Matt Ryan looked outside to his left.
Then he quickly looked inside and fired the ball in the direction of running back Devonta Freeman. Saints safety Jamarca Sanford wasn’t fooled and he jumped the route.
He made the interception as if he was the intended receiver with 1:42 seconds left with the score tied 17-17. The play set up the Saints game-winning 30-yard field at the buzzer.
It was Ryan’s 16th interception of the season.
“I didn’t see the defender coming on the left side,” Ryan said. “It was a bad decision on my part and a disappointing way to end the game.”
Ryan did not have one of his best seasons while playing in a totally new offensive system with coordinator Kyle Shanahan.
It was his most interceptions since he threw 17 in 2013. He threw 21 touchdown passes, his fewest he threw 16 as a rookie in 2008.
“There’s been some good,” Ryan said. “I don’t think I can put it in one word. There’s been some good and some not-so-good. That’s one of the things I want to clean up this offseason.”
Shahanan’ offense, which required Ryan to make more plays on the move, came with the reputation for moving the ball, but stalling in the red zone.
In six of his previous eight seasons as a coordinator, his offenses finished in the bottom-half of the league in red zone efficiency.
The Falcons added to that by committing red zone turnovers throughout the season.
“When you don’t have an opportunity to keep playing into the playoffs and you didn’t play as well as you would like, obviously that’s disappointing,” Ryan said. “There will be some things that I think we can correct. I think there were a lot of positives, a lot of really good things we did this year, but at the end of the day, we didn’t do them often enough and I didn’t do them often enough.”
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