Pro Sports

ATLANTA — Nobody will get rich betting on the career fortunes of young quarterback Matt Ryan by using just two NFL games as a guide.

His Atlanta Falcons won their season-opener with Ryan throwing a 62-yard touchdown pass. But mainly he was just along for the ride. Ryan was asked to throw just 13 passes because the running game, which gained 318 yards, did most of the heavy lifting.

Ryan looked every bit the rookie last week, throwing two interceptions and seven incompletions before he connected with one of his own receivers.

Still, the Chiefs have to be looking at Ryan with some envy on Sunday when they play the Falcons at the Georgia Dome.

He's far from a finished product, and the third pick in this year's draft may never become a franchise quarterback. Yet the Chiefs have to think that Ryan would look good in one of their uniforms. He would fit in nicely with the Chiefs' rebuilding program and provide some stability that's lacking at the team's most important position.

Today is the third game of the season, and Tyler Thigpen will be the Chiefs' third starting quarterback. Brodie Croyle and Damon Huard are both injured.

The Chiefs were tantalizingly close to being in position to take Ryan in the draft. They were fifth in line and wound up with defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey instead. Later in the first round, they picked offensive tackle Branden Albert.

The Chiefs would have had to be aggressive to be able to get Ryan. He would have come at a cost that would have included the picks they used on Dorsey and Albert.

That's a stiff price to pay for a team in need of so much.

"If you're picking that high, you're thinking about all players that fall in that category," Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said, acknowledging the Chiefs' interest in Ryan. "We were in a situation where we needed a lot of positions. We needed (Dorsey and Albert) in that mix."

"(Ryan) would have been interesting sitting there. We ended up getting two good players who will be the foundation of this football team who are starting for us. We're happy with the guys we drafted.

"We like the young quarterback we have. Now, hopefully he will get back out there soon and he stays healthy and keeps the job for a long time."

But if Croyle eventually fails, the Chiefs could come to regret their decision not to pursue Ryan harder. The Falcons, in a rebuilding mode similar to that of the Chiefs, didn't have a difficult decision.

"We went through our due diligence, but it was pretty evident that Matt Ryan was the direction we should go," said Mike Smith, Atlanta's rookie head coach. "As a defensive coach, I know that defending quarterbacks is the thing we have to do. This is a quarterback-driven league. Teams that historically win championships have a quarterback that's operating efficiently.

"When I was at Jacksonville, we had to prepare for quarterbacks like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger. You spent a whole lot more time devising a game plan against them than against quarterbacks who maybe weren't as efficient as those guys."

As Edwards indicated, the Chiefs like Croyle's ability and potential, but they've also acknowledged he hasn't earned the right to be their long-term starting quarterback. While they couldn't have known he would be knocked out in the third quarter of the season-opener in New England because of a shoulder separation, they did know that his history with injuries made him a risk.

Croyle was driven from the lineup twice last year after taking over as the starter at midseason.

"They have to be sure Brodie Croyle is the guy if they're going to pass on a quarterback," said former Chiefs quarterback Rich Gannon, who as a CBS analyst called last week's Chiefs-Raiders game at Arrowhead Stadium. "I watched how he played in the New England game, and I liked what I saw. My concerns are what everybody else's concerns are: He's not a very big guy, and he keeps getting hurt."

The Chiefs have many other problems that neither Ryan nor any other quarterback can solve. Their pass blocking has been shaky and their running game unproductive, and their receivers have dropped many passes.

Then there's the defense, which caved in by allowing 300 rushing yards to the Raiders.

"They've got a number of things going on there," Gannon said. "They've got a new offensive system and a lot of young offensive players. They're playing a lot of young guys on defense, too. If it was just one thing, you could say, 'They've got to get the quarterback thing resolved.' But it's not just that. There's a lot of newness going on that's compounding everything.

"Certainly, you'd like to have more stability and experience and consistency at quarterback. But even if they had that, they'd still have some other issues to deal with. They need to fix those things before they start worrying about a quarterback."

The Chiefs looked closely at Ryan, meeting with him at the combine, going to various predraft workouts and inviting him to Kansas City for a visit. It was enough that Ryan thought he might eventually play for the Chiefs.

"You're not sure," he said. "You don't know what to read into certain things. I really didn't know what was going to happen.

"I really enjoyed my visits with them. That was certainly a place that showed interest."

While the Chiefs would have considered drafting Ryan with the fifth pick, they weren't about to trade up to get him. One reason was the presence of Croyle, who started six games last season.

The team lost all of them, but the Chiefs felt it wasn't a fair evaluation given their many other offensive problems.

That, plus the fact they needed help at so many other positions, probably would have steered them away from Ryan. So, instead of building around a quarterback, the Chiefs may be building without one.

That goes against conventional NFL thinking. The Tennessee Titans drafted first Steve McNair and years later Vince Young with early first-round picks while Floyd Reese was their general manager.

"You hope you're not going to be in a position to draft a franchise quarterback very often," Reese said. "So if you're not sure of what you have at that position, then that has to be the No. 1 position that you have to take care of.

"We always thought that if you had the other 21 guys in place but not the quarterback, you couldn't win it all. But if you had, say, 16 or 17 guys in place and one of them was the quarterback, you could win it all.

"That's the most important position in professional sports."

McNair eventually led the Titans to a Super Bowl, where they almost upset the Rams. Young hasn't worked out as well, so far.

"If you get everything else in place and you're still playing without a (good) quarterback, your record is probably not going to be very good," Reese said. "If you draft a quarterback then, you know it's going to take him a year, two years or more to get going and by that time you've gone through four or five years of desperation.

"That's why we always thought if we were going to go through problems with a (young) quarterback, let's do it with a young team so that when the quarterback pulls through this, you'll be ready to go."

The start to Ryan's season has been typical for a rookie quarterback. He's completed less than half of his passes and has been sacked five times.

His passer efficiency rating is a paltry 60.0, or only slightly better than that of Thigpen's.

Eventually, the payoff could be huge. If it is, the Falcons will reap the benefits and not the Chiefs.

"I really like his intangibles, the things you can't measure, things like: What he's like in the huddle. How does he lead? What the other players think of him," Reese said. "Those are things that make a quarterback, and you can't measure them.

"He was strongest in the intangibles. He's tremendously poised, very confident, very bright, has a great feel for the game. Physically, he's not in the league with a guy like JaMarcus Russell. But he's good enough in the physical part of it — the things you can measure like height and weight and arm strength — and he's got so much of the intangibles.

"When you come across a guy like that and you need a quarterback, you've got to do whatever you can to go and get him."

Today: Chiefs at Falcons
Noon, CBS 42