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ators Stitched Logan Paulsen Jersey , not the other way around." />Skip to main contentclockmenumore-arrownoyesThe Falcoholic homepageHorizontal - WhiteThe Falcoholican Atlanta Falcons communityFollow The Falcoholic online:Follow The Falcoholic on TwitterFollow The Falcoholic on FacebookLog in or sign upLog InSign UpSite searchSearchSearchThe Falcoholic main menuFanpostsFanshotsLibraryFalconsOddsAboutMastheadCommunity GuidelinesStubHubMoreAll 321 blogs on Horizontal - WhiteFanposts Fanshots Library FalcFans Podcast on The FalcoholicContact The FalcoholicFalcons StoriesScheduleRosterStatsYahoo Falcons NewsYahoo Falcons Team PageYahoo Falcons ReportYahoo Falcons Depth ChartYahoo Falcons TransactionsYahoo Falcons PhotosOdds About Masthead Community Guidelines StubHub ✕Matt Ryan isn’t a system quarterback, he is the systemNew,41commentsMatt Ryan makes offensive coordinators, not the other way around.EDTShare this storyShare this on FacebookShare this on TwitterShareAll sharing optionsShareAll sharing options for:Matt Ryan isn’t a system quarterback, he is the systemTwitterFacebookRedditPocketFlipboardEmailPhoto by Rob Carr/Getty ImagesOne of the most hilarious anti-Matt Ryan arguments you’ll find on social media is people calling him out for being a system quarterback. Both rival fans and Falcons fans who blindly hate Matt Ryan (this group of people is much worse than the former) like to point to Kyle Shanahan as the sole reason for Matt Ryan doing anything good on the football field in his life.Most Falcons fans know that this argument is incredibly weak and false. The purpose of this article is to look at how the numbers destroy this anemic and frail criticism of the best quarterback player in Falcons history. We’ll look at Ryan’s separate stats with every offensive coordinator he’s had in his career, and where that coordinator ended up afterward.*Each statistic calculated will be Ryan’s average per season rate with that particular coordinator. Each figure will be rounded up or down to the nearest whole number.<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="YPPaVR">Mike Mularkey (2008-2011)Stats - 3560 yards per season; 24 touchdowns per season; 12 interceptions per season; 88.0 average passer ratingAnalysis: Ryan’s numbers with Mike Mularkey, in his first four years in the league, are understandably the weakest out of all four of his OCs. He was, after all, a rookie quarterback in 2008, and was slowed down by a late-season injury in his sophomore campaign in 2009.Mularkey also took the ball out of Ryan’s hands and put it into Michael Turner’s as much as possible. Ryan was a young QB who was more of a game manager than anything else in those initial few years. His life was made exponentially easier by Turner’s presence, as he was allowed to patiently grow into the QB he would eventually become.Ryan’s peak season under Mularkey was in 2010, when he led the Falcons to a 13-3 record and tallied a TD/INT ratio of 28/9, also earning his first trip to the Pro Bowl in the process. In 2011, he achieved his first ever 4000-year season.Mularkey parlayed his time with Matt Ryan and Atlanta’s offense into a head coaching job with the Jacksonville Jaguars, before getting fired after his initial 2-14 season in Duvall County. He then became Tennessee’s tight ends coach in 2014, and eventually the interim head coach in 2015. He lasted two seasons as head coach of the Titans in 2016 and 2017 after the removal of the interim tag.Mularkey is currently back in Atlanta as the team’s tight ends coach.Dirk Koetter (2012-2014)Stats - 4643 yards per season; 29 touchdowns per season; 15 interceptions per season; 94.2 average passer ratingAnalysis: Under Dirk Koetter is where Matt Ryan took that next step in his career into elite territory. Koetter removed a lot of the restrictions placed on him by Mularkey, who was an old school “run the ball” kind of coach. Ryan flourished despite having no run game to lean on in these three years. The addition of Julio Jones made the offense even more potent.2012 was the best season of Ryan’s career up until that magical 2016 campaign. 