Back to Driver’s Ed With Matt Ryan
Hello fantasy people.
After picking Matt Ryan in a recent best ball draft, I had a flashback to driver’s ed. Such great times those were…
It’s been more than a decade, but I do recall one class where we went over “stale green lights.” Essentially it referred to when a traffic light had been green for so long that we should be anticipating a turn to yellow.
I realized that Matt Ryan is a stale green light. As for now, it looks like the signs around him are full-go, but we should have our foot ready to hit the brake pedal.
On paper, he seems safe, passing for 4,000 yards in nine straight seasons, he has an indoor home field, and the Falcons defense should be bad once again, forcing more passing volume.
However, I think I’m going to exercise a bit more caution toward Ryan in my best ball exposure. First of all, I generally don’t like betting on players on bad teams, especially a team where the coaching situation has been in question for a couple years now. There’s an outside chance of a meltdown in Atlanta that could cause midseason turnover. That doesn’t automatically mean Matt Ryan can’t keep producing in fantasy, but to me an extra level of uncertainty exists.
He’s also 35 now, closer to the tailend of his career than his prime years. I’m not calling for major destruction in Atlanta in 2020, but we just need to keep in mind where Matt Ryan is in his career and the Falcons are as an organization, especially if we’re getting a lot of shares of Ryan as a “safe” QB choice in best ball.
It seems worth mentioning, even though we can’t predict injuries, that Matt Ryan also popped up in Cash’s studies as one of the most at-risk quarterbacks in the league.
For now, I’m still all for Julio Jones in the early 2nd round and Calvin Ridley in the 4th because I do think it’d be premature to say this is the end, but I’m going to be taking more shots on QBs being drafted after Ryan. For the sake of the offseason Ridley hype, I do hope Ryan stays healthy. I just don’t know how much longer we can refer to him as a “safe” asset.
