The blame for Loss No. 9 falls on Matt Ryan

Tom Brady can do that. Peyton Manning can do that. Matt Ryan? Hasn’t done it lately.

To say Ryan was awful Sunday would be incorrect. He completed 26 of 37 passes for 310 yards and had a passer rating of 102.3. With Julio Jones inactive, those numbers look spiffy enough. Looks, however, deceive.

Ryan started slowly, missing two open receivers to quash the first possession. On the first play of the second quarter, he threw for Harry Douglas, although only by the loosest definition of “threw for” was this pass even close to its presumed target. Pittsburgh cornerback William Gay intercepted and returned the gift 52 wayfaring yards for a touchdown.

“It was just kind of a tough play,” Ryan said. “I let it go and it was certainly a decision you can’t make. I can’t do that. It stops there.”

Gay’s return made it 13-0. Never again would the Falcons have the ball and a chance to take the lead. It was the second time in six days an inexplicable Ryan INT had such an effect.

In Green Bay on Monday night, Ryan’s apparent underthrow of a throwaway was snagged by Morgan Burnett and returned to the Falcons’ 15-yard line. The Packers would score to make it 17-7. Never again would the Falcons — have I said this already — have the ball and a chance to take the lead.

Ryan throwing to Julio Jones was the only reason the Falcons made it close at Lambeau Field, and Ryan throwing to receivers other than Jones kept the Falcons in it against the Steelers in Sunday’s “road” game — those wearing red were almost outnumbered by those waving Terrible Towels — at the Georgia Dome. But the what-was-he-thinking interception has become a season staple, and a team without much of a running game and with the league’s worst defense cannot have its quarterback give the ball away.

There was the bizarre second-half interception against Detroit in London that hastened the dissolution of a 21-point lead. (The Falcons lost on a field goal at 0:00.) There was a second-quarter interception — followed by a lost fumble — that led to Cleveland taking a 13-7 lead. (The Falcons lost on a field goal at 0:00.) There was a interception returned for a touchdown against Arizona that briefly endangered this team’s best victory since Opening Day. Now two in six days.

“There are a lot of reasons interceptions happen,” Ryan said. “I’ve got to be better with the ones that are on me.”

He quibbled, genially as always, with a questioner’s premise: “Going back to my rookie year, we throw the ball a lot more now. I hope that is (in) there. I’ve got to control the things I can. I’ve got to do better than I have done up until this point and that’s it.”

The bit about throwing the ball more is undeniable: He delivered 434 passes in 16 games as a rookie, the same year Michael Turner was rushing for 1,699 yards. This year Ryan has thrown 541 passes in 14 games, and by no means has he been wretched. (He entered Sunday’s game ranked fifth in passing yards.) He just hasn’t been quite as good as this flimsy team needed him to be.

That the Falcons can still win the NFC South says more about their division than it does them. They’ve played better lately than over their first seven games, but this week the schedule caught up to them. Over the final two games, they’ll be playing fellow lightweights — New Orleans there, Carolina here.

In his postgame briefing, coach Mike Smith began placidly but closed with what was, by Smitty standards, a speech on the order of Henry V before Agincourt. “It’s hard to win on the road in this league,” he said, his face tightening and his voice rising, “but we’ve gone down there and done it before. It’s our intention to go down there and do it again.”

A bit later, a less impassioned Roddy White said: “We don’t need any motivational speeches. We just need 53 players to play to their potential.”

It will make no difference if the other Falcons perform to capacity and Matt Ryan doesn’t. For these Falcons to be even mediocre, he has to be great.