The 2010 Pro Bowl, a team meeting & 2 practices: How Colts QB Matt Ryan came back from the dead

LAS VEGAS -- Matt Ryan dropped back on a third down in the fourth quarter with his Colts team trailing, spotted green grass to the right and did something he never thought he would do.

He took off running, and he didn't stop.

The 37-year-old was heaving gusts of air as he sprinted past the first-down marker and then past the 50, hit the sideline and, rather than run out of bounds, turned the corner and kept chugging and chugging like a locomotive running on fumes.

He's the aging engine of a start-and-stop franchise, a place of starting fires and pounding the accelerator to see where it goes. The tread on his arm made a franchise think he was done, but here he was, running like his career depended on it and doing what he's always found a way to do:

He was leading another fourth-quarter comeback victory. This time, he did it by running 39 yards on a scramble, longer than any run he's made in 15 years, before hitting a much younger and speedier Parris Campbell on a slant route that he took 35 yards for Ryan's NFL-best fifth fourth-quarter comeback of the year.

It created a 25-20 victory over the Raiders to move the Colts to 4-5-1, with playoff dreams chugging like Ryan was.

“Everyone doesn't have a (Patrick) Mahomes or someone like that," Colts owner Jim Irsay said. "Matt sure looked like Mahomes on that scramble.”

An owner who benched Ryan for a second-year player in Sam Ehlinger hoping his legs could spark a sluggish offense had to tip his cap to Ryan winning this way, and this week.

This is Matt Ryan, back from the dead. This is the Colts, hoping they just might be, too.

'You're just shocked'

It started with a firing and a speech.

This past Monday, the Colts were reeling off a 26-3 loss to the rival Patriots that featured the least efficient offensive performance in the franchise's Indianapolis history. They were 3-5-1, and since changes have become the story of their season, nobody was surprised to have an all-players meeting called at the team facility.

General manager Chris Ballard told them that Frank Reich would no longer be their coach. They didn't have a replacement yet. So a team without a head coach or an offensive coordinator had players looking around, waiting on someone to talk, and suddenly a voice cut in.

It was Ryan.

Their backup quarterback told them all to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves how they got here. He wanted to see if they could figure out what they had inside that would enable them to stick around.

"Being in that situation was surreal. You're just shocked, like, 'What?'" linebacker and fellow captain Zaire Franklin said.

"... Being able to offer those words of encouragement and focus at that time, it set the stage for the week."

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Survive and persevere. That's the story of Ryan's career. He was drafted by the Falcons into a Michael Vick dog fighting scandal and asked to clean it up. He's had three head coaches fired, including two in the middle of a season. He held a 28-3 lead in a Super Bowl only to see it spiral into a loss and then a meme for a society that feasts on people in their worst moments, shining the spotlight on their scars and hoping they eat the face.

This year alone has given him all the reason to break. First, the Falcons told him they wanted him back as the face of their franchise for a 15th season only to try to replace him with Deshaun Watson despite his more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct. Then, the Colts convinced him to request a trade and promised him two years as a starter only to pull the plug after seven games and fire his offensive coordinator and head coach, half of the leaders who sold this plan in the first place.

His shoulder was separated, his job was gone, his team was spiraling toward a top-five draft pick. A franchise that even cut Peyton Manning to draft a replacement high was moving on once more, but now it felt directionless.

As the quiet set in Monday, Ryan became that voice, first for his stunned younger teammates, and then for his new head coach. Jeff Saturday arrived that night to his first coaching role above high school, to a firestorm of criticism over his lack of experience by Bill Cowher, Joe Thomas, Golden Tate and more.

The two had met before, first as players in the Pro Bowl in 2010, before any of these other Colts players were even in the league. That was Ryan at his peak, age 25 and in command of a franchise, with records to break and comebacks to lead.

The one Saturday saw this week was 37 years old, his shoulder healing, his job gone, his franchise seemingly falling apart.

He was struck by how similar those two were.

As a 13-year center for the Colts, Saturday prides himself as a players coach, and he found a locker room still reeling from the news. Ryan entered their lives this spring as an MVP who rose to heights they'd only dreamed of, and in seven weeks, he plunged to depths they couldn't imagine. The competitor in him grew furious at this newfound mortality and loss of control, words he'd vent to his wife and others outside the locker room.

But when it came time for someone -- anyone -- to speak to the public about the presumptive end, the first to step forward was Ryan. And there he was on the second day of practice, a black hoodie pulled over his separated shoulder, talking Ehlinger through his footwork and mechanics.

