The NFL moves fast.
A little over a week ago, the Atlanta Falcons team MVP quarterback Matt Ryan was a centerpiece reason for the team's mini-revival ... and it was very familiar and comforting in a way, because he was demonstrating that even as a 14-year veteran, he can still do many of the things he's done to put up Hall-of-Fame-type numbers over the course of all those years.
Atlanta had buoyed itself to .500. A glance at the NFC standings showed that playoff contention was at least mathematically possible.
And then ...
Dallas.
Ryan finished with a career-low 21.4 passer rating in the Falcons’ embarrassing 43-3 loss to the Cowboys. He completed just 9 of 21 passes for 117 yards and had two interceptions.
And as a result? In what some might call a "knee-jerk manner,'' and in what others might call "reality,'' some in Falcons Nation are calling for the benching of Matt Ryan.
He has, of course, seen it all - including calls for his head. But he also recognizes that by the numbers, what happened in Dallas is rock-bottom, only to be matched by a similar failure way back in his rookie year of 2008.
That season, he finished with a passer rating of 29.6 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I remember that one, too,” Ryan said of that awful memory. “It was ugly.”
The question now for Atlanta, at 4-5 in the NFC South basement: Can Ryan fix the ugly? Or is it irreparable?
“Hopefully, it will be another 13 years before I have another rating like that,” Ryan said. “That’s kind of how I view it. It’s one of the days, it wasn’t for us. We didn’t play well. I didn’t play well. You’ve got to get back to work. Trust me, I really believe that we’re going to get back there next week and play really well.”
They will almost certainly try to do that with Ryan, and not with backup QBs Josh Rosen or Feleipe Franks. But the schedule might help determine when coach Arthur Smith decides to give way at quarterback. It's Bill Belichick's Patriots on Thursday. Then comes a game against the have-not Jags, and then come the defending-champ Bucs.
As much as Ryan and Smith surely wish to control their own destiny at the position, success - or the coming lack thereof - might actually take control.
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