In May 2001, before he become an All-American at Boston College, a four-time Pro Bowler, arguably the greatest Falcon of all-time, a beloved Atlantan and, now, an inductee into the Falcons’ Ring of Honor, Matt Ryan was newly 16 and headed to the golf course to play with his older brother, Mike, who had come home from college for the occasion.
This would seem true to their relationship. Ryan remembered Mike (also known as Motts) including him in the neighborhood games, even though Matt was 3-1/2 years younger. The years have informed Ryan that not every older brother does this.
“Exactly,” Ryan said in a phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday. “And I look at it with my own boys now and as I’ve gotten older, realizing how cool that was.”
Ryan used the word “role model” to describe Mike.
“He was a really good athlete, but he was quiet, humble, tough, smart – all of those things – and for me, that was what I always wanted to be,” Ryan said.
Hmm. Sound like anybody you know?
They were almost to the course when both brothers’ lives changed forever. As they were waiting to turn into the club, they were rear-ended, an impact that horrifically sent them into the path of a convoy of military vehicles.
Matt escaped with a broken ankle. Mike suffered far worse – a shattered elbow, a broken arm and a serious head injury. Their father, Michael, has been quoted saying that Matt thought that his brother had been killed.
Thankfully, Mike is fine. He lives in Exton, Pennsylvania – the Ryans’ hometown – and leads a successful career in commercial and residential real estate. But, at the time, he was a quarterback at nearby Division III Widener University. Because of injuries from the wreck, he never was able to play again.
Understandably, 16-year-old Matt Ryan was rattled, seeing his role model nearly lose his life and then have to give up his passion. He wondered why it had been Mike and not him – “Oh, my gosh. So much.” Even 23 years later, the feelings of guilt have not fully gone away. But, for the better, the wreck also changed his perspective forever.
“I think there are things that happen in everybody’s life that propel them forward or derail or whatever, and it made an impact on my life,” Ryan said.
Personally, it taught him to savor moments with loved ones, especially as life has sped up. When Ryan becomes the 14th member of the Falcons organization to be inducted Thursday night at halftime of the Falcons-Buccaneers game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, his parents, his siblings, a bunch of nieces and nephews and many members of his wife Sarah’s family will be there. There’s no need to guess at what that means to Ryan.
As an athlete, it created a painful and early awareness that the game can be taken away at any moment and a resulting hunger to maximize every opportunity. Ryan said he didn’t necessarily play for his brother, “but for me, I think it was more just the idea of not knowing when it’s going to be done and being there and always having that in the back of my mind as a motivator of, ‘Man, you have to go for it and you have to go for it now,’” Ryan said.
Mike continued to model for his brother as they grew into adults.
“I always watched him work and the way he worked at it and how hard he tried and the effort that he put in,” Ryan said. “And for me, it was like, ‘Man, you can’t give this anything other than your best because you’ve seen it taken away from somebody who loved it so much.’”
Ryan’s handiwork includes an NFL MVP season, two NFC Championship game appearances, 46 game-winning drives, nearly every passing record in the team record book and well-earned reputations for toughness, competitiveness and obsessive preparation, along with many charitable endeavors. He now is an analyst on CBS Sports’ The NFL Today show. Ryan can’t answer the unknowable – what if the wreck had never happened? – “but I don’t minimize the impact that that had on my life,” he said.
Their adult lives have remained intertwined. They share in each others’ lives on family text chains and frequent phone calls. During Ryan’s career, he reserved the Monday morning drive to Flowery Branch to talk with his brother. Sometimes about football, sometimes not.
“He’s my older brother,” Ryan said. “He’s the guy I kind of go to for approval or advice or any of those things.”
They lament their struggles coaching their sons’ football teams – Matt’s in flag, Mike’s in a Pop Warner league. The two brothers married sisters. After Matt and Sarah Marshall started dating at Boston College, Sarah’s parents invited Matt’s parents to their football tailgates, where Mike and Maggie met and also began dating.
“I was like, ‘Don’t screw this up, man,’” Ryan said.
It would have been so easy for the two brothers’ diverging life paths – Ryan achieving fame, unimaginable wealth and his childhood dream in Atlanta, Mike staying in Exton and becoming a successful, if comparatively anonymous, businessman – to widen the gap between them, to say nothing of their sharing an awful wreck that spared one brother’s athletic career and ended the other’s.
Even if just a little bit.
But, Ryan said, they are “as close as you can be.” As he spoke about his brother, he got choked up at different points, such as when he said of Mike that “he’s always been the most supportive to me and just encouraging and just, like, so incredibly loyal.”
On Thursday night, he again will be the object of the adulation of tens of thousands of Falcons fans paying homage to their hero.
A good thing for Matt Ryan – his hero will be there, too.
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