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The Atlanta Falcons have extended the contract of QB Matt Ryan five years past its 2019 expiration date, securing he will be the quarterback for the team through the rest of his prime and into his twilight. He’ll make about $30 million per season, and has $100 million in guaranteed money coming his way. You’re likely to see plenty of takes surface in the days ahead about why Ryan is such a great, underappreciated talent, and they’ll be true. You’ll see people say he’s not worth the money, and they’ll be wrong, but they’ll offer a spirited debate. You’ll see people crack Banana Republic jokes, and they’ll be funny. But, the conversation we need to go ahead and take a weed wacker to involves what Ryan’s deal means for the team’s future cap situation. There’s a dirty idea floating around like a fart cloud that states Ryan’s contract will kneecap the team from retaining its core talent in the years to come. That’s just patently not true, and should be quashed like a mean old spider in your bathroom. This surrounds the bizarre hand-wringing about the team retaining talent in the years ahead, and the almighty misunderstanding of the cap system. I can comfortably tell you that the Falcons aren’t going to lose any of the super-core players that are key to their success because of their cap situation, unless you count Tevin Coleman, which in that case, yeah, that’s a luxury you were only going to ride for so long, man. But that might not even be about money. Reps matter, too! First, let’s understand something about cap space. Good teams like Atlanta make smart deals (well, uh, at least recently, they’ve made smart deals). They push money down the road, guarantee a bunch up front, and release some of that bloat when it comes time to reevaluate the new cap for the new year. Old contracts fall off all the time, new contracts are greenlit in their stead, and the cap continuously rises as time goes on. It’s an ever-changing number, and an ever-changing system. One quarterback contract can’t ruin that, or hinder it in such a way where it’s prohibitive for further key extensions. There’s just too much money to go around, and too much transition as years pass on. Second, let’s establish something about pay rates. NFL positions have set markets, and NFL players have agents. When it comes time for a player at a position to get a new deal, the agent is going to either try to reach the set point in the market for an annual deal, or try to raise the ceiling. If you’ve ever wondered why X fine WR2 would get X amount of ridiculous money on the March market, that’s why. It’s a raising scale, and only players who are aging or just aren’t that good don’t reach the set point for pay at their position. For good quarterbacks especially, reaching that number, and even setting the bar, is seen as a right of passage. For agents, it’s a big stinking deal to get your client the new “marquee” deal of the group, particularly if your client is a quarterback. When Matt Stafford, Kirk Cousins and Jimmy Garoppolo are setting records with their deals, Matt Ryan’s agent would awfully bad at his job if the couldn’t secure his client more dough than those guys got. Ryan’s agent is Tom Condon, who is one of the best in the business. Cousins just set the market. Cousins hasn’t won a playoff game. Ryan nearly won a Super Bowl. Ryan’s deal is what the market commanded, and that’s how it was going to be. He deserves it for what he provides, which is only two seasons of losing football in ten. Please stop citing Tom Brady’s contract. He took that pay cut well into his late-30s, and only did so because he has so much money coming in from elsewhere. He’s also married to someone who makes more money per year than he does. And, he still made a ton of money (he cost $13 and $14 million in the last two seasons, and will count $22 million this season, and next season). And, for those who use the “rookie QB” argument, consider that since 2010, only the Seahawks and Ravens have won a Super Bowl with a QB on a rookie deal. The Eaglesgot to the playoff with Carson Wentz, but won the big game with a veteran in Nick Foles. There’s no telling what Wentz would’ve done against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. And, to be fair to Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson, those wins based more on defense than anything else. So, now that we have that established, let’s talk about the Falcons’ financial futures. Sure, the team has a lot of deals to broker in the years to come: Jake Matthews, Grady Jarrett, Vic Beasley and Ricardo Allen are the next four up to bat, and they’re more than likely going to get deals to pay them handsomely for what they provide to the team. Jake’s and Rico’s could come in the summer or during the season. Jarrett’s could as well. Beasley’s could wait until the 2019 season when his fifth-year option kicks in. Some argue the team will try and replace Allen, but even then, that’s not because of Ryan’s deal. It’ll be because they invest a first rounder at the spot in the years ahead to upgrade the talent, or just find someone who is as good as Rico, and costs less per average. Guys like Deion Jones, Keanu Neal, Takk McKinley, De’Vondre Campbell and Austin Hooper won’t need new deals for quite some time, as their rookie contracts have enough gas on them to last for a bit, particularly Neal and McKinley. The Falcons also have veterans like Robert Alford and Mohamed Sanu who have big chunks of their deals about to set in. The team just drafted Alford and Sanu’s eventual successors, and those deals might not get renewed when they expire, or, in a distant scenario, could be cut before their completion. So, their replacements will have time to gel with the league before assuming greater responsibilities. There are also deals like Brooks Reed’s, Derrick Shelby’s and Andy Levitre’s that will expire when they are up, and that money will be freed up to go elsewhere. Those guys aren’t locks to return, and the team could opt to replace their impacts with rookie deals. This is all to say there are only two players on the team right now who might actually walk when their deals are over besides Allen: Coleman and Campbell. Coleman’s decision might not even be financial; he may just want to be the lead back elsewhere and get the lion’s share of reps. Campbell is under contract until 2020, and even then, could still stick around. So, right now, there is not one single Atlanta Falcon whose contract is guaranteed to be thrown to the side just because Ryan got an extension and counts $30 million on the cap. There is going to be enough money to go around to make sure everyone that needs to be there is paid. This is a nonissue. So, uh, I think that’s it. The Falcons extending Ryan on an ever-growing cap system and in an ever-changing lineup on contracts means nothing to retaining any of their key talent down the road. It might mean they don’t come into each March with $50 million in cap space to play with, but traditionally, the teams that do typically stink. So, just be glad the Falcons have extended Ryan, and quit freaking out about the future cap situation. The Falcons will find a way to get everyone fed, and still win games. Heck, maybe they’ll even find a way to finish a Super Bowl before it’s all said and done. But, paying the QB what he’s worth and what the market demands won’t hinder that to any unreasonable degree. Stop trying to argue otherwise. https://www.thefalcoholic.com/2018/5/5/17317040/matt-ryans-contract-doesnt-hinder-the-atlanta-falcons-going-forward

