Former NFL MVP makes bizarre statement

The closing minutes of the Monday Night Football matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Atlanta Falcons resulted in no shortage of analysis. That included in real-time on ESPN’s ManningCast, where guest Matt Ryan made a questionable suggestion that seemingly left Peyton and Eli totally confused.

The 2016 NFL MVP’s comment came with the Eagles facing a third-and-3 from the Falcons’ 10-yard line with a three-point lead and less than two minutes remaining in the game. As Peyton and Eli plotted the Falcons’ next move — holding the Eagles to a field goal and getting the ball back with roughly a minute remaining — Ryan was already one (or three) steps ahead of them.

“I was always in these situations, guys, like, ‘As soon as we do this, let’s get the ball back, let’s get into field goal range, kick that field goal as fast as possible and then let’s go for that onside kick and try and just save as much time as you can for that end-of-game Hail Mary,'” Ryan said. “To me, that’s your only chance now.”

The blank expressions on Peyton and Eli’s faces said it all.

“It’s still three, so if you hold them to a field goal, you’re just down six,” Eli replied.

“You gotta hold ’em,” Peyton said, talking over his younger brother.

Presumably, Ryan was talking about what he would do if the Eagles scored a touchdown to push their lead to 10 points. But while it makes sense for a quarterback to prepare for every possible scenario, the reality is that there’s no world where Philadelphia would have even wanted to score a touchdown, as merely converting a first down would have allowed the Eagles to run out the clock.

The irony in all of this is that Ryan’s analysis was ultimately proven moot. Rather than running the ball to either convert the first down or set up a ‘tush push’ fourth-down conversion — and keep the clock running — the Eagles ran a perfectly executed pass play — only to have the ball slip through Saquon Barkley’s fingers.

Philadelphia proceeded to kick a field goal to go up six points, giving the ball back to Atlanta with 1:39 remaining. The Falcons didn’t even need all that time to drive the ball back down the field, with Kirk Cousins finding Drake London for the game-winning touchdown with 34 seconds remaining.

All things considered, it was a memorable moment for Ryan, whose excitement was palpable as his former team executed the late-fourth quarter comeback with him on the call . Still, that didn’t make his previous analysis of the situation that had occurred just moments earlier any less confusing.

[ Warren Sharp ]

The post Matt Ryan’s bizarre analysis left the ‘ManningCast’ dumbfounded appeared first on Awful Announcing .