The NFL offseason isn’t slowing down for anyone…
You heard over and over again last year that the Colts didn’t need or want Carson Wentz to be Superman, and yet they were there at the end of the season, still begging him to take the downtime that was for him in Frank Reich’s Crime.
It’s fair to assume Matt Ryan won’t have that problem. The Falcons traded Ryan to Indy on Monday for the second of their third-round picks (Indianapolis retains the 73rd pick they got from Washington to Wentz), and the Colts ended up with a quarterback who more or less exactly what they need: a point guard who will make the most of the other guys that general manager Chris Ballard and coach Frank Reich are about to put on the floor with him.
Wentz’s trade last year was a bet that Reich’s old protégé could use his abilities and penchant for playing Heroball to play Indy effectively. Conversely, there is very little projection on Ryan. He needs to be able to pass the ball to Michael Pittman, Jonathan Taylor and the Mo Ali-Coxes that the Colts bring to the table.
That doesn’t mean Ryan is still the guy he was in 2016. However, the key point is that the Colts won’t ask him to be like that.
“Really smart, but still accurate for short to medium levels,” says an NFC executive who has studied Ryan and regularly ran against him. “You have to protect him, he can’t move at all. His ability to throw a long ball has always been at an average level, and now it is declining – he can do it better than [Drew] Brees at the end, but it looks like it. … [But] he can get them in a good game, pass the ball to Taylor and be efficient and accurate when he shoots.
“He’s still good. … [the Falcons] it just wasn’t enough anymore.”
And the Falcons still looked favorably on him—as a quarterback who knew how to navigate traffic, who could take hits, play with injuries, and shoot effectively from various angles of hands in the chaos around him.
The good news for Ryan is that he will have more help in Indy, and a lot of motivation to show people, at 38, what he has left. And if you’re Ballard and Reich, he’s different from Wentz, Philip Rivers, or Jacoby Brisset – with a good throw to be, say, a three-year bridge for someone who is a long-term answer as a quarterback. This is especially valuable this year when Indy has no first-round pick and the quality of the quarterback in the draft is very mediocre.
USA Today Sports (3)
• Now, to be sure, the Colts dug themselves this hole with a hit and miss – and it was a big miss – on the Crown. But to give credit to Ballard, he entered the quarterback market and moved his fighting starting lineup and his contract out of the lineup and made more money than many thought. And now? Well, if you add up the peaks that went back and forth between the Colts and the Eagles and the Commanders and the Falcons, that’s how all three grew.
Colts receive: 2022 second round pick (42nd overall), 2022 third round pick (73rd overall), 2023 second/third round pick.
Colts gives: 2021 third round pick (84th overall), 2022 first round pick (16th overall), 2022 second round pick (47th overall) , 2022 seventh round pick (237th overall).
So, if we assume Wentz is the starting player for the Commanders, then the Colts gave up 1s, 2s, 3s, and 7s in exchange for two 2s and 3s, and the 2s and 3s they get are higher than the ones they gave. And for that trade, with three Top 100 picks gone and three more in, they got a year-long rotation with Wentz and then Ryan to replace him.
Ideally, you shouldn’t trade for Crown at all. But in terms of asset management, Ballard was doing well.
• And just to put aside who Ryan is, I thought it was important to remember his place in the history of the Falcons. He brought the franchise down to rock bottom: Mike Vick was convicted of helping to host dogfights, and Bobby Petrino quit the team midway through the previous season. The city had a new general manager (Thomas Dimitroff) and coach (Mike Smith) and there was a lot of (justified) skepticism about the team’s direction.
Scroll to continue
Ryan was then selected third overall, and the Falcons made the playoffs in four of the next five seasons, making it to the Super Bowl a few years after that.
“Matt Ryan was my first draft pick when I started in Atlanta,” Dimitroff wrote on Monday. “His unique intelligence and leadership made him the star of our new era. Matt has experienced exponential growth as a leader on and off the field and demonstrates a sense of purpose, competitiveness, resilience, resilience and playing skills unlike anyone else. I’m excited to see his passion and firepower impact the AFC and wish him the best of luck in Indianapolis.”
It’s fair to say that many of those he left behind in Atlanta did, too.
• Marcus Mariota turns 29 this season, so the Falcons won’t bring in some young brat who hasn’t tried out for the NFL yet. But for a team that will incur a $40.525 million fine for training its old quarterback, Mariota could represent a Wentz-type throw for Arthur Smith, who could play in position if the Falcons don’t end up drafted. April.
