Matt Ryan threw for fewest yards since the 2011 season as Falcons offense splutters

It’s not a fun stat to think about.

The losses keep rolling in for the Atlanta Falcons, even when you’re looking off the win-loss column.

Sunday’s 131-yard performance in the air for quarterback Matt Ryan against Baltimore was the lowest number he’s had since New Year’s Day 2012 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (106).

A cursory look at his NFL.com game logs show he’s only thrown for less than 150 yards four times in his career when healthy (there’s a game in 2009 you don’t count since he left without finishing).

Those other games came in the 2008 (134 vs. Minnesota) and 2010 (148 vs. New Orleans) seasons.

Now, it doesn’t help that the team only held the ball for roughly a minute in the third quarter, and that the team was a deep ball connecting away from this not being the case.

But as it stands, it’s a frustrating statistic for a player who deserves much more than what he’s getting from his team right now. Very little of this skid is on Ryan, who’s played at an MVP level all season and can’t do a lot with consistent blitzes and pressures coming at him.

You look to the offensive line and other blockers to do much more, and the failure there this season may lead to some personnel changes here and there. I’ll save close speculation for after the season as to where those might be, but we may have a new starting left guard and right tackle next season if things don’t get better as the season goes on.

So Sunday wasn’t a banner day for what’s largely been an effective unit this season for Atlanta. Since Cleveland, they’ve looked quite rotten going up against some stellar defenses.

Steve Sarkisian has not been as quite as effective as he was the first two months of the season, but he’s not got an offensive line who can do a lot to hold back the fiercest defensive fronts (sans Jake Matthews and Alex Mack). It’s got to be the blocking that’s holding this unit back from where they recently were as of late, coupled with Sark’s struggles to acclimate to what to do when the blocking isn’t there.

It’s a bummer time to be a Falcons fan, with this statistic a glaring example of just how poorly everything is going as of late.

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