It’s almost stunning how poorly the Atlanta Falcons have handled every aspect of Matt Ryan’s departure from the franchise. Even the simplest of gestures have fallen flat.
The Falcons traded Ryan — their starting quarterback since 2008 — on Monday to the Indianapolis Colts for a 2022 third-round pick. This trade came an hour before Ryan’s roster bonus deadline and a few days after the team went all in to pursue Deshaun Watson despite 22 separate allegations of sexual misconduct. When Watson ultimately chose the Browns, the Falcons were essentially forced to part ways with the now-alienated Ryan and launch a hasty rebuild.
Still, you’d expect the Falcons to at least try to give Ryan a proper sendoff after how the team botched the past couple weeks. After all, the Falcons never even had back-to-back winning seasons until Ryan arrived. He had a huge impact on the franchise’s most competitive era, but instead, all he got was a lackluster tribute video.
Forever a Falcons legend. pic.twitter.com/IKJ2pDidNW
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) March 21, 2022
Like, that was it.
About two hours after the trade, the Falcons thanked Ryan with a 53-second video comprised entirely of Ryan walking in the tunnel. While we could hear the audio calls of some big moments in Ryan’s career, the Falcons’ tribute video to the franchise’s best quarterback included no visible highlights. They couldn’t even stretch it to a minute.
That’s just sad. Ryan at least deserved a highly produced highlight video after 15 years. He’s the reason the Falcons haven’t needed to worry about the quarterback position since 2008. That’s changing now, obviously.
