Falcons owner says team feels strongly that Desmond Ridder is ‘gonna be our QB for the future’

For a long time, the Atlanta Falcons never really had to worry much about the quarterback position. The team landed Matt Ryan with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft, he won Offensive Rookie of the Year, and he played in and started 222 of the team’s next 225 games, making multiple Pro Bowls and even winning an MVP along the way.

Last offseason, though, the Falcons traded Ryan to Indianapolis and entered a period of uncertainty at the league’s most important position. The Falcons signed Marcus Mariota to be a stopgap starter, and also selected Desmond Ridder out of Cincinnati in the third round. 

Mariota began the season as the starter and worked in the role for the first 13 games of the season, but he didn’t provide much in the way of upside as a passer. The Falcons turned to Ridder down the stretch, and he went 2-2 while completing 63.5% of his passes at an average of 6.2 yards per attempt, with two touchdowns and zero interceptions.

Heading into Ridder’s second season, Falcons owner Arthur Blank expressed confidence that the team has found its next stalwart. “We feel pretty strongly that he’s gonna be our QB for the future,” Blank said of Ridder, per NFL Media. 

The likelihood that a mid-round draft pick will turn into a franchise quarterback is historically pretty low. It’s even lower when that player doesn’t play right away, like, say, Russell Wilson (third round) or Dak Prescott (fourth) did. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen; just that it’s not likely. 

Of course the Falcons are confident in Ridder. They wouldn’t have drafted him if they weren’t. But we still have to see him put into action on the field what the team thinks he can be. 

He needs to limit his sacks (he took a sack on 7.3% of his dropbacks last season), improve his accuracy (his 18.3% off-target throw rate was worse than Mariota’s, and second-worst among 47 quarterbacks who threw at least 100 passes, putting him ahead of only Zach Wilson at 18.6%), and show that he can handle blitzes (his EPA per dropback fell from 0.03 against a four-man rush to -0.19 against five rushers and -0.58 against six or more). And if he handles all of that, then he needs to prove he can do it again after teams get more tape on him and key in on his tendencies. In other words, we’re a long way away from finding out whether or not Blank is right.