I love this video. One more time ya'll

He doesn’t get burnt on underneath routes. That’s just cover 3 for you. It keeps everything in front. It gives up underneath routes. It’s by design. Weakness of cover 3 is comebacks and curls. The object is to make the immediate tackle after a short catch. If he’s in cover 1 he doesn’t give up the underneath because he’s in man coverage. Even Alf gives up underneath plays. The object is to keep the offense in 3rd and long that’s why we run cover 3 most of the time. We keep everything in front and let nothing get behind us. Don’t think tru can’t cover underneath cause there’s plenty of film of him breaking plays or almost picking it off because he’s in cover 1. Cover 3 is a bail technique so both corners turn to bail and if it’s a short pass they have to come up and make the tackle.

Fake News

Yes they will put a rookie on the outside. It’s not that hard to play cover 3 and Oliver is a day one ready corner. Tru was a day 1 outside corner. Many a rookie corner plays Day 1 and Quinn believes in playing his young. He WILL start a rookie. But Oliver wouldn’t start on the outside. Alf would and he’d move to slot in nickel and Oliver on the outside. Cover 3, bail technique and use his length. He gets his head around and he knows how to warp a wr’s arm so he can’t use it. He will certainly play outside and I think he will move Poole to dime. He will be our Richard Sherman.

We have already seen with Jalen Collins that they would play Alford in the slot when they go nickel. I don't think there is any mystery to it other than when does Oliver prove he is ready to play on the outside in those situations.

Has everyone had enough of this BS? The better our team gets the more the infants need to stir up drama like teenage girls. Great draft, trolls squeal MR signs, trolls squeal Blah blah blah. Lmao!

