Arlington, Texas - In the 43-3 beatdown by the Cowboys, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, who’s in his 14th season in the NFL, had the worst passer rating of his career on Sunday.
Going against his former head coach in Dan Quinn, Ryan had a passer rating of 21.4, as he completed just 9 of 21 passes for 117 yards and two interceptions. After being fired by the Falcons last season, Quinn was named Dallas’ defensive coordinator. Ryan’s previous low was 29.6 in the second game of his career against Tampa Bay in 2008.
“I remember that one, too,” Ryan said of his play against Monte Kiffin’s defense back in his rookie season. “It was ugly.”
Ryan plans to bounce back.
“Hopefully, it will be another 13 years before I have another rating like that,” Ryan said. “That’s kind of how I view it. It’s one of the days, it wasn’t for us. We didn’t play well. I didn’t play well. You’ve got to get back to work. Trust me, I really believe that we’re going to get back there next week and play really well.”
As the Dallas game got out of hand, Ryan was pulled for backup quarterbacks Josh Rosen and Feleipe Franks.
Quinn’s defenders ran the Falcons routes better than the wide receivers. The Cowboys had 10 pass breakup and three interceptions.
“It was early, I thought we had the first two drives were pretty good,” Ryan said. “We moved the ball down there. We had opportunities. We knew coming into it that it was an explosive offense that we were going against.”
Things went down hill after the Falcons failed to convert on a third down-and-7 and then fourth down-and-7 late in the first quarter.
“We had to capitalize,” Ryan said. “We couldn’t convert the third downs in the red area on the first two drives. We couldn’t convert the fourth down. From there it got ugly quick. Days like today happen.”
Ryan tipped his hat to Quinn and the Cowboys.
“I thought they play very well,” Ryan said. “I thought we played poorly. When you do that, going against a good football team it can get ugly real quick.”
The Falcons play New England on Thursday.
“We’ve got to put it behind us,” Ryan said. “That’s part of being a professional and (being) mentally tough is you know when you get knocked down, you’ve got to get back up quick.”
The Falcons wide receivers didn’t catch a pass to early in the fourth quarter.
“We didn’t play well anywhere,” Ryan said. “It’s not about one position. We all didn’t take care of our business. We can do better than that and we need to moving forward.”
The Falcons dropped to 4-5 and have reached .500 twice this season, but have lost the game that would have moved them over .500.
The Falcons have not been over .500 since the end of the 2017 season.
“We still have eight more chances to go out there,” Ryan said. “We are better than we played today. We just need to play up to the standard that we’re capable of playing.”
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