I'm Ready To Join The Matt Ryan Fan Club

So yesterday I posted one of the more depressing rants of my tenure. It would have made The Cure and Pink Floyd proud. In all seriousness, that is the mood that I am in. Today has been a different story as now my attitude is one of taking action as opposed to sitting around feeling miserable. Usually it takes me a day or two to eventually work through any major funk. It takes the Olsen twins less time to go through a bag of blow. Change is in the air. Change is on it's way. Change is on it's way to my household. It's either me or Sarah Palin's clothing account. I will now move on to another subject for fear that I will lose many of you again by going into a long rant about how insane my life has become.

So is there a fan club that I can join? I am sure there has to be. I was wrong this past April. I begged the porn king that owns the Falcons to draft Glenn Dorsey to shore up a porous defensive line. Instead they picked Matt Ryan with their No. 3 pick and I howled saying that the Porn King had further sent the Falcons further into oblivion. I was convinced that his pick of Ryan would eventually be the final blow from the Ron Mexico saga that would officially end the Falcons franchise and move them to Los Angeles. Don't think no one else thought about it.

The Falcons are now 6-3. Yes, that's right. Six wins and three losses. Their losses have been to Carolina (7-2), Tampa (6-3), and Philadelphia (5-3 going into tonight). I was ranting before the season started that the only game that they had a chance to win was the first game against the Lions. I was right about the Lions as they are now riding Dante Culpepper to hopefully a dream season of the reverse undeafeated 0-16 record. I believed that Matt Ryan would be killed in his first season by a Saran Wrap offensive line, recievers who had concrete for hands, and an over-rated Michael Turner. None of this happened. Today, I finally became convinced that there is a hopeful future for Ryan and the Falcons. I have stopped thinking that these early wins were just a fluke and the Falcons were really not as good as they appear. Last Sunday, the Falcons embarassed the Raiders in the own stadium. It was easy to state that a win in Oakland did not mean anything because the Raiders are truly horrible and they are run by dead guy. I looked further into how they won against the Raiders. Ten yards of passing yardage...for the whole game. 300 yards of offense...in the first half. You have to be good to do that to any team in the NFL. Matt Ryan went 17 for 22 with 220 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions in Oakland. This was the fifth game he would be best be described as efficient. High completion percentage with few to none interceptions. Ryan became 5-0 as a rookie quarterback in Oakland when he completed 60% of his passes. He has shown to be both deadly accurate as well as unshakable. Note the pass in the final seconds against Chicago that set them up for an unprobable and landmark victory. Today, at home in a must win situation against a bitter division rival, he continued his icy efficiency with a 16 for 23 with 248 yards and another two touchdowns with no mistakes performance. That's a 70% completion rate and a two touchdown victory. Ryan has won six straight professional games when his completion percentage is 60% or above. He was 21-4 at Boston College when his percentage was 60% or above. You can now see despite the fact that he did not have video game numbers or a Heisman trophy what the Falcons Porn King minions saw in him. He was scouted by Dimitroff who learned under the masters at the Evil Empire. Their quarterback? Tom Brady. Hmm.

One must also credit to an offensive line that has given up twleve sacks in nine games. This was supposed to be the weak link in the Falcons chain. They have managed to keep Ryan upright for long enough to fire lasers at his primary targets White and Jenkins. The tandem of Ryan and White have become feared across the league. No one believed that this would be the case before the season started. Now defenses have to deal with the two pronged attack of Turner and Ryan. That is more than three quarters of the teams in the league can say. All in all I have become a fan. A fan of Matt Ryan. I believe that he has the goods. I believe that he will be a winner and that's all I can ask for. Oh, except for the fan club I want to join.

Random Thoughts

I just have some random thoughts about what is happening that has come to my attention. Everything else is just a blur of wine and laxatives.

** The #1 team in college football, Georgia, won against Georgia Southern 45-21. What? There should be a rule. When you are the #1 team in the country playing a Division I-AA school (sorry, that is what I will continue to call it) you should win by at least 42. Did anyone else notice but me that there was no official Las Vegas line for this game? I guess they can't post lines for Division I-AA schools. The line for the Hawaii-Florida game I think was forty two. The Gators won by 46. I should have put money on that one. I was so tempted. The bad news in Athens is that senior starting defensive tackle Jeff Owens is out for the season with a knee injury. This is truly bad news. This is worse than the mass suspensions for meaningless games by the crew of players that got arrested in the off-season...all 80 of them. Owens provides "veteran" leadership on the defensive line and is a solid lineman versus both the run and pass. It will be extremely hard to replace his presence on the line this year.

** Matt Ryan is the starting quarterback in Atlanta for a Falcons team that will not be favored to win a game all year. They get Detroit first up. Not a horrible way to start your career. It's better than playing the Patriots your first game ever. The Lions are favored on the road in this one by three. Definitely take the Lions in this game. You have no other reasonable choice. The Falcons did not have any other reasonable choice in picking Ryan as the opening day starter. What is the point in sending Redman out there? He is not good enough to be the starter for Georgia Southern. Why not send him out there to sink or swim from the very start? He'll get sacked this year 100 times and eventually get PTSD like David Carr and become so shell shocked that he'll never be effective. But who cares? Who cares when you have a guy with a porn mustache running your team. Joey Harrington just iced his "bust" status by being cut from the Falcons. When you are a quarterback and you are cut by the Falcons, your NFL career is over. It's time to play in Arena 2.

** The Braves have gotten so low that the only pitcher they could go out and get was Elmer Dessens. Who is Elmer Dessens? Well, he is a lower than journeyman pitcher who was 10-2 with an ERA of 4.02 this season...in the Mexican Triple AAA league. There was no one else available? Fernando Valenzuela wasn't waiting by the phone? Dessens in his first appearance of the season got lit up for five runs on five hits in a 1/3rd of an inning blowing a save and getting the loss to the worst team in the majors. ERA is now 31.65. Even Barry Zito thinks that ERA is bad. The Braves are now 19 games under .500 and are closer to last place than first. Right now, the Nationals are playing better than the Braves. Now that is saying something. How about bringing up everyone from Richmond (er...Gwinnett) to pitch? That has got to be better than bringing in a retread from Mexico. Not that anyone should have any bad feelings about Mexico or anything...it's only the most corrupt country on Earth.

** Hurricane Gustav is on it's way to Louisiana. The New Orleans city officials, state officials, and the US government are trying so hard to do a better job this time around that it appears contrived. They are making such a public spectacle of showing how "prepared" they are that it is sickening. It is disturbing that as 1.9 million people are evacuating the area, numb to what is happening again three years after Katrina that all the public officials are making as many photo ops as possible so they can be seen as "prepared", "visible", and "ready." Just do your job right. Don't look for photo ops. Just do the job right this time. The worst offender, of course, is President Asterisk who went to FEMA headquarters and shook hands with people in the command center, posed for photos, and gave a news conference. Who came up with that idea? Let's go down to FEMA command and make sure a bunch of cameras are there and distract these people from being able to prepare for a major disaster. Great.

P.S. To Mr. Blank

P.S.: Mr. Blank, in the words of Nancy Kerrigan:

WHYYYY!!!!! WHYYYY!!!!! WHYYYYY!!!! (clutching leg in pain) WHHHYYYYY!!!! WHHHYYYY!!!!

With Matt Ryan you've set the Falcons back another decade. That's it! I'm not buying any wood from you anymore!!! I'm done.

Fox4NX