4719 yards and a TD/INT ratio of 32/14 helped Atlanta to a second 13-3 record in three seasons and put Ryan into MVP conversations.In 2013, Ryan somehow managed to throw for over 4500 yards and 26 TDs despite having Harry Douglas as his number one wide receiver for most of the year (he turned Douglas into a 1000-yard receiver) Youth Logan Paulsen Jersey , because of injuries, and maybe the softest offensive line in football. Everything fell onto Ryan’s shoulders as the team collapsed around him.Ryan was once again very good despite having no run game or offensive line protection in 2014. He had nearly 4700 yards and a TD/INT ratio of 28/14. Atlanta lost a lot of games in 2013 and 2014 but that was mainly because the defense was putrid (as it has been throughout most of his career in Atlanta). Ryan was a Pro Bowl selection in two of the three years with Koetter as his OC.Koetter moved on to fill the OC position with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the coaching staff replacements in Atlanta after the 2014 season, and he would eventually become the Tampa head coach for three seasons before being fired following the 2018 campaign. He’s back in Atlanta as the team’s offensive coordinator for a second stint.Kyle Shanahan (2015-2016)Stats - 4768 yards per season; 30 touchdowns per season; 12 interceptions per season; 103.1 average passer ratingAnalysis: 2015 and 2016 were night and day seasons for Matt Ryan. I would argue that 2015 was the worst professional season of Ryan’s career. Statistically, it wasn’t worse than 2008 and 2009, but Ryan was an eight-year pro in 2015 and just starting out in 2008.Ryan struggled within Shanahan’s new scheme in 2015, and he contributed very much to the team’s collapse following a 5-0 start to the year. His 3.4% touchdown percentage was a career low and his TD/INT ratio of 21/16 was the worst in his career outside of his rookie season.In 2016, however, a switch was flipped and the result was the greatest season ever by an Atlanta Falcon. Ryan more than doubled his touchdown percentage to a league leading 7.1%, tallied 4944 yards, a TD/INT ratio of 38/7, and a league leading passer rating of 117.1. He was the runaway MVP.This 2016 season is what casual football fans point to more than anything in their argument that Ryan was made by Shanahan. However, Ryan has put up big numbers throughout most of his career outside of 2016. This isn’t a situation like what we saw from Nick Foles in a 2013 anomaly season where he legitimately was a product of Chip Kelly’s system.2016 was a bit of an outlier, but it wasn’t as drastic as many try to make it seem.Kyle Shanahan parlayed Ryan and the team’s success in 2016 into a very secure head coaching position with the San Francisco 49ers, where he currently has a record of 10-22 in his first two seasons.Steve Sarkisian (2017-2018)Stats: 4510 yards per season; 28 touchdowns per season; 10 interceptions per season; 99.8 average passer ratingAnalysis: Much like with Shanahan, Ryan struggled in year one when attempting to click with his new OC (on paper), but then took off in year two.Sarkisian, in 2017, held the offense back with his play calling more than anybody since Mike Mularkey, taking the Ferrari that was the Falcons’ historic offense from a year ago and driving it like a Fiat. Ryan suffered from some awful luck to put up a TD/INT ratio of 20/12 along with his lowest yardage total since 2010. However Stitched Brandon Fusco Jersey , he was graded out as the second-best QB in the NFL by PFF, and had a league-low 0.9% of throws which were turnover worthy despite having double digit interceptions.In 2018, Ryan’s raw statistics met his level of advanced play due to positive regression, and a better chemistry with Sarkisian. He threw for 4924 yards, 35 TDs, and seven interceptions in what was his best statistical season outside of 2016. Ryan being passed up for a Pro Bowl spot was a travesty of the highest order.Sarkisian was a sacrificial lamb in a season that didn’t live up to expectations. He was axed along with nearly every other assistant coach, and was re-hired as the OC at Alabama.<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="D4GJ61">Matt Ryan has been an elite quarterback in the NFL since 2012. He has the most passing yards in history for a player through his first 11 seasons (46,720). He has thrown for 4000 passing yards for eight consecutive seasons. He’s currently 12th all time in career passing yards, and is on pace to be first by the end of his career.The Falcons are 102-72 in Matt Ryan’s career (0-2 in games in which he didn’t play) despite giving him a top 10 statistical defense just once. Despite the fact that the Falcons have been outside of the top 20 in defense seven times in Ryan’s 11 seasons. Despite the fact that they’ve shuffled through four offensive coordinators in that time period.Matt Ryan has continually played at a high level throughout his career, no matter who his offensive coordinator has been — whether it was someone who put