Insider: Why Matt Ryan can take the Colts RPO game to another level

WESTFIELD — Matt Ryan has mastered a lot of offensive football in his career.

Fourteen seasons in Atlanta. Five different coordinators. Play in that many systems, and a quarterback learns to be comfortable in almost any scheme, any style of play.

But there is one chapter of Frank Reich’s playbook that is still relatively new to Ryan.

“When he got here, Matt had said, ‘Hey, I haven’t done a ton of this RPO stuff, but I’ve kind of seen it on tape a lot,’” Reich said. “’I like it, and I’m looking forward to getting a feel for it.’”

An RPO, or run-pass option, is a relatively simple concept.

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The defense’s actions dictate the play. In one type of RPO, the quarterback reads the actions of a single defender and either hands it off to the running back or pulls the ball out of the back’s arms and fires it quickly to an open receiver. In another type, an advantage RPO, the quarterback makes his decision before the snap based on the number of defenders at the point of attack.

“You’re basically giving them a playbook with maybe three to four plays in it per RPO,” running backs coach Scottie Montgomery said. “Three or four different places to go with it, three or four ways to execute it.”

A simple but rapid decision-making process that feels awfully familiar to the Colts’ new starting quarterback.

“I ran the triple option in high school,” Ryan said with a laugh. “You do whatever you’ve got to do to win football games, and I’m certainly comfortable with it.”

Those days at William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia aren’t Ryan’s only experience with the option. Nearly all NFL offenses now have some form of RPO in the playbook, and Ryan’s coordinators in Atlanta dabbled in the RPO world from time to time.

The RPO was a treat for those offenses.

Under Reich and Montgomery, the coaching staff’s resident expert on the RPO world, the Colts have made them a staple of their offensive diet. When a team has a back like Jonathan Taylor at the mesh point, the right decision by the quarterback can be lethal.

“We can be as basic as we want to be,” Montgomery said. “Or be as dynamic as we want to be, and really go in a lot of different directions.”

Ryan’s relative lack of experience in the discipline will not hold the Colts back.

He has all the necessary tools.

“You’ve got to have a quick mind, make good decisions and then be accurate with the ball, because it’s a short throw, there’s usually going to be a small window and you’ve got to get it out quick,” Reich said. “Obviously, all those things fit him. That’s why it was like: ‘Hey, you’re going to be good at this.’”

Ryan’s 2021 Falcons tape left no doubt.

Atlanta’s quarterbacks coach, Charles London, played with Montgomery at Duke, and even though Arthur Smith’s offense does not include a lot of RPOs, there were other concepts in the system that highlighted the skills necessary to run them in the Indianapolis offense.

“If you watch some of the throws in his run-action pass game, they translate,” Montgomery said. “Even if he’s not doing a run-pass option, but if you look at some of the run-action passes that he had, you’d almost think he was in the RPO world before, because he was so good with his hands, his fakes were so consistent.”

If the Colts are right about Ryan, the team’s new starting quarterback might actually open up RPO possibilities for the Indianapolis offense.

Former starter Carson Wentz was comfortable in the RPO game, probably more comfortable than any other part of Reich’s playbook — the Colts head coach became an RPO expert while working with Wentz and Doug Pederson in Philadelphia.

But Wentz’s physical gifts and playing style did not match the mental comfort he felt in the RPO world. When Indianapolis evaluated the RPOs the offense ran in 2021, the Colts found themselves lamenting missed opportunities.

“You know, we had some near misses, whether it was accuracy, whether it was timing with routes and accuracy, but we had some big plays that we left out there,” Montgomery said. “We thought we executed best with some of our RPOs in the red zone. The decision-making of Jack (Doyle) made it easy. … And then, when we can use our backs, both of them, in the RPO world, it’s almost a sensory overload for the defense.”

Accuracy is one of Ryan’s calling cards.

The 37-year-old’s lifetime completion percentage of .655 ranks 10th in the history of the NFL.

Another one of Ryan’s strengths, his ability to read defenses and Peyton Manning-like devotion to film study, is also the antidote to the tricks defensive coordinators like to use against teams that live in the RPO world.

“The one thing that people try to do to you in the RPO world is fool you, but we have so many answers, it’s like we’re running all these plays on our terms,” Montgomery said. “We should have an opportunity to go be great at it because of him.”

Indianapolis has studied the RPO world so thoroughly that the Colts have a long database to mine for the plays that fit Ryan and the rest of the team’s offensive talent best.

The Colts will run some of their base RPOs. Reich and Montgomery might also add a few wrinkles that fit specific weapons in the team’s arsenal, resting easily in the knowledge that Ryan can pick them up quickly.

“More so, it’s about trying to find out what Matt’s comfortable with,” Montgomery said. “Some of the stuff that, maybe, one of our new receivers has done before they got here, or with all of this length we have now at tight end, some of the things that we can do to utilize those guys in the offenses we’ve been in.”

The Colts can be as basic as they want to be.

Or they can get creative with a veteran quarterback capable of handling almost anything they throw at him.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Matt Ryan might take Colts RPO game to another level