It genuinely seems like yesterday that Matt Ryan was drafted, but the Falcons’ franchise quarterback will be entering his 12th NFL season in 2019. The league he entered was one where running backs where still highly valued—recall the big deal the Falcons threw at Michael Turner, and his massive role in making Ryan’s first few years a success—and a league in which rule changes and conditioning changes had not yet begun to transform the way teams played defense.
Last week, Ryan was in the mood to wax nostalgic a bit and talk about how the NFL has changed, and I wanted to wrap a few of them together because it’s interesting to see it laid out from his perspective.