Keidel: Falcons' Ryan May Be Elite, But He Still Needs A Coronation

By Jason Keidel
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How often is the leading MVP candidate buried under the layers of Super Bowl hype?

Matt Ryan made NFL defenses his personal playground during the regular season, finishing a whisker under 5,000 yards, with 38 touchdowns and seven interceptions. Yet, he's still toiling a level below the sport's aristocracy. A win on Feb. 5 will change that, and his life, forever.

Ryan has gotten hotter as the calendar has gotten colder. Over his last six games -- all Atlanta wins -- he has tossed 18 TDs and not a single INT. With all due respect to his heralded Super Bowl LI counterpart, Tom Brady, you can't have a hotter hand than Ryan, who has thrown seven of those scoring passes in the playoffs.

Ryan punched his ticket to the Super Bowl with his finest four quarters of the season against the Packers, completing 27 of 38 passes (71.1 percent), for 392 yards and four TDs, in addition to posting a stratospheric passer rating (139.4) and QBR (98.4). He even scored a rushing touchdown, for good measure.

Yet the obvious narrative has been all about the Patriots, the iconic B & B tandem (Brady and Belichick), as they inch toward their fifth Lombardi Trophy, which would nudge both past Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw to become the only HC/QB with a Super Bowl ring for every finger.

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And Brady, of course, would slide past his childhood hero, Joe Montana, as the only QB with five Super Bowl titles. When you get to the thin air of the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, the differences are negligible. Can you truly assert that Brady is better than Montana, or the reverse? Will one more win change decades of history?

All this perception and reflection will obscure the fact that there really are two quarterbacks playing in this game. Brady may have more rings than Liberace, but Ryan is hardly a newb, or a neophyte, or a wide-eyed rookie who's playing his first big game since senior night at Boston College. Ryan is balling right now. And if you think the sheer force of destiny is enough to knock the Falcons from their nest, consider whom they just beat. The Packers were on fire, fresh off two playoff wins, and riding an eight-game winning streak.

All of this good fortune was spawned by another quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, who was playing at such a surreal pace that many of us were declaring that he was playing at levels we'd never seen. Rodgers was so spellbinding, his play felt almost biblical. Consider Phil Simms a member of the Rodgers congregation, with the former Giants great telling us that Rodgers was the best pure passer the world has ever seen.

So much for destiny. The Falcons blew the doors off the Packers, with Ryan matching Rodgers pass for pass. Ryan led the league in yards per attempt (9.26) and averaged an astounding 10.32 yards per throw in the NFC title game. Not only is Ryan an MVP favorite, he has also restored his sweet sobriquet, "Matty Ice," his game as cool as the weather.

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Now Matty Ice has one more QB dragon to slay, to finally get his name up the totem pole, to shed his place as a second-tier quarterback, a rung below Rodgers, Brady, Brees, and Big Ben. There is no greater symbol of Super Bowl success than Brady.

To stretch a Dickensian phrase, the Super Bowl is a tale of two teams, two cultures, and two histories. The clubs could not be more different. The Falcons are an inverted version of the Patriots, a team with just a single Super Bowl appearance, which, oddly enough, was a coronation for another iconic quarterback adding the last strokes to his sprawling resume.

For those younger readers, John Elway was every bit the QB Brady is today. He not only was a living legend, and winner, but he'd just won the prior Super Bowl, and was looking for one more world title wave to ride into retirement. Atlanta had Chris Chandler, Jamal Anderson, and the "Dirty Birds," who weren't quite enough to blunt the momentum of history.

Likewise, this Super Bowl is about a team that expects to play here every year and one that crashed the party. The Patriots have 21 players who have played in a Super Bowl. Atlanta has four. But, as we know, the NFL is a quarterback's world. So this game will likely be distilled to the finer talents of Brady and Ryan. Brady's celebrity and legacy are already assured.

If Ryan wants a seat at the legends' table, he just needs to beat one more legend. Or else Matty Ice will melt into a football footnote.

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel