To the surprise of no one, Matt Ryan said he didn’t care who he faced in Super Bowl 51.
"We’ll be ready to go (either way), that’s for sure," Ryan told Fox immediately after his Falcons coasted to the NFC championship.
Now they know who it will be — and what they have to be ready for. The Falcons, the highest-scoring team in the NFL this season (and tied for the eighth highest-scoring in history), face the Patriots, who gave up the fewest points in the league.
Thus, the matchup that won’t technically be a matchup — Ryan vs. Tom Brady — is not the matchup to watch in Houston.
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The last time the top scoring offense faced the top scoring defense in the Super Bowl, in Super Bowl 48, the Seahawks obliterated Peyton Manning and the Broncos, 43-8. They held Denver some 31 points below their regular-season average of 37.9 a game.
That has been the history of the No. 1-vs.-No. 1 showdowns. To be fair, the four previous such games since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger happened more than a quarter of a century ago — but the top-ranked defense won three of the other four, too.
The Giants held off the Bills in Super Bowl 25, 20-19 (Scott Norwood’s missed field goal at the end); the 49ers beat Dan Marino’s Dolphins in Super Bowl 19, 38-16; and the Steelers ended up outgunning the Cowboys, 35-31, in Super Bowl 13.
The exception was a historic one: the Joe Montana-Jerry Rice 49ers; the No. 1 offense thrashed the Broncos’ No. 1 defense, 55-10, in Super Bowl 24.
So if the Patriots win, it would keep what passes for this trend alive. It also would fit in with how they got there — putting the squeeze on a very good, very dangerous Steelers offense Sunday. The Steelers didn’t have Le’Veon Bell for the last three quarters, but they were already in the process of being smothered.
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The Steelers, 10th in scoring in the regular season, with Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown on hand and averaging 26 points a game over their last 10 with Roethlisberger back from midseason knee surgery, were in single digits until 3:36 left in the 36-17 rout.
The goal-line stand late in the first half, when the Steelers had their best chance to get back into the game, epitomized what the Patriots do well, and what the Falcons will face in Houston.
The Falcons’ offense and Patriots’ defense are near-perfect marriages of talent and scheme … which means a bright spotlight will fall on the respective coordinators, both of whom are constantly in discussion about head-coaching openings.
Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan is expected to take the 49ers job after the Super Bowl, and Sunday’s demolition of the Packers gave every example why they zeroed in on him and decided to push other candidates aside.
And while the Packers’ defense was undermanned and overmatched all day, the Falcons had made the Seahawks — whose four-year run as the No. 1 scoring defense in the league was broken this season — look just as bad the week before.
IYER: Packers need massive changes on defense
In the Falcons’ two playoff games, Julio Jones caught 15 passes for 247 yards and three touchdowns. Over the two NFC playoff wins, Ryan connected with eight different receivers in each game. Against the Packers, that included a pass to fullback Patrick DiMarco, with all of seven catches all season, that he turned into a 31-yarder, because every other Packers defender was drawn to all the the other Falcons targets.
From design to execution, the Falcons looked unstoppable .
Yet that concept has never sat well with the Patriots, who now have held their last nine opponents, regular season and postseason, to 13.3 points a game.
Matt Patricia, the Patriots’ defensive coordinator, dealt with the stark contrast between the offense-poor Texans the week before, and the potentially explosive Steelers. The Texans ended up being more of an offensive challenge.
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The Patriots’ secondary in particular — including cornerback Malcolm Butler, hero of their last Super Bowl win over Seattle two years ago — took Brown completely out of the conference title game. He’ll almost surely draw the main assignment of covering Jones.
The coordinators, and their head coaches, Bill Belichick and Dan Quinn, have their work cut out for them.
History says the tougher task belongs to Quinn — his unit, the No. 1 offense, is overdue for a win.
