With the line having some issues, it took quarterback Matt Ryan awhile to get the league’s No. 1 offense rolling.
After being held to 86 yards in the first half, Ryan marched the Falcons down the field on three consecutive touchdown-scoring possessions of 75, 79 and 97 yards in the third quarter.
With the rushing attack shut down, Ryan completed 27 of 42 passes for 335 yards and three touchdowns in the 26-24 loss to Seattle on Sunday.“It’s disappointing,” Ryan said. “It’ didn’t start the way we wanted to in the first half, but I thought we responded really well in the second half. We continued to battle. We just didn’t finish the way we wanted to.”
However, he had a costly fumble and interception that Seattle turned into 10 points, including the game-winning 45-yard field goal.Ryan was 13 yards under his league-leading average of 348 yards passing per game. He finished with a passer rating of 102.8.
With the Falcons leading, 24-23, and trying to run out the clock, Ryan’s pass for Julio Jones bounced off his hands and was tipped up by Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman. Seattle free safety Earl Thomas came down with the interception.
“I just need to give him a better ball in that situation,” Ryan said. “I liked how aggressive we were. We just have to make a play.”
The Falcons didn’t make any major adjustments in the second half.
“I thought we settle down a little bit at halftime,” Ryan said. “This is a tough place to play, there is no question about it. It was loud. (We) probably didn’t handled the environment as well as we needed to in the first half, but we settled down, came back out in the second half and executed pretty well. We got ourselves right back into the game.”
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