Insider: Why Colts believe Matt Ryan can still turn it around
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INDIANAPOLIS — Matt Ryan hasn’t been able to lift the Colts offense out of the pit the offensive line has dug to start this season.
If anything, he’s made it worse. Seven interceptions. Eleven fumbles, three that have been lost and eight more that have often cost Indianapolis extra yards as the it scrambles around to recover them.
But Ryan wasn’t brought to Indianapolis to carry this offense on his back, and that’s a big reason why the Colts coaching staff continues to express belief in their 37-year-old quarterback.
“My evaluation, and my comfort with Matt as our starting quarterback is very high,” Indianapolis head coach Frank Reich said. “Obviously, I feel like I have a deeper understanding, having played the position for a long time and having coached the position for a long time, understanding all the dynamics that go into having effective quarterback play.”
The Colts promised a lot of those dynamics to Ryan and haven’t delivered.
When Indianapolis traded for Ryan, the Colts believed they’d be surrounding him with all of the support he didn’t have in Atlanta: a sturdy offensive line, a track record of protecting the quarterback and a running game good enough to give Ryan a steady stream of throws against light secondaries.
The collapse of the Colts offensive line has erased all of that.
All of that pressure inevitably takes a toll, speeds up the decision-making process and leads to the kinds of missed throws and poor decisions that have plagued Ryan early.
“I think that’s natural for a quarterback if you have been under duress for a long time,” offensive coordinator Marcus Brady said. “There’s just that internal clock in your head, like, ‘Okay, I know I’m waiting for this play to develop but I know I have to get this ball out sooner or later here.’ I’m sure that’s kind of catching up a little bit.”
Ryan has been sacked a league-high 21 times, hit a ridiculous 45 times, played with an ugly running game that’s averaging 3.6 yards per carry and trapping him in a never-ending string of third-and-long situations.
“What is the effect of playing behind the sticks and having a run game that has been subpar, and so on and so forth?” Reich asked. “But at the same time, you’re always pushing and coaching somebody to get better.”
The area Ryan needs to fix most is easy to spot.
Ten turnovers is far too many for a quarterback through the first five games of the season. By comparison, Reich’s last three quarterbacks finished with 12 or fewer turnovers over the course of the entire season.
Ryan’s one game away from that number at his current pace, only three games away from Andrew Luck’s 16, the most a Colts quarterback has turned the ball over with Reich in charge.
And a little less fumble recovery luck could have pushed the number even higher. For weeks, Ryan has said he expects the fumble numbers to even out, citing his NFL track record of protecting the ball, but there are fundamentals he can fix.
“The thing that everybody is going to say is two hands on the ball in the pocket as long as you possibly can. … Now, within that framework, there are one or two things that we’ve talked about with him,” Reich said. “It’s the maturity to say, ‘I’ve got 14 years of film that says this is a fluke for him. But wait a second, it’s not a fluke to us, because we feel the pain of those, so we better get this thing fixed.’”
Fixing the problem is two-fold.
First of all, the Colts have to reduce the number of hits Ryan is taking, a responsibility that falls somewhat on the quarterback’s shoulders but largely on the pads of an offensive line that has been abysmal to star the season.
The second part of the fix falls on Ryan himself.
He has to hold onto the ball.
“You constantly have to keep two hands on the ball in the pocket,” Brady said. “So it’s just something when he is making a move, he’s trying to escape pressure, it has to be natural for him to keep pressure on the ball with both hands. It’s something that he just has to continue to work on.”
Colts quarterbacks coaches Scott Milanovich and Parks Frazier have been emphasizing the fundamentals in practice, constantly drilling Ryan on keeping two hands on the ball.
The more Ryan fumbles, the more opposing pass rushers are going to swipe at the ball, taking shots in an effort to make a big play even bigger.
Reich likened the phenomenon to a group of piranhas that suddenly smells blood in the water.
“Obviously, live action is different than practice drills, and he has to, honestly, translate that,” Brady said. “He’s very intent on trying to get better at it, and because he has been playing for so long, it is a habit that he has to break. We have to keep drilling it, keep drilling it and he’s just got to protect it better during the game.”
Fix the fumbles, fix the protection, and the Colts believe there is a much higher level of play in Ryan, held back by the pressure he’s been under to start the season.
Indianapolis has seen glimpses.
Mostly in the fourth quarter, with the game on the line.
“He made three or four throws in that last game that were elite,” Reich said. “If you really look at the tight copy and you see a couple throws that he made, they are unreal throws.”
Ryan also made a few throws that were inexcusable, including both interceptions.
Fix the problems around Ryan, though, and the Colts believe there will be more highlights, fewer disasters. Ryan is completing 65.6% of his passes, averaging 275.2 yards per game and creating explosive pass plays — the Colts are 11th in the NFL in pass plays of 20 yards or more.
“He’s doing a good job of creating too, though, of extending some plays,” Brady said. “I mean, that freaking great play that he made to Alec (Pierce) on third down. I don’t know if you guys noticed how tightly contested he was in that pocket and he slid and through it off-balance. He’s making some plays out there trying to extend it. He’s a freaking competitor and a warrior.”
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But the Colts haven’t been successful in the Reich era by making their quarterbacks into one-man armies. Truth be told, they haven’t had a quarterback capable of that since Andrew Luck.
If they’re going to get better play out of Ryan this season, they have to give him the support they promised in the first place.
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