Wednesday Wonder: What Does Matt Ryan Think About the Atlanta Falcons’ Quarterback Conundrum?
Is there a more fascinating, or more important, question than Ryan's vision for the Atlanta Falcons?
Matt Ryan is the President of Football for the Atlanta Falcons. He also happens to be the best quarterback in franchise history. Below Ryan, it’s either Michael Vick or Steve Bartkowski. What the latter two have in common, outside of being great quarterbacks for the franchise, is that they both went No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft in their respective classes. The aforementioned Ryan went No. 3 overall. All three were the first quarterbacks off the board in their respective drafts.
Atlanta’s current franchise quarterback hopeful, Michael Penix Jr., was the fourth quarterback taken in the 2024 NFL Draft. The three quarterbacks taken before him, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, and Drake Maye, have each already proven they’re franchise quarterbacks, and each has already made the postseason, with the latter leading his team to the Super Bowl this past season.
The Falcons have not hosted a playoff game in the no-longer-new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and have the second-longest playoff drought in the NFL at eight seasons overall. The quickest way to resolve that embarrassing mark for the franchise is to get the quarterback position right. With Penix Jr. coming off yet another knee injury and the team signing Tua Tagovailoa as insurance, I can’t help but wonder where Ryan is when it comes to the most important position in football with the Atlanta Falcons, a position he knows and understands better than anyone in that building.
Ryan, along with new general manager Ian Cunningham, did not draft Penix Jr. Along with the two new leaders in the Falcons’ front office, the team has a new head coach and new offensive staff underneath Kevin Stefanski. In college football, the term Year 0 is used frequently. For instance, with the amount of roster turnover and looming sanctions at Tennessee when Josh Heupel first arrived in Knoxville, it was understood the 2021 season was an evaluation year – a year to reset the deck. Year 0, not Year 1. With how the Falcons have operated in free agency thus far, it certainly does look like an evaluation and reset year is what’s on the menu for the Falcons in 2026, and for good reason. If Ryan, Cunningham, and Stefanski tie themselves to Penix Jr., and that decision proves to extend the team’s playoff drought to double-digit seasons, that’s a huge problem for the trio.
Former longtime Atlanta Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff, who has now become vastly underrated by the fanbase over the last six years, used his first selection on Ryan in the 2008 NFL Draft. He led the franchise for over a decade in large part because he got the quarterback right right away in Atlanta. Ryan and Cunningham did not use their first selection as top decision-makers for the franchise in 2026 on a quarterback – the team did not even have a first-round pick this season after the previous administration traded back into the first round last year for Tennessee LEO James Pearce Jr. 2026 was also one of the weaker quarterback drafts with just two quarterbacks taken in the first round and just one taken in the top-10, Fernando Mendoza, who went No. 1 overall to the Las Vegas Raiders. However, Atlanta has its first-round pick in the 2027 NFL Draft. Next year’s draft is one that analysts believe to be loaded at the quarterback position, headlined by Texas’ Arch Manning.
The trio of Ryan, Cunningham, and Stefanski has all seen what happens when your team takes the first quarterback off the board in any particular draft. Ryan saw the longterm success he had with the franchise after being taken No. 3 overall and the first quarterback off the board in 2008. Cunningham was with the Bears when they selected Caleb Williams No. 1 overall. Stefanski, who won Coach of the Year twice during his tenure in Cleveland, was most successful with a quarterback the Browns took No. 1 overall in Baker Mayfield. Kind of like the NBA, where the San Antonio Spurs look like they’re headed towards another long-term all-time great run with former No. 1 overall pick Victor Wembanyama. The Detroit Pistons broke through this season, a season where their best player, Cade Cunningham, a former No. 1 overall pick, broke through as a top-10 guy in the League. Sometimes, you just need a little luck and the best bets to become stars become, well, stars.
For the Falcons to get there, the 2026 season has to be different, and not just the uniforms. The seemingly never-ending march to eight or nine wins has to cease. It’ll be painful to have to invest another first-round pick on a quarterback in 2027 after just doing so in 2024, along with the Kirk Cousins debacle, but none of that is on this current administration. What this administration has to do is reset the rookie quarterback contract clock in 2027. What they can’t do is stumble their way into eight or nine wins again with up-and-down play from Penix Jr.
But I wonder if Ryan sees it that way? Has he seen enough in the previous two years watching from afar to believe Penix Jr. can be the franchise quarterback former general manager Terry Fontenot thought he was getting two years ago? Or does he, along with Cunningham and Stefanski, look at the 2027 quarterback class and believe 2026 needs to be a Take Your Medicine year?
This season and the next are so critical to building out something that works long-term in Atlanta. The Falcons have won seven or eight games in seven of the last eight seasons. It’s a ride every Atlanta fan desperately wants to get off. I suspect more fans than not, like a lot of Steelers fans, would gladly take a rough step-back year if it meant taking potentially the top quarterback in next year’s class.
The last time the Falcons won four games or fewer, they took a tight end at No. 4 in what turned out to be a disastrous quarterback class. Still, the first quarterback taken in that draft worked out – Trevor Lawrence to the Jacksonville Jaguars at No. 1 overall. The Falcons went 4-12 the season before they took Michael Vick No. 1 overall. The Falcons went 4-12 the season before they took Matt Ryan No. 1 overall. Perhaps it’s time for the Falcons to go 4-12, er, 4-13, this year.
I wonder if Ryan, Cunningham, and Stefanski look at it through a similar lens? It’s better to rip the Band-Aid off early in a new tenure when hope and optimism are at their highest. Stefanski got Mayfield early. Ben Johnson got Williams early. Dimitroff got Ryan early. Will Ryan, Cunningham, and Stefanski follow what worked in the past? Or will they try to make it work through the middle, a path that has failed the franchise for nearly a decade now? I don’t have the answer, but I hope Ryan does because his long-term future in Atlanta, along with Cunningham and Stefanski, will depend on it.