Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan spoke with Pete Prisco of CBS Sports and discussed the heartbreaking loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI. The quarterback pointed out that his former offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, should shoulder much of that blame for the historic meltdown by Atlanta.
"Kyle's play calls – he would take time to get stuff in," Ryan said. "As I was getting it, you're looking at the clock and you're talking 16 seconds before it cuts out. You don't have a lot of time to say, 'There's 16 seconds, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. Hey, guys, we're going to line up and run this.' You're talking about breaking the huddle at seven seconds if you do something along the lines.
"With the way Kyle's system was set up, he took more time to call plays and we shift and motion a lot more than we did with (former coordinator) Dirk (Koetter). You couldn't get out of stuff like that. We talk about being the most aggressive team in football. And I'm all for it. But there's also winning time. You're not being aggressive not running it there."
Ryan told Prisco that, because of the way the plays came in from Shanahan, he never had a chance to change them.
Shanahan is now the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and addressed the criticism by Ryan on Thursday as the team opened training camp.
"Something that I pride myself on a lot is how quick can you get a play call in to a quarterback," Shanahan told Bay Area media. "The quicker you do, the more comfortable it is, not just for him, but the entire offense. They're not panicked. They're able to move to the line. And with me as a coordinator, personally, I try in almost every situation to get it in as fast as possible. And I can be honest. There's sometimes I do better than others. There's sometimes I don't do it as good. There's sometimes I do it real good. That's something that we all work at.
"One thing that I can say about our two years in Atlanta, that I was happy with and happy with the whole entire offense, that we were the only team in the NFL that went two straight years without one delay of game. I've never done that in my entire career and I don't think many other teams have. There was times when we did better than others but what I was really proud of? Those guys on offense, which is a lot of credit to Matt and rest of the guys, that regardless of when we did get it in, two years straight without a delay of game and being the only team to even do that one year, I think, was a pretty impressive task. We did a good job of that as a whole."