Throughout his 15-year NFL career, Matt Ryan was rarely himself in public. During press conferences, media scrums, and sit-down interviews, the longtime Falcons captain and quarterback had to play diplomat and toe the company line. “You’re protecting the players that you’re with, the coaching staff, a front office, an ownership group,” he tells Front Office Sports. “I think some of that strips away your personality.”
But last year, as a first-time broadcaster for CBS, he started to restore it. In Chicago for a Week 4 matchup between the Bears and Broncos, Ryan had clipped together a three-play video package of quarterback Justin Fields, advocating the team implement a different offensive strategy after a rough start to the season. “If I’m a coach in this situation, I don’t want to put Justin into the situations he was in last week,’” Ryan narrated before Fields’s first drive.
This was new territory for Ryan—he was being critical, voicing concerns, and offering proof. He was starting to become an analyst. A few moments later, the Bears’ offense ran a series of plays nearly identical to Ryan’s suggestions. He was a bit shocked, then relieved. “It was affirming for me,” he says. “Your prep is right, you’re seeing these things, and you’re taking a chance, giving an opinion on what you think they should be doing. And then to see it happen—that part was really cool.”
It was also a reminder.
“It’s not my job to protect that team,” he says. “It’s my job to tell you what I think is going on.”
On Sunday, the 39-year-old Ryan will share even more opinions, debuting as a full-time studio analyst on CBS’s new-look pregame show The NFL Today. In April, the network announced it was executing a two-on-one quarterback swap, replacing stalwart analysts Boomer Esiason and Phil Simms with the recently retired play-caller. Now, each weekend throughout the fall, Ryan will fly from Atlanta—where he lives with his wife, daughter, and twin boys—to New York City. His mission: Re-introduce his fiery personality and develop chemistry in front of a national audience with a group that includes returning host James Brown and analysts Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson, and J.J. Watt.
On the surface, audiences could easily interpret Ryan’s move to the studio cynically: a white, handsome, MVP quarterback with an impressive career who never quite reached the pinnacle of the sport. Essentially, a younger version of his predecessors, but lacking the prestigious pedigree of Tom Brady or the exaggerated exuberance of Jason Kelce (each about to start his own broadcast career on rivals Fox and ESPN, respectively).
Ryan is well aware of this interpretation. “You have to transcend that criticism in a certain way to say, ‘Well, what do I bring? What’s different? What’s unique?’” he says.
His new teammates are convinced he brings plenty. They love his drive, his football IQ, and his willingness to participate. They’re excited to hear his unshackled opinions about the game and watch his competitive spirit emerge again. In other words, they think we might finally get a front-row seat to the real “Matty Ice.”
“The perception doesn’t necessarily match the reality,” Watt says. “Matt’s got some juice, man.”
Not long after becoming a free agent last year, Ryan began to grapple with his future. He’d just finished a mediocre 2022 season with the Colts (which included getting benched) and was ready to consider career options outside lining up under center. So he consulted with Alan Zucker, a partner at Excel Sports Management who has handled his marketing ventures since 2015. “I called him and said, ‘Listen, what do the next steps look like and what should I be doing?’” Ryan says. “And he was kind of like, ‘Well, what do you want to do? What are you interested in?’”
Ryan wanted to stick to football. He loved talking about it. He loved being around it. He couldn’t cut it out of his life cold turkey. “Let’s just take some meetings,” suggested Zucker, who arranged interviews with network executives while the pair was in Arizona for Super Bowl week in February 2023. There, CBS pitched him a hybrid role—part game commentary, part studio analysis—before eventually offering him an opportunity to join a three-man booth for the upcoming season with Andrew Catalon and Tiki Barber.
“It kind of happened fast,” Ryan says. “But I viewed it early on as like, ‘Let’s see if it’s fun. Let’s see if I enjoy it.’”
The decision made sense to him. He’d get to stay on the same Sunday schedule with his family and gauge whether he wanted a real future in broadcasting. Up to that point, Ryan had a small sample size of television experience but felt confident in his skill set. He’d guested on an episode of ESPN’s Sunday Night Countdown a decade earlier, then appeared with The NFL Today crew during a January 2023 playoff weekend. “That was my audition without really even knowing it,” he says.
