On a night where Hall of Fame voters failed to put one of the best wide receivers of all-time into the Hall of Fame, the NFL’s award voters got the league’s top award correct by naming Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan the MVP.
Ryan threw for 4,944 yards, 38 touchdowns and seven interceptions during the regular season with a nice completion percentage of 69.9 percent. Ryan’s Falcons earned the second seed in the NFC with an 11-5 record, and rolled their two playoff opponents to get to the Super Bowl for the second time in franchise history.
Head-to-head matchups shouldn’t really be taken into account when quarterbacks face each other, but the NFC Championship game against the Packers felt like Ryan’s stamp on the award, throwing for 392 yards and four touchdowns as the Falcons dominated the Packers with a 44-21 victory. Aaron Rodgers, thought to be Ryan’s biggest competition for the award, struggled by comparison with 287 yards, three touchdowns and one interception in the loss.
Ryan becomes the first Atlanta Falcon to win the NFL’s MVP award, and the first player from any Atlanta professional sports team to win an MVP award since Chipper Jones was the NL MVP in 1999. That also happens to be the last year a player won the NFL MVP and the Super Bowl in the same season, when Kurt Warner did so with the Rams.
