After adequate time to process what happened on Sunday night, the Super Bowl QB grades are in and they are a little bit strange this week:

I say strange because Brady's performance, which will go down in NFL history as one of the most-remembered QB games ever played, graded out to a 9.1, over a full point down from his AFC Championship mark. Matt Ryan became the first QB to ever achieve a perfect QB rating through the first half of a Super Bowl and finished the game at an ungodly 144.1. And yet he gets an 8.8 from us. There are very good reasons for both grades, though.

Brady flat out struggled for half of the game, as the Falcons were able to successfully apply pressure with four and sometimes five man rushes and man coverage in the secondary. We discussed in the podcast prior to the game that the key to disrupting Brady is getting to his feet. The only thing he really needs to succeed is time to set his feet in the pocket, and we all have the mental image of him standing straight up and down, slightly bouncing in place and tapping the ball with his eyes focused down field. But Atlanta prevented him from finding that comfort zone in the first half and Brady was instead forced to move around the pocket and throw with sub-optimal foot placement on almost every single pass attempt.

There was also that hideous pick six, which was a bad read on two levels. Brady never saw Robert Alford over the top, but Danny Amendola was covered well by Brian Poole on the play and the pass would not have been completed even if Alford hadn't jumped the route.

I still gave Brady a phenomenal eye test grade due to his second half. After looking uneasy in the first two quarters, the classic look in his eye undoubtedly returned for the comeback run. The Patriots quarterback was able to string together an avalanche of accurate passes that ruthlessly exploited the growing fatigue of the Falcons defense. Still, he absolutely benefited from a wild throw late in the fourth that had no business being caught by Julian Edelman and frankly should have been intercepted. All these things considered, I can live with the 9.1 grade on one of sports history's most famous individual performances.

Matt Ryan's night was just as interesting. He held a perfect QB rating into the middle of the third quarter and appeared to be capping a career season with his best performance yet. Then it began to fall apart. While I will hold back on making Ryan the game's goat (I think the entire team and coaching staff, with the notable exceptions of Julio Jones and Grady Jarrett, share the blame pretty evenly), Atlanta's QB still managed a negative eye test grade from me that mitigated his impressive numbers.

This was due primarily to two inexcusable plays in the second half. The first was the 3rd and 1 strip sack in the middle of the third quarter. The Patriots telegraphed a blitz and Ryan still 1. held the ball too long and 2. failed to protect it in trying to force a late throw with pressure in his face. It was nearly the exact same mistake made by Alex Smith that doomed the Chiefs against the Steelers three weeks ago. It should never happen to the MVP in the second half of a Super Bowl.

Then there was the famous second down sack he took late in the fourth quarter in Patriots territory. I cannot for the life of me understand what Ryan was thinking on this play either. He had to know that taking a sack was not an option and he had an opportunity to throw it away while outside of the pocket and somehow decided against it. Perhaps he was trying to keep the clock moving. Whatever the reasoning, it was a disastrous decision that pushed Atlanta out of field goal range and limited their options for the rest of the drive.

I can't fault Kyle Shanahan for putting the ball in the hands of his best player and the MVP of the league in two of the game's most critical moments. Matt Ryan simply did not come through. There was also the matter of poor clock management in the fourth quarter, as Ryan snapped the ball with over ten seconds left on the play clock and a running game clock multiple times. I hate to say it but it seems the moment was once again too big for Matty Ice, and he definitely appeared to lose his focus in the second half of the biggest game of his life. Thus his amazing 144.1 QB rating only grades out to an 8.8 on the throw_ology scale.

Here are the final cumulative grades for the 2017 NFL Playoffs:

Matt Ryan gets the consolation prize as throw_ology's top QB performer of the playoffs. We're sure the honor will do wonders to ease the sting of his nightmarish Sunday evening.