By Eric Edholm
July 6, 2008

Matt Ryan is two-faced.

There’s the one side of the young man who has become something of a media darling in the past year: the self-effacing, articulate and affable quarterback who turned tomato-red when Boston College sports information director Chris Cameron told him the school wanted to promote him as a Heisman Trophy candidate last season and all the added attention that comes with such a campaign.

At the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the trading-card companies put him through a grueling, five-hour photo shoot in mid-May, it was exactly the kind of attention-grabbing event that makes him squirm underneath his pads and shyly grin as a defense mechanism.

Matt Ryan

“Football is still a game, and we try to present it that way,” Falcons offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey said. “It still should be fun, and sometimes there are times we try to make it humorous. But it’s hard for me to get him to crack a smile.

“He’s all business out there.”

“Out there” is on the field, where Ryan is knee-deep in the Falcons’ new playbook. He’s learning a whole new volume of terminology. A three-by-one formation to the right was known as “trey right” at B.C.; now it’s something completely different. He’s retraining his brain, learning a system and adjusting to his first few months of life in the NFL.

“For the most part I feel comfortable with the concepts we are using for the passing game and the protection schemes,” Ryan said. “It’s just terminology — you have to translate what you know into a different language. That’s the process I am going through right now.”

In many ways, though, he faces more pressure than your typical top-three pick or quarterback. Of course, few other players have been thrust into such an unstable situation as that of the Falcons. The franchise’s recent demise has been well documented. The ugly saga of Michael Vick — the last man to be anointed as the team’s face — has cast a shadow over the organization and the city of Atlanta, and former head coach Bobby Petrino’s sudden resignation toward the end of last season left the team in a lurch.

Whether by purge or by progress, the Falcons have made wholesale changes this offseason. The first move for Arthur Blank was hiring a new general manager, and he chose Thomas Dimitroff, who cut his teeth in New England under Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli. Dimitroff then found Mike Smith, the architect of a blue-collar defense in Jacksonville, to be his head coach, and Smith added Mularkey and a host of new assistants.

The new regime quickly settled on a plan for the on-field product, ridding itself of some end-of-the-line or broken-down veterans such as Warrick Dunn, Alge Crumpler, Wayne Gandy and Rod Coleman, plus outspoken DeAngelo Hall, whose troublemaking had trumped his talent, especially on an impressionable club with a new head coach. Perhaps Joe Horn will be the next to go. In their place came a decent crop of young talent in free agency, led by RB Michael Turner, and 11 draft picks, headlined by Ryan.

Because of where he was picked, the position he plays and the franchise’s fragile state, Ryan has become the new face. He’s front and center in a refurbishment effort that is seen everywhere from improved public relations to Blank meeting with some season-ticket holders in his box this spring.

“Maybe I am not an attention seeker,” Ryan said, “but at the same time it’s part of what I want to be. I want to be a successful quarterback in the NFL, and that goes along with it. So you prepare yourself and deal with it in the right manner, and for the most part I am trying to.”

It’s no coincidence that from Jeff Jagodzinski, Ryan’s head coach for a year at B.C., to each of Ryan’s college teammates and assistant coaches, each of them gave the thumbs-up on Ryan’s character, too.

The Falcons’ brass effectively made up its mind to select Ryan following a two-day meeting in Atlanta back on April 5-6 during which Blank, Dimitroff, Smith, Mularkey and others hosted him for dinner the first night and threw the gauntlet at him the next day on the white erase board with a host of football questions. The team had identified six QB prospects it was interested in drafting and wanted to see how quickly they could process information.

“We shocked all six of them,” Mularkey said of the team’s X’s and O’s quiz. “That’s the position where it comes fast and furious.”

The team presented the same series of Falcons plays to each of the quarterbacks and asked them to break the plays down. Some of the prospects struggled with the test; the ones who handled the concepts well got more thrown at them. Ryan stood above the other five guys.

“We wanted some straightforward answers in regards to football, life, everything,” Mularkey said. “That was impressive on his part, and then to follow it up with the board work and the field work. And then the people we talked to — teammates, coaches — there were a lot of things where I walked away going, ‘I’d have no problem taking him with the third pick.’ ”

Mularkey scoffs at the notion that his new quarterback is too nice, too sedate to command attention and respect in the huddle.

“I don’t see it,” he said. “I see a little fire. He’s very competitive. Guys on this team are recognizing that.

“He has a presence already, and I don’t think he’s waiting to have some success on the field to grab these guys’ respect. I have not seen him be intimidated by the speed and the names in this game right now. He’s very focused. And some of the things he has said in the huddle on top of the play call as far as direct to players, what to do, I have been impressed with it.”

Said WR Harry Douglas, a fellow rookie and third-round pick, “In meeting rooms, coaches call on him about certain things. He’s quick on his feet with the answers. And the answers are right, too.”

But even with his focus on the field, Ryan has been at the center of criticism around the league — or at least his new contract has. On the eve of the owners’ meetings in May, the Falcons signed Ryan to a six-year, $72 million deal in a contract that pays him more than top pick Jake Long. The timing was not ideal. The owners have opted out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and one of the hot-button issues is the escalation of rookie contracts, which has angered some veteran players, including NFL Players Association president Kevin Mawae, and hindered some teams’ financial flexibility.

“For a young guy to get paid that kind of money and (having) never (stepped) on an NFL football field, it’s a little disheartening to think of,” Mawae, a 14-year veteran, said on ESPN Radio.

For now, though, Ryan has sidestepped controversy and kept his focus on the field. After remaining in Atlanta through June, Ryan is now taking a little time off and will return for the Falcons’ training camp in Flowery Branch, Ga., in late July.

“The biggest thing is to try to embrace everything, even the tough stuff,” Ryan said. “The more comfortable I can get with everything around me, the better chance I will have to play right away. But I have a lot to learn.”

Ryan will get his chance. Mularkey said he’ll compete with holdovers Chris Redman and Joey Harrington for the starting gig in Week One against Detroit, but there are some in the Falcons’ facility who feel Ryan will be the guy from Day One.

“I can tell he studies away from this building,” Mularkey said. “That’s evident. He can take the play from me, go in the huddle, call the play, and if I say ‘flip it,’ he can flip it. There are some quarterbacks who can’t do that, guys who have been in this league for a long time.”

Just in case Ryan becomes what the Falcons hope he can become, Douglas knows whom he needs to buddy up to.

“Me and him, we’re going to be like white on rice,” Douglas boasted.

With perhaps just a touch of tomato mixed in.