You said Brady was not better than him in any stat. That is wrong. Ryan was not even the best player on his team. Julio was. But that's another discussion. Matt's tougher schedule amounted to playing teams with a 49% winning percentage overall versus 45% for NE. That's not all that much. Moreover, that is overall team numbers. Brady showed up in week 5 and played: The Seahawks, Dolphins, Steelers, Ravens, Cincy, and Denver. All of those teams are better on defense than those teams Matt played with winning records (he did play the Broncos). Other than that, all those teams were awful on defense: Tampa (twice), New Orleans (twice), the Chargers, we saw what happened to GB in the playoffs, the 49ers? The Panthers were trash last year. Come on, Let's not be crazy.
Matt was 15/28 for 1 TD versus Denver. Brady threw 3 TDs against them. It was fairly obvious all of last year that Matt Ryan benefitted from other teams having down years defensively and having all that offensive talent on his squad. He has not looked the same this year because everyone bounced back. He's not worse than last year.
Brady was 16/32 for 188 yards last year against Denver.
Both teams lost to Seattle last year and the QBs had similar games (Blount scored the 3TDs NE got and they were at home but I won’t hold that against him)
Overall, the Falcons played the 4th hardest schedule of defenses last year according to football outsiders and NE was 9th. Not a huge difference so I’ll give you that.
But, as far as the stats go, those were the ones I listed because they are the main ones we factor in when talking about MVP. I listed the rate stats to account for Brady missing those 4 games
Now if we wanna get into an overall talent on the team discussion then we can’t dismiss the fact that New England almost went undefeated without Brady with the offense not missing a beat with Jimmy G in there.
And as far as why the Falcons aren’t as good this year on offense and he doesn’t look the same:
1. We have a new coordinator who hadnt called plays at the NFL level before
2. We’re tied for the league lead in dropped passes, with about 8 of Matt’s 12 ints coming off of those drops. Julio himself is tied for second in drops
3. Teams have film on some of the things we exploited last year(Coleman can’t break one when we flex him out as a receiver because LBs are playing 10 yards off him and teams are going more zone)
4. Not getting the expected production out of the TE position(Hooper himself has accounted for 3 ints, one of which if he caught we would have beat Miami)
5. Last season was insanity, dude threw for almost 5000 yards at 9.3 yards per attempt. if they just ran the ball and kicked the field goal at the end of the SB it goes down as one of the best seasons a QB has ever had, hell it still is
We also play at a slower pace and the defense gives up longer drives which effectively shorten the game. The offense is still top 5 on a per drive basis in points and yards so you’re right he’s not necessarily that much worse beyond the typical regression coming off an insane season like last year.