
Check back throughout the afternoon. I’ll try my best to make sense of the doings, although I have to warn you: Today’s my birthday, and I’m feeling even older than ever.
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