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Originally Published: November 1, 2009

FBO: The two sides of Matt Ryan

At the Georgia Dome, he's stellar; away from Atlanta, he's pedestrian

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By Sean McCormick
Football Outsiders
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Getty ImagesSomewhat unsurprisingly, this game -- and this sack -- took place in Arizona, not Atlanta.

One of our pet peeves at Football Outsiders is the tendency of fans and media alike to judge quarterbacks by wins and losses -- rather than by examining the statistical context. It gives rise to blanket statements like "Quarterback (insert name here) can't win when it counts!" Remember when Peyton Manning couldn't win the big game? It turns out he could, so long as he had a defense that could make a play or two. Manning wasn't any better in his Super Bowl season than he was in 2005 or 2004, but never mind that -- the win-loss crowd simply turned its attention to the next prolific quarterback who hadn't "proved anything" yet.

And yet sometimes a win-loss record might well tell us something about a quarterback after all, which brings us to Matt Ryan.

In his two seasons in Atlanta, Matty Ice has more than delivered as top draft pick/franchise savior/all-purpose Michael Vick stain remover. According to the system we used to rank the top quarterback seasons of all-time in our book "Pro Football Prospectus 2005," Ryan had the most effective rookie season since the NFL/AFL merger in 1970. His sophomore campaign has been equally impressive -- Ryan's 27.3 percent DVOA is seventh-best among quarterbacks. (Click here for an explanation of FO's advanced DVOA metric.) Since drafting the Boston College phenom, the Falcons have gone 15-7. So what issue can we take with a guy who has a .682 lifetime winning percentage?

Quite simply, the Falcons are a different team, and Ryan is a different quarterback, when they have to go on the road. At home over the past two seasons, Atlanta has been dominant, posting a 10-1 record, but take the Falcons outside of the Georgia Dome and they sink to just below .500. Both of Atlanta's losses this season came on the road. Last week in Dallas, Ryan threw a pair of interceptions, fumbled twice more and took two sacks on his way to a game that we rated as one of the five worst of the week in our Quick Reads stats.

Ryan throws for nearly the same yardage at home and away, and his touchdown-to-interception ratios are more or less identical. It's only when you look at efficiency statistics like quarterback rating or yards per attempt that the difference becomes glaring.

Most NFL quarterbacks play a bit better at their home venues. The NFL average quarterback rating is 86.3 for home games and 83.0 for away games. Ryan's career quarterback rating at home is 94.7 -- which is excellent -- but it drops all the way down to 83.3 on the road. The difference of minus-11.4 is third-worst in the NFL, behind Marc Bulger and Matt Schaub.

In sum, take him out of the Georgia Dome and Matty Ice turns into Matty Average.

It's not totally Ryan's fault in terms of Atlanta's away-game woes, though. Atlanta's Passing DVOA on the road with Ryan at quarterback is 32.8 percent, still well above average; the problem is that the Falcons simply aren't good enough in the other phases of the game to compensate when they are not getting elite production out of the passing game. Atlanta's run game and run defense both drop from acceptable to below-average when they play away games. The one area where the Falcons improve is in their pass defense, which catapults from a miserable 42.8 percent DVOA at home to 11.3 percent DVOA on the road. That would suggest that the same ideal conditions that help Ryan maximize his talent also serve to hurt Atlanta's pass defense. With a date against Drew Brees and the NFL's best offense, the Falcons need Ryan at the top of his game if they hope to stay in the NFC South race. Maybe someone should tell Matty Ice to close his eyes and imagine he's in the Georgia Dome.

Sean McCormick is an author of Football Outsiders.