Matt Ryan’s journey of self-inflicted pain

It would be fair to argue that Matt Ryan is one of the least culpable people for that particular defeat. Sure, he wasn’t without error in the quarter-plus of the Super Bowl, but his offense was responsible for 21 of the 28 points the team put up, and an excellent throw put them in a position to ice the game away in the fourth quarter, before the playcalling got a little wonky.

Alas, it was not to be, so instead of being immediately vaulted into the top tier of NFL quarterbacks for at least the next few years, the reigning MVP is the butt of jokes even though he didn’t even play poorly in the Super Bowl. That’s surely enough to haunt even the iciest of Mattys. Sure enough, at a celebrity golf tournament earlier this week, Matt Ryan admitted to being crushed by the game, and watching it over and over in the days after.          

“No, I watched it. I watched it a day after. I watched it two days after and I watched it three days after. For me, it was one of those things where you kind of want to be able to deal with it appropriately. Maybe, that’s different for everybody. Some people bury it away. Some people (do) whatever. … For me it was ‘all right, let’s watch. Does it feel the same way it felt as we were going through it?”

Staring down your demons head-on is a very brave and conventionally leader-type thing to do, so surely Ryan is to be and likely will be commended for the move. But is it possible he could push it further, to a place near pathology, if that’s what it takes to get over the hump? Quarterbacks are generally encouraged to have amnesia about their mistakes, so as not to dwell on them in the future, where they can play with just enough abandon to attempt the difficult passes needed to win close games.

But this is Matt Ryan we’re talking about. Any detail that can be expanded to form something resembling a personality is a route we should take. Therefore, here are a bunch of ways Ryan can take this Super Bowl grieving even further.

- Literally wear a hair shirt during OTAs to atone for his failure.

- Cause more delays to the new Falcons stadium by logging a replica Lombardi trophy where the roof would shut.

- Construct a human bridge of himself and his fellow starters on offense to fix the portion of I-85 that collapsed. “At least now we’ll be serving a useful purpose,” he says, as the first car drives over him.

- Write 28 and 3 on the eyeblack under each eye throughout the 2017 season. When he’s fined for it each week, Matt Ryan swears it’s worth it for the sobering reminder of what he’s been through, which culminates in Atlanta losing in the divisional round.

- Refuse to throw the ball at all during the 2017 season as a protest for being unable to audible out of certain plays in the Super Bowl. Sure, it’s kind of a toothless protest since Kyle Shanahan has already gone on to a new team, but he’ll surely see it and feel bad, and that’s what matters.