What’s interesting is that Mariota is now the sort of land reclamation project that once took his job when he played for Smith in Tennessee. You’ll remember that in 2019, Smith did a great job of resurrecting Ryan Tannehill’s career and helping to make him effective enough to remove Mariota from the Titans’ starting lineup. Now let’s see if Smith can do the same for Mariota in Atlanta.
The truth is that Mariota was not very good in Nashville. And as beaten as he was, a lot of people in the NFL assumed he just wasn’t the guy he came for. This should be a good chance for Mariota to prove these people wrong.
• The Niners’ asking price for Jimmy Garoppolo has held steady for some time (other teams have been claiming two picks in the second round for a couple of weeks now), and the Browns rallied over the weekend and teams knew they wanted a pick in first round for Baker Mayfield behind Deshawn Watson.
I’m pretty sure Cleveland will have to adjust the price, and maybe San Francisco too. After all, you need suitors. Indy is no more. The Saints are also based on what they give to Jameis Winston and they already have Tysom Hill in the books. And it is unlikely that Atlanta will want to get neither Garoppolo nor Mayfield. What leaves… who? Panthers? Seahawks (Hard to imagine the Niners selling their boyfriend to the division)? Yes, now it is difficult to understand where the reward will come from.
• With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how this affects Kyler Murray’s strategy with the Cardinals. His backers want a new deal before the draft and are willing to demand a trade if there is no movement towards him in between. The main reason for this is that after the draft, teams usually plan out their quarterback plans, making it difficult to find a solid landing spot.
But in its current form, such opportunities are already drying up. Let’s see if it causes more urgency on Murray’s part to negotiate with the team.
• When you start to put it all together – and I’m definitely not the first to do this – it’s pretty clear how competitive the AFC has become: Ryan and Russell Wilson are leaving the NFC for the AFC (and so are the likes of Davante Adams, Chandler Jones , Von Miller, Marcus Williams and Randy Gregory), and others who have changed teams such as Deshawn Watson remain in the conference.
This, of course, forces the opponents to remain aggressive.
“You have to have a quarterback, and then you have to have defense and specifically ways to go after the quarterback,” Bills general manager Brandon Bean said Sunday. “How are you going to do it? I think you look at each year and think, “Where did you fail in the biggest games?” And we had #1 defense, but we didn’t always get the quarterback down. And we didn’t have a double digit sack on our team.”
So they landed a big hit on Miller, much like the Raiders hit Jones or, to a lesser extent, the Broncos on Gregory. These teams certainly know what they’re up against, and these moves are proof of that.
• Once again about Miller. I always think smart teams ask the question before going after a free agent or a veteran in a trade why the other team is letting a guy go. And that, in my opinion, is what’s charming about what Buffalo went to to go and land Miller.
The Rams didn’t just let Miller go. They offered a deal similar to Buffalo’s, only guaranteed only the first two years. The willingness of the bills to move guarantees to a third year certainly played a role. But Buffalo figured that $17.5 million over those three years was worth rolling the dice, even if Miller is 35 in the last of those seasons.
Remember that in recent years, the Bills have received a lot from older players like Jerry Hughes and Mario Addison.
• The Patriots woke up this week to invite Leonard Furnett and Malcolm Butler for visits, and of course, this is consistent with how they were talking to agents of key free agents in Indianapolis at the mill, telling them they weren’t going to pay. price for the guys in the first wave, but will be there if the market bottoms out for the guys they like.
Some found it a bit ridiculous that they were so blatantly stating this, because that’s the approach they used in tandem with the temptation to play with Tom Brady to make deals during their championship years. Now we’ll see if there’s anything else like it for Bill Belchik & Co.
• Speaking of Brady, I liked how Chris Godwin gave everyone a small window into the quarterback recruiting effort in the group text they exchange with Mike Evans. On Monday, Godwin told local reporters that eight days ago, before breaking the news to the world, Brady broke the news to his recipients in this thread. Suffice it to say that it had an effect on Godwin.
“Mike and I were so horny, like, ‘Hey, what are you talking about? Have you just retired?! Godwin said. “It’s hard to leave the game when you’re as dedicated as Tom.”
Now, since Evans had a contract and Godwin was tagged, he really didn’t need to bring these guys back into the ranks. But it wasn’t long before Godwin agreed to an extension or more messages were sent to the other guys that Brady wanted back on his side.
As a result, Ryan Jensen and Carlton Davis are staying, and I’m sure a few more Bucks free agents will make similar decisions in the coming weeks.
More NFL coverage:
• MMQB: How the Browns are back in pursuit of Deshawn Watson
• How 22 women and one star quarterback got here
• The Browns will never walk away from a Watson deal.
• This is how far teams will go for a QB franchise