Camila Sosa
The arrival of Matt Ryan to the Indianapolis Colts was one of the big moves in the market and Frank Reich, the team’s head coach, is more than excited about the arrival of the quarterback in the city.
During the NFL’s annual meeting, Reich confessed to being extremely happy about Ryan’s arrival, since, according to what he said, both sides needed each other.
“I think everyone saw that he fits perfectly,” the head coach said according to Michael Baca, of NFL.com. “I think people can universally agree you got a player who’s still playing at a very high level with a team and roster that is built to make some noise. We needed each other.”
The Colts acquired Ryan from the Atlanta Falcons a couple of weeks ago after trading their last season quarterback, Carson Wentz, to the Washington Commanders. With the experienced quarterback starting the campaign as the leader of Indianapolis’ offense, this will be the fifth consecutive campaign that the organization has put a different name in this position and will likely continue to increase their record from being the only team with a different QB to play at least 15 games in four straight seasons.
Frank Reich added that he has no doubt that Ryan will continue to show all his talent despite his 37 years of age. That is so since. before making the decision to seek his services in Atlanta, they studied his performance thouroughly and what he is still capable of doing on the gridiron.
“The first thing I’m seeing is that the accuracy is still there as are the conditions on his arm,” Reich explained. “Also, I delved into every release of the last two years. I looked at the speed of the ball, looked at the length, looked at the accuracy, looked at the movement skills, and I don’t see that the physical skills have decreased.”
In the organization it is hoped that Ryan will make them forget the disaster experienced during the end of last season pretty quickly (when they lost the last two games needing a single victory to advance to the postseason). This was the reason why they got rid of Wentz’s services despite having given a first-round pick for him prior to 2021.
Matt Ryan’s Numbers That Make Reich Fall for Him
It’s understandable that Colts head coach Frank Reich is excited to have with him a quarterback who was Offensive Rookie of the Year and in 2016 won the circuit’s MVP award.
While Ryan wasn’t what the Falcons expected after that award won during the same season they lost to the New England Patriots, one has to be fair to the quarterback in pointing out that Atlanta didn’t put together such a competitive team to help him either.
Since the 2011 season, Ryan has only completed less than 64% of his passes once, while only last year did he miss 4,000 yards: he recorded 3,968. In addition, during that time he has never thrown less than 20 touchdowns and in 2019 and 2020 he finished as the NFL’s leader regarding complete passes.
Frank Reich must certainly be expecting to count on a quarterback who is ninth in touchdowns (362), eighth in rushing yards (59,735) and seventh in complete passes (5,242). In addition, he led the Falcons six times to the postseason, was selected four times to the Pro-Bowl and was once chosen to the All-Pro team.
