Falcons owner Arthur Blank and general manager Thomas Dimitroff gave updates on Matt Ryan’s contract situation Tuesday.
Blank said Tuesday via email that there is no timetable for getting a deal done with Ryan, who is entering the final year of his contract.
"The most direct and honest answer is: no need to worry, good conversations are happening, they are positive and there's no timetable for this," the Falcons' owner wrote to Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jeff Schultz.
Ryan is scheduled to earn $19.250 million in base salary this season. The Falcons missed their window to close a deal for an extension that might have lowered Ryan’s salary-cap figure before the start of free agency. The fact that a contract has not been completed yet does not mean a deal won’t get done, but it could make things problematic down the road.
Dimitroff said on 680 The Fan that he thought the team was “close” to a deal and repeated what he said at Georgia’s Pro Day about it not being a complicated deal.
“We continue to have ongoing dialogue with Matt’s representatives on a contract extension,” Dimitroff said when asked by the AJC to expand on his radio comments. “It remains our primary focus this offseason, and we continue to get closer every day. It can be a lengthy process as you work through a major deal like this, but all of our conversations are productive and continue to move the process forward.”
Here’s what Dimitroff said at Georgia’s Pro day.
“We adhered to the plan that we had,” Dimitroff said. “We knew we had a big signing and work to do on Matt of course. With any organization dealing with an upper-echelon quarterback, it’s predicated, not the deal, as I said before, you have to be creative with how you do that.
“We mapped out a lot of different strategies as far as how we were going to maintain, signing our players back, which was our No. 1 (goal).”
The quarterback market has settled during free agency.
The problematic deal for the Falcons was the three-year, $84 million deal that Kirk Cousins signed with Minnesota. All of his money was guaranteed.
Also, Detroit signed Matthew Stafford to a six-year, $135 million deal, with $92 million guaranteed.
Ryan’s extension could go as high as six years and $180 million, which would make him the NFL’s first $30 million per year player.
Ryan signed his original six-year, $72 million deal May 20, 2008 and was an instant hit. A total of $34.75 million of that deal was guaranteed.
While guiding the Falcons to the playoffs six times and to one Super Bowl, Ryan has completed 3,630 of 5,593 passes (64.9 percent) for 41,796 yards, 260 touchdowns and 126 interceptions. He has a career passer rating of 93.4. The attempts, completions, yards and touchdowns are all-time franchise records.
Ryan has been incredibly durable, starting all 16 games in nine of 10 seasons. Only a wicked turf-toe injury kept him out of two games in the 2009 season.
Ryan has rallied the Falcons to victory with 36 game-winning drives and has staged 27 fourth-quarter comebacks .
Ryan, who’s set to turn 33 on May 17, has helped make the Falcons legitimate title contenders after he was drafted with the third pick of the 2008 NFL draft.
