FanHouse Matt Ryan

There are some very legitimate questions about how good the Falcons' defense will be. Atlanta will be relying on a largely new set of linebackers, a much younger set of safeties and a still-potentially thin defensive line.

But offensively, is there a Falcons fan who doesn't think the Falcons will be even better than they were last year? They replaced the league's worst set of tight ends (combined 19 catches for 211 yards) with Tony Gonzalez (96 catches for 1,058 yards). The running game of Michael Turner and Jerious Norwood is back, the wide receivers should be even better as Harry Douglas enters his second year, and the offensive line returns intact.

It's June, so a lot can change between now and the start of training camp in six weeks, but apparently the Buccaneers are thinking about giving the starting quarterback gig to rookie first-round pick Josh Freeman.

Before last season, I would have had a hard time supporting that plan, but Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco changed all that. Ryan led the Falcons, a four-win outfit in 2007, to the postseason; Flacco made it to the AFC Conference Championship game with the Ravens, a team that finished 5-11 the year before.

Now, the Bucs might have similar ideas for Freeman. And they were 9-7 in 2008, which, in theory, means they have fewer holes to patch.

FanHouse's crack squad of savvy fantasy football personnel put our five heads together and amassed consensus rankings for non-keeper, standard scoring leagues. We'll update as the season gets closer, but this is our "incredibly early yet still fun" version.

Was last season the year of the quarterback or what? You still had the old reliables like Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner and Donovan McNabb doing their thing, but a whole new crop of passers have elevated themselves. Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers and Jay Cutler led the way for the youth movement. You could have even waited toward the end of your draft and landed stud QBs in Matt Ryan and Tyler Thigpen (who would have been waiver-wire fodder). Team all that with Tom Brady's Week 1 injury, and we had a really interesting season. Let's see how they fall out presently for 2009.

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Earlier this week, EA Sports released the player ratings for Madden 10. And now, with the NFL Draft in the rearview, and nothing else to do between now and training camps, we'll ponder the important questions. Like: How is [Player who is obviously rated too high] rated above [Player who is obviously rated too low]?

It's fun and original!

Perhaps the best way to ease a young NFL quarterback into the starting job is to surround him with playmakers, the support of a suffocating defense, or both. That way, he's seldom in the position of having to win a game, but has the benefit of gaining experience.

The strategy worked for the Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger in 2004, and the Ravens and Joe Flacco and the Falcons and Matt Ryan last season. Pittsburgh was 15-1, Baltimore and Atlanta were 11-5. It helps to have most of the pieces in place before handing over the offense to a young QB, but it's not mandatory; the Ravens won five times the year before Flacco arrived, and the Falcons won four.

If not for Matt Ryan, Falcons owner Arthur Blank would be facing a nightmare scenario right now.

When Blank reiterated today that the Falcons will be getting rid of Vick as soon as he's reinstated by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, there was nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders. With Ryan firmly established as the team's franchise quarterback, it makes perfect sense that Vick has no place in Atlanta's future plans.

By announcing such a plan, the Falcons will likely not get any team to offer them anything in a trade -- he's made it clear that Atlanta won't be keeping him.

The Falcons' Matt Ryan was the Associated Press' NFL offensive rookie of the year last season. It was well deserved after completing 61.1 percent of his passes and throwing 16 touchdowns with a quarterback rating of 87.7.

But for the first three weeks of the season, Cowboys running back Felix Jones was the leader. In fact, he won all the primaries. Jones scored a touchdowns in the first three weeks of the season, including the first carry of his career at Cleveland. Jones scored on an 11-yard run, a 60-yard run, 33-yard scamper and how could we forget his 98-yard kickoff return for a score?

Steve Young has been where Matthew Stafford is going, and he has some advice for the kid: Good luck.

"You have to be a really unique person, not player, but person," Young told FanHouse on Friday. "You can be a phenomenal player, but you have to have an iron stomach. It's not going to be easy for him."

Before Young earned his spot in the Hall of Fame with the 49ers, he struggled trying to be the savior for the woeful Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Now, Stafford, the No. 1 pick in last month's draft, finds himself in that spot with the Detroit Lions.

The plan was for Joe Flacco to spend his rookie season -- the first part of it, anyway -- on the sidelines. The Ravens' 2008 first-round pick came to Baltimore by way of Delaware, a Division I-AA school. And while he had the physical tools -- size, elusiveness, arguably the strongest arm in the league -- there's a huge difference between pummeling Monmouth on Saturdays and trying to slow down the Steelers on Monday night.

But training camp injuries to Kyle Boller and Troy Smith forced Flacco onto the field. In 2003, Brian Billick named then-rookie Boller the starter, and five years later, he was fighting for a roster spot (and Billick was out of a job).

There used to be a time when teams would use a first-round pick on a quarterback with the understanding that he would sit on the bench for two or three years, learn the offense, and then assume the full-time gig. Recently, with the proliferation of the pro-style offense in college, and the out-of-control salaries top-of-the-draft quarterbacks now command, more is expected sooner.

Since 2002, 20 QBs have been drafted in Round 1, and 10, for different reasons, played in at least nine games as a rookie. Results were mixed (Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Byron Leftwich and Ben Roethlisberger were all stellar; David Carr and Joey Harrington were not), but much of that had to do with the situation these young signal callers were thrust into.

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