Every thread is the same from this guy. 1. I’m the biggest fan of this player! 2. BUT.... 3. Commences to throw subtle shade and pessimism about said player. 4. Make the same thread about the next guy. Sometimes making the same thread about the previous guy, just worded slightly different (mods have to lock because it’s an obvious duplicate troll job) OP, your obvious shtick is obvious.

Both guys are gonna smoke some biches this year. And I plan on enjoying the **** out of it.

Shut up and quit whining. This is not a full-time gig for mods, they clean things up as soon as they can get to them.

Theoretically i just saved us like 15 pages.

Ryan hasn’t retired yet, it’s lazy argue about didn’t win a ring. People forget Elway won back to back SB in last years of his career. Too bad Broncos fans and front office didn’t get rid of him before he beat down falcons in SB.

I’m giddy thinking about Oliver and Trufant on the outside with Alford at nickel. Neal is our enforcer. I really respect Rico Allen, but he’s no Earl Thomas. I’m curious if there’s an Earl Thomas in college right now who’s going to be in the 2019 draft. We are so close to having the makings of a #1 defense. I just want to know what it’s like to hold teams to 15 ppg and get 50 sacks.

Over the top for me, but wanted all to see.

Evangelicals gonna evangelical.

Lol, Julio is fine. He's a Falcon and loves this team. Why do people make bs up idk

Last year was probably the only year Alford has outplayed Trufant. He had a down year last year (still graded as the #19 CB by PFF last year), but he was coming off an injury the previous year and look rusty for a lot of the year. I'm fully expecting a bounce back year for Tru. Long term our outside corners will be Tru and Oliver, so I think we roll with that and move Alford inside in nickel. I honestly think this will be Alfords last year as a Falcon.

But we all know they're going to ghost this place until someone gives them their talking points tomorrow, or some other news comes along. I for one welcome these little breaks.

I like Alford over tru also, but I really doubt they put in a rookie on the outside when they don't need to do so. Oliver will have to earn whatever spot he plays, it's not even a given he will beat out Poole for a starting job, much less tru. Good news is we have one hella deep DB squad.

So much dust in the room right now. posted because of the kids super hero name and why he chose it

I'll be honest and say that although I can't wait to see Ridley, Oliver and Senat, my fingers are crossed hardest to see if Oluokun's measurables translate to this level of football. For some reason, he jumps out as a potential X factor.

The weak point of this defense is Poole, not Allen. We get killed on short passes, which Rocky could shut down completely. Add slightly more pass rush up the middle with QB being forced into Vic or Takk and we won’t need an Earl Thomas. Allen will LOOK like Earl Thomas Bc teams won’t even have the time to throw deep.

Tevin is a liability between the tackles. He runs like a heat seeking missile. He is the quintessential one-cut and go outside zone RB. Everytime he runs between the tackles, I’m afraid one of his chicken legs is going to be snapped in half. You get him outside the tackles and it doesn’t matter when a DB hits him, he’s going to inflict pain and at the very least fall forward for 5-6 yards. He is brilliant in the RB2 role. Absolutely perfect, actually. We should never be giving Coleman RB1 snaps. He should be running only sweeps, outside zone, dump’s into the flats, screens, and lining up in the slot or even sliding out wide. This is why he’s only worth about $5-$6M/yr at most. He is not a feature back who can take 25+ snaps and get 4.5 ypc on inside runs. If he demands more than $6M, because he and his agent want to claim that’s who he is capable of being, then we have to let him go. We didn’t draft Ito Smith to be Coleman’s replacement. We drafted smith in case Freeman goes down and we need someone to run inside the tackles. If Coleman walks after this season, we’ll be drafting his replacement in round 2 or 3.

On the plus side, the last couple of days have made the Soroka decision simple. Assuming he pitches well tomorrow, he's not going anywhere.