"He didn't show anything different than who he is," Campbell said. "He's been doing this for a long time. He's seen it all, done it all. That's Matt."

Ryan refused to go down, on that scramble and in a season that's constantly on the verge of detonating. He was in a new place as a backup trying to win a job, but a dead-cat bounce off the basement floor became as natural as anything else.

He didn't have to find himself again, because he found a way to never leave.

Take a moment two days after his benching, when he had pulled on a blue coat, packed up his things and was headed out the door. He saw cornerback Kenny Moore II sitting in a locker stall, quiet and alone. Moore II was one of the players who grew up in Georgia watching those Falcons teams, with Ryan becoming a four-time Pro Bowler and league MVP. When he got the news this spring, he texted Ryan right away, ecstatic that they could play together at last. And now the dream felt dead.

Ryan sat with him for a few moments, exchanging words that will stay between teammates but that ended with a smile. The message was implicit: Their worst week yet could still feature the best of them.

And this team would need those versions of them soon.

'We saw the resilience today'

The time was this week, with doubt piling up like fall leaves, giving off a sign of death and decay.

Saturday arrived to a press conference Monday night that would set the Internet aflame, not for anything he said, but for the nostalgia, finger-pointing and start-and-stop chaos that has come to define a franchise resting on what it was in 2005 or 2014, when it had an elite quarterback and questions had answers.

Saturday needed some that night, so when he was asked who was starting at quarterback, he didn't hesitate.

"Sam will be the quarterback," he answered.

Then he got to work Tuesday, and he heard about the speech Ryan gave. It backed up what he knew about him as a Georgia native, where he heard stories of his ability to rally, be it for 37 fourth-quarter comebacks or to make the Falcons the first team with every single player vaccinated for the 2021 season.

On Wednesday, Saturday coached his first NFL practice, and Ehlinger took the starting reps while Ryan rehabbed the shoulder. He spoke between plays with Nick Foles, the 11-year veteran who has become the most tuned-in observer of this quarterback chaos. He was ready to see what Ryan had left.

On Thursday, Ryan practiced for the first time in three weeks, and Saturday was struck by the smoothness of the ball. Some parts of the 25-year-old he met at the Pro Bowl were still in there, now hardened by the things that couldn't break him, and he carried those parts in the meetings and the practices and then delivered them like a spiral into his new coach's gut.

"When he asked me about it earlier in the week, I really just said, 'I only know one way to do it,'" Ryan said. "And so, if I do it, this is how I do it, and this is who I am, and this is how it's worked for me.'"

Saturday told Ehlinger that he was making a switch. It would be his first major decision as a head coach, one that would be scrutinized and analyzed by everyone, especially those calling him unqualified for the job. He was placing a bet on a 37-year-old to become the spark nobody could see.

"Stud, man," Saturday said. "I mean, listen, he met every challenge, every conversation.

"I told those guys, 'Take ownership.' Everything is about you guys. Everything that we do in this organization is about you and making you the best player you can be. But you have to take a hold of this thing.'"

Sunday arrived, and Ryan took the field with the first-team offense to the Raiders' surprise. Their coaching staff was made up of former Patriots, and their mentor, Bill Belichick, had just teed up a game plan of how to fluster the Colts with Ehlinger.

The offense went three-and-out after a first-down conversion to receiver Alec Pierce was overturned on review, but on the second drive, Ryan came alive. He completed all four of his passes to get the Colts to the 1-yard line and then took the ball and shoved against a pile until Michael Pittman Jr. drove him from behind into the end zone for the score.

It was just his 13th rushing touchdown in 15 seasons.

"You could just see the hunger that he had," defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. "He was telling me, 'I'm going to give you guys everything I've got. I'm going to put everything on the line.' We saw the resilience today."

Ryan's return as the starting quarterback was about blending the old with something new. He got back to his connections with Campbell and Pittman Jr., a smooth operation that let him finish 21 of 28 for 222 yards, a touchdown and a 109.5 rating.

But he had just his second start in blue and white without a turnover. He played pain-free, hit just one time all day after leading the league in sack yardage at the time of his benching. That renewed life transferred from his arm to his legs, where even when the defense had everything locked down in man coverage on 3rd-and-3 on a final drive, he could take off up the sideline and keep running in ways he didn't know his 37-year-old legs were capable of.

As his sideline started jumping, throwing fists into the air, Ryan sucked in the air and the gasps of disbelief, the oxygen becoming a cathartic reminder that you can't bury something that never actually died.

Contact Colts insider Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Inside the revival of Matt Ryan and the Colts' playoff hopes