Matt Ryan, Frank Reich, Falcons discussed on Bet The Board
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He is in the twilight of his career, I said. I didn't see his retired yet. We're not taking him into the glue factory. But let's see what he's got left in the tank. Fortunately for Ryan though, he probably or at least hopefully won't be running for his life in Indianapolis the same way he did last year as a member of the falcons. Agreed there. And I've said this the last couple seasons. And I still believe it to be true after looking at the data. Matt Ryan, to me, still has a lot of juice. And if you look at some of his numbers last year, he was 7th best in adjusted accuracy from a clean pocket. The problem was exactly what you said. The falcons offensive line was a Sith. They allowed Matt Ryan to be pressured on 40 percent of dropbacks. And it's not like he was holding on to the ball forever. Ryan had a well above average time to throw it under 2.7 seconds. So the ball was leaving his hands pretty quick. I also felt like Matt Ryan handled pressure relatively well. Everyone's trying to send the guy into retirement, but you look at some of his pocket presence and awareness numbers. He had the 9th best pressure to saccharide. So only 16% of pressures turned into sacks and for context, Josh Allen was number one at 11%. And then you look at Matt Ryan when you would actually flee the pocket. He was 11th in EPA per pass attempt throwing from outside the pocket. So again, he's probably not going to win many 40 yard dashes, but at 37 he's certainly not a statue. And I think what's interesting here is he's walking into an offense that has an identity now, right? It has a plan. It's led by a former quarterback who does a really good job. Building leads, that is organizational emphasis. And if you look at Frank Reich on early downs, cults were number one in the NFL and EPA per rush the first three quarters. The falcons were 20th. So Matt Ryan is going to have a little bit more support here. You'll look at the offensive line. Probably Matt Ryan's best he'll play behind since 2017. And I think when you look at that cultural line, I know a lot of people do have some potential question marks for it. And I'm not sure it's going to be elite like it was a few years back. I think there are still some nice pieces here. There's still some good attributes. It just needs to get cleaned up a little bit. And it needs to be more consistency. When you look last year, indie blocked well. And when they blocked while they blocked really, really well. They finished top 7 in both adjusted line yards and run block win rate. The problem was at times. It could get overwhelmed a little bit and blown off the ball and you see that in the number where Jonathan Taylor has been contacted at or behind the line of scrimmage on 49% of his carry. You just need more consistency there. There's some questions about the depth along the offensive line and some guys are being shuffled around, but you look at some of the actual pieces and how they've performed in the past. Matt Pryor coming off his best season. He's played laugh tackle before. Brayden Smith proved to be a really fine right tackle. Great out 11th of 54 qualifying tackles last year. Then you have pinter who's now playing guard after being a very dominant run blocking center. And I think that bodes well now that he has less responsibility. And then you have Quentin Nelson and Ryan Kelly and we know Kelly dealt with a couple off field tragedies last year. When you look at the numbers, no surprise it was his worst season on the field. I would expect a bounce back there. I think barring injury, the colt still have a top ten offensive line. Then you look at without the support of an efficient ground game and a fringe top ten offensive line. I think you're looking at Matt Ryan, who's going to prove to be substantially better than Carson Wentz last season. I think you talked about some of the accuracy things. And then you look at him pushing the ball down the field that a little bit better of a rate on passes of ten or more yards. So basically the intermediate and deep passes combined. Matt Ryan was third and accuracy. Like, who are his receivers last year in Atlanta? I thought that was exceptional. Once was 31st in that category. Then you kind of strip down the benefit of throwing with play action since we know that's a little bit of a cheat code for quarterbacks and look at only passes without that enhancement of play action. Matt Ryan was 7th and accuracy. Once 32nd. And Matt Ryan was also more accurate than whence when using play action as well. The receiver group here is interesting. I was told this past summer that there would be a Julio Matt Ryan reunion. The colts didn't press as hard as Tampa did. And once Mike Evans engage went down with some tweaks and knowing Godwin was coming back from ACL, tear there, Tampa kind of put the full court press on Julio and landed them. I don't think there's going to be a ton of moves made, but potentially you could see a reunion with TY Hilton. You could see a play for will fuller. I think they're still kind of figuring out what this receiver room looks like. But I envision Michael Pittman having a little bit of a coming out party this year. You look at last season, Michael Pittman was top 5 in both total route wins and route win rate, which means when he runs her out. He was getting open. I think when you have a more cerebral quarterback and a more accurate quarterback, like Matt Ryan, you should be able to find Pittman a little bit more when he's winning all those routes. Alec pierce is interesting. He's The Rookie out of Cincinnati. I think they've kind of thrown him into the fire. And you listen to Frank Reich, he basically said, I threw him into the deep end of the pool with a brick tie around his ankle from the onset. And it was an interesting visual for sure reading that particular quote from Frank Reich. That's for damn sure. Yeah, he said he wanted to expedite his growth. So basically, Frank Reich has had Stefan Gilmore shadow Alec pierce every day in training camp. And aside from a few drops, pierce has showed pretty well. And sometimes we all do it. We judge a book by its cover. But pierce is 6 three, 215 pounds. He runs four four with a 41 inch vertical. Yesterday, if you're reading some of the reports from joint practices against the lines, pierce was basically turning Jeffrey Okuda into a pretzel with his route running. I think the colts may have found something there without pierce, but it could take some could take some time. Again, I think Chris Ballard potentially kicks the tires on will fuller or TY Hilton just based upon the idea of can Paris Campbell stay healthy. If you can, awesome, he becomes a wild card with elite speed to the offense, but can you actually rely on him and then Kiki kutai is dealing with a nagging injury as well. I think you look at two things that need to happen for the colts to kind of realize their potential. The first