Good luck finding a QB this good. https://www.thefalcoholic.com/2018/5/5/17318662/after-10-years-matt-ryan-has-proven-to-be-irreplaceable-falcons-mvp When the Falcons drafted Matt Ryan in 2008, most analysts believed he would be a good starting QB in the NFL. He wasn’t considered a generational talent (a la Peyton Manning) and certainly wasn’t someone people pegged as a potential top QB in the league. In the past ten years, however, Ryan has proven to be not only good, but sometimes great. His MVP award in 2016 affirmed he had reached one of the highest points for an NFL QB, even as his critics only quieted slightly. That’s not to say that Ryan is one of the best ever and doesn’t have his flaws, but there’s little doubt he’s been one of the top QBs in the league over the last decade. Even still, some fans question the logic of paying Ryan. His recent blockbuster contract only ignited those criticisms as Ryan reset the QB market - even if only for the time being (we’re looking at you Aaron Rodgers). The Falcons don’t exist in a vacuum, though, and any decision to not pay Matt Ryan would have to be coupled with a plan to replace him. The reality in the NFL is that you will never consistently be in contention until you find a franchise QB. With that said, we now have 10 years of NFL draft classes we can look at in determining how easy or hard it would be to replace the Falcons quarterback. For simplicity, I’m leaving out recently drafted QBs like Jared Goff, Dak Prescott and Carson Wentz. Even though all of them look promising, one to two years of production is hardly enough to predict an entire career off of. I think you’ll see that even if we did include them, the list of good QBs that have come out in the years since Ryan was drafted is still incredibly small. As I see it, excluding the 3 players mentioned above, there’s a small list of QBs who are quality starters that have been drafted since 2008. This list is more or less limited to: Cameron Newton Russell Wilson Matthew Stafford Andrew Luck Derek Carr Jameis Winston Given that list and the 3 young QBs aforementioned, that brings us to exactly 9 QBs taken over an entire decade who amount to good NFL QBs. The past 10 years is flooded with quarterbacks that have come and gone, some in as little as 2 years or less (hello Johnny). To take this further, if you’re going to replace Ryan with someone younger who has come after him, it would make sense to get someone who is at least comparable or better than the QB you’re replacing. While some of the names above are quality QBs, I’m not sure that any of them is demonstrably “a leap above” Matt Ryan. In fact, if you look at this chart below, you’ll see that over the past 3 years, Ryan has been consistently better than nearly all of these QBs, with the exception of 2015: From 2015 to 2017, Ryan has been the top QB in these key metrics/statistics (within this sample group) 8 out of the possible 13 measurements above (PFF scores weren’t available to me before 2017). The next highest QB on the list was Russell Wilson with 3 (all of which happened in 2015). While statistics aren’t the end of any discussion, the near dominance of all of these stats over a three-year time frame does paint a picture of just how good Ryan has been compared to the guys who could have potentially “replaced” him. Again, this isn’t to say that Ryan has been the best in the NFL or that his game is flawless. This is a simple reality check on how difficult it is to find a quality QB in the NFL. I also realize many of you will point out the “weapons” Ryan has had at his disposal over the years. First, Ryan has often been given weapons, but at the cost of playing on teams with dismal defenses. While Newton and Wilson may not have had a Julio Jones, both QBs played with top-5 defenses for several years - something Ryan has yet to do. Additionally, the “weapons” argument is impossible to quantify, because we simply have no proof that another QB would do better/worse in the same offense as Ryan. It’s all speculative. With all of that said, this is not intended to be a knock on the other QBs mentioned. Many of them are high quality starters whose teams are thrilled to have them. What this does highlight, however, is how difficult it is to find a top-tier QB. The fact that this list can be whittled down to just a handful of players over an entire decade is proof enough. The fact that Ryan still stands out amongst them is a testament to how good he truly has been. He’s not flawless and his place in NFL history is yet to be written, but let’s not pull any punches here either: the Falcons are ****ed fortunate to have Matt Ryan, and he is worth every penny they paid.

Just imagine spending a decade or more fine tuning your own offensive scheme, route tree combinations, and jargon. You see a defense executing and you just know how to adjust because you have your scheme and every counter imaginable memorized and down pat. You see a tendency or formation and you just know what to call without hesitation because it’s second nature. And then you’re asked to come in and learn somebody else’s scheme and jargon, and still execute the same way. I think it’s a mistake to not have expected Sark to have a learning curve and show out below average. He’s actually a pretty good OC. But anyone would have had a steep hill to climb learning somebody else’s scheme and executing at top tier levels. I believe we will see a big jump in execution from Sark this season.