“He came in and his personality, his energy just sucked me in,” says The NFL Today producer Drew Kaliski. “I’ve been exposed to a lot of players over the years. Matt just had this energy [that was] accepting of everybody and just wanted to be part of the show.”
Learning color commentary, however, required some reps. Ahead of last season, Ryan joined Catalon and Barber inside a New York studio to call a quarter of a taped game. A couple of weeks later, Catalon, who calls preseason Bills games, invited Ryan to shadow him in the booth and watch a live operation up close. Ryan obliged, flying up from Atlanta for the weekend to play golf with his new play-by-play partner and absorb the nuances of the broadcast the next day. “When an athlete comes off the field, you never know how they’re going to approach this,” Catalon says. “His willingness to do that showed me that he’s in this for real.”
There were early hiccups throughout last season. Ryan sometimes fumbled his phrasing, even remembering one game in which a producer, speaking in his ear, caused him to temporarily pause mid-sentence and create an awkward silence. He was also the center of a viral moment during Week 1, when Catalon ribbed him on air with a 28–3 reference, a Super Bowl LI callback that Ryan had joked about with Barber at halftime, not realizing Catalon had overheard him.
Eventually, Ryan started to put things together. He unlearned watching film like a quarterback in order to see things more broadly. He also changed his spotting board, at Catalon’s suggestion, so he could find names and numbers quicker in between plays. The entire experience resembled his own NFL career. “You prepare all week, and then the light goes on, and you’re on camera where the game starts, and you’ve got three hours, and you have no idea what’s about to unfold,” he says. “You’re either ready or you’re not.”
Each week, Catalon grew more impressed. “He does his homework,” he says. “He’s not going to go on the air and just throw something out there to see if it sticks. He really puts in the work.”
At the end of last season, CBS invited Ryan to contribute to its Super Bowl week coverage in Las Vegas. His duties included a variety of interviews and brief live hits, but he made an impression during a pregame segment with former Patriot and Super Bowl LIII champion Jason McCourty a few hours before kickoff. In front of a roving camera, the pair walked from inside the Chiefs’ locker room and onto midfield, describing their memories emerging from the tunnel before the Big Game. Ryan looked confident and in control, offering unique anecdotes and improvising where necessary. Kaliski barely needed to coach him. “What the hell am I meant to do?” the producer remembers thinking.
Shortly after, CBS Sports president David Berson called Ryan with a proposition. “Would you be willing to go into the studio?” This wasn’t a command disguised as a question. Berson liked the way Ryan had fared in his first year in the booth, but he had some impending vacancies to fill. Ryan didn’t take long to answer. The switch would mean becoming an official face of the network. It made his decision to officially retire in April a little easier.
“I understand that there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with sitting at this desk,” Ryan says. “It’s a prestigious show.”
It’s not too much of an exaggeration to call Ryan’s move to the studio a major change-up. Esiason had been a staple analyst for 22 years, while Simms joined the desk in 2017 after Tony Romo took his place in the booth alongside Jim Nantz. Understandably, the show became a little predictable, rigid, and old-school with two former quarterbacks past the age of 60.
Along with Burleson and Watt, Ryan’s close proximity to the game (and the vast network of coaches in his phone) should provide an injection of relevant commentary and insight. “They’re just very fresh right off the field,” Kaliski says. “They have those relationships with the players, they know what’s going on in the locker rooms, and they can just bring our viewers closer to the action.”
The change is also a testament to Ryan’s willingness to experiment. He’ll take part in various sit-down interviews across the country and present fun, thoughtful highlight packages. But in his brief gatherings with The NFL Today crew so far, he’s expressed an openness to self-deprecating segments, like throwback jersey fashion shows from last year, which has led Kaliski to rethink the pregame’s formatting and pit him against various personalities in different corners of the set.
The more Ryan gets comfortable with the group, the better chance his inner competitor and enthusiasm (the kind Kyle Brandt witnessed in August) will likely make it to air. And, with one fewer person at the table, there will be increased opportunities for unscripted conversations instead of disjointