Falcons to induct Matt Ryan, Arthur Blank into Ring of Honor

Atlanta is set to honor the franchise’s greatest quarterback and longtime owner.

Matt Ryan is the greatest quarterback in Atlanta Falcons history and a potential Hall of Famer. Arthur Blank has been the team’s owner throughout their most successful epoch, and has poured money into the city and the team throughout his tenure. Now both are being inducted into the franchise’s Ring of Honor.

The team announced the big news on Tuesday, with the duo set to be honored in two separate games this fall. Blank will be the 13th member of the Ring of Honor inducted on September 22nd against the Chiefs, while Ryan will be honored on October 2nd against the Buccaneers.

Atlanta does not, as a rule, retire numbers, so this is the biggest honor the franchise can bestow upon a player (or executive/owner, as the case may be). It’s an extremely well-deserved one for Ryan, who came into the league in 2008 as the team’s first round pick and left via trade with every significant franchise passing mark, a Super Bowl berth in 2016, and the franchise’s sole Most Valuable Player award. As we wrote when he made his retirement official, Ryan took a bereft franchise that had just suffered an awful year of quarterbacking and the abrupt departure of their deeply evil coach and turned them into an instant contender, following that with the time-honored tradition of good-to-great play for a lot of teams that either came up short or never were anything great.

But it was Ryan’s play that so often gave the Falcons a fighting chance at winning, and they did more of that from 2008-2017 than any other stretch in franchise history. At his best, Ryan was among the most consistent and lethal quarterbacks in the NFL, and that was the case despite an era where some of the greatest players ever manned the position. It goes without saying that he deserves to go into the Ring of Honor alongside quarterback Steve Bartkowski and former teammates Todd McClure and Roddy White.

Blank’s tenure as team owner began shortly after the Falcons’ first franchise Super Bowl, and the franchise has achieved more playoff berths in that span than any other epoch in team history. While Blank has come under fire in recent years for his perceived hand in personnel matters and the decision to roll with Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff a year longer than most of us would have, he has been one of the least meddlesome owners in the NFL over his tenure and has an evident desire to win and spend to do so that helped to make the Falcons pretty terrific for the better part of a decade. That and his largesse in Atlanta have meant a lot for the city and the franchise, and it’s little surprise the team he owns is set to honor him now, in the early stages of what everyone hopes will be the team’s first winning seasons since 2017.

Congratulations are in order for both Ryan and Blank, and we’ll look forward to seeing them join franchise icons like Jessie Tuggle, Deion Sanders, and Mike Kenn in the Ring of Honor soon enough.