There's something I really want to say to @NobisFan60 but I don't want to be made an example. LOL!

Lol, my dude you barely even register cause I think your're either 12 or somebody on here's alt. This is as much as I've probably ever even engaged you, your typically only worth memes. Nobody even bothers giving you the courtesy of going into the search archive to troll you or even bringing you up at all really all that often cause it's too much like punching down to a slow kid. The idea that you might be the serious account of an independent adult is kind of too much a sad thought.

Lo is triggered

Your trying waaaaaaay to hard here, and gave the game away

That last sentence is a bummer. I know its not realistic to keep him around but the image of him taking it to the house while Brady laid in waste was a couple of run plays from being my favorite image on a football field. Well, maybe that and Julio's catch.

Something like "It's exactly like what Clinton did, so it's okay with us and you should know by now to eat ****."

Thanos decides that

5 minutes....he’s been given a self-destructing note from inspector gadget

Your threads seem to take turns for the worst lately so I’m just here to

The Bills have $36m in dead money this year. That’s how you cripple a franchise. Not by signing your MVP player.

I disagree with the premise of this article. It is illogical. Every time you pay top money to a player it somewhat restricts what you can do going forward. Paying MR2 30m a season gives us 30m less to be able to resign our players or add FA's, which in turn has a bearing on what we can do in the future. Just look at this year - we let Poe walk and were inactive in free agency because we had limited cap room compared to other teams. If we had an extra 30m of cap space, it is very likely that we'd have kept Poe and/or spent more on other free agents improvements, but our existing contracts and future commitments/needs restricted what we felt we could do. We won't be able to measure the impact of the deal until future free agency periods plays out and important players like Matthews, Grady, Beasley need to be re-signed. That's when we will see how much space we have, which players (if any) we feel we cannot afford to keep and how many holes we have which we lack the money to plug with better talent through free agency. The we will see how those personnel decisions affect the product on the field. For the avoidance of doubt, I am NOT suggesting for one moment that Ryan isn't worth the money, or that we should have let him walk rather than pay the man. I just disagree with the premise that big contracts don't limit teams going forward. My take: Positional value is key. The QB position is so important, that when you have a top tier QB I think you must keep him, even though the financial costs of doing so is very significant and tieing up all that money in 1 roster spot clearly reduces how much you can invest in other areas of the team.

well actually, for those of us who have been around longer than you, and not slinging mud or nothin, but it's amazing that you think it's amazing that those same knobs are complaining it's their calling. they'd complain about free pie and ice cream, it is what it is and it won't change

Truthfully, the concept of a large power-back is a different concept than why we have Freeman and Coleman. If we had all 3, they would be used 3 different ways and fulfill 3 different job descriptions. The thing about a power-back is, an athletic FB with half decent agility and vision can usually do this job. The problem is it’s actually a lot harder to find those guys than people realize. I’m hoping McNitt can be this guy. Our scouts seem to think they found a diamond in the ruff with him. He might be the full package at FB. Lead blocker, receiver, and power-back on 3rd downs and goal line. Would be a great find if he is.

So the narrative changes again? His new contract takes up about the same percentage his current one does. This percentage allows gives us the flexibility to retain current players and get new ones if need be.

Been a long time fan of Louie. Tons of personality...fair minded...calls it like he sees it...especially when talking about his Redskins.

I swear to God...I take a long break from the board and I come back to the same exact crap that went on back when I was here all the time. Sometimes it's painful to watch. Anyway, I like that Ryan is a Falcon for life. I wish it could have been for less, but this is the going rate, so let's all be stoked we have one of the best QB's in the league for the rest of his career!

Troll alert. This clown is probably a Saints fan.

Ryan made Shanahan look good, just like he does with every OC.