it all together like Shanahan, somebody inexperienced at the NFL level like Sarkisian, or someone whose offensive mentality was always stuck in the 1970s and has thus relegated him to being a tight ends coach like Mularkey.Matt Ryan has set every one of his offensive coordinators up for head coach roles except for Sarkisian. He’s done more for their careers than they have for his. Matt Ryan isn’t a system quarterback, he is the system. Arthur Blank may not be truly restless now, but everything still depends on how Atlanta fares in 2019."Arthur Blank might be getting restless. Well, he won’t say he’s outwardly restless, as that would be unprofessional. A self-made man doesn’t ascend to billionaire status without being a little restless, but it also doesn’t help him to wear that restlessness on his sleeve. To build an empire, it takes a rock-steady hand, freezer-cold resolve and bona fide patience.In the 17 years since he purchased the franchise Youth Brandon Fusco Jersey , Blank has weathered a lot as the owner. The rise and fall of Michael Vick. The Bobby Petrino fiasco. Years of playoff drought with a front office and coaching staff who seems to do the right thing until the wheels fall off. The firing of a franchise-best coach. Playoff heartbreak. Unfortunately, 28-3. It’s that last one that probably got us here, the mind-numbing tragedy of Super Bowl 51 that turned a jubilant Blank fist-pump dancing over that accursed box score into a meme. It’s always going to be the most embarrassing game result in the NFL’s history, and it’s a damned banner Blank will have to look at until he’s no longer the owner of the Atlanta Falcons. The only way he’s going to be able to clear this, at least somewhat, from his ledger is for a Lombardi to finally make its way to the new palace he’s built in downtown Atlanta. You know, the palace that, at its opening, fans got too preoccupied touring/hanging out in to actually sit in their expensive seats and watch/cheer/create the whole ‘hostile environment.’ But again, Blank’s got grit. He came out, coolly, and put his faith in Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff to clean the mess up the team created in 2017...it’s quite a mess! In 2017, you expected a little bit of a down year and got one, but the Falcons still made the playoffs and won a game. In 2018? Well, that was the chance. A home Super Bowl would’ve been a sweet salve for that loss. But it was not to be, and this offseason has been conducted as if many things depend on ensuring it doesn’t happen again. The report from NFL reporting legend Peter King was as worrisome as anything that’s come out about the Falcons in ages. It’s not a signal that the franchise awaits a mad king at its helm (we’re not about to see the sacking of Dirty Bird’s Landing), but it’s a constant reminder that even a great owner like Blank was always going to have his limits. The fact that Blank took the time to walk that back is notable but doesn’t change the expectation that another lousy season will close the book on this chapter for the Falcons. If 2019 wasn’t already a make-or-break year for the Falcons, the clock now ticks ever louder. To be very honest, it’s not like you could blame big changes. It’s Blank’s team Stitched Damontae Kazee Jersey , after all, and he’s got 28-3 reasons for his restlessness. He’s been as patient as an owner can be, and patience isn’t guaranteed rewards. What could happen in a failed campaign is anyone’s guess. He could hit the refresh button on the coaching staff and front office, lead the charge to trade or release high-paid players, or even start (just start) thinking about life after Matt Ryan. That word bears mentioning again. It’s fair to say we don’t quite know the severity of “restless,” but “restless” is something that has to be cured. When you get restless in bed, you move around as much as you have to and change out things here and there until you feel comfortable again. We don’t at all know where Blank’s restlessness lies, and he’ll certainly refute it in person, as to show the resolve and calm we’ve seen keep his franchise stable for his stretch of ownership. But if the idea is out there, it must mean there’s something to it. If there’s smoke, expect fire. It just might be a camp fire, but 2019 might spray gasoline on it to create a flame we’ve not seen quite yet in the team’s recent history. Whatever happens, just know the clock is now ticking for this version of the Atlanta Falcons. 2019 is going to be huge. If we have another uneventful fall and nonexistent winter, we might be in for a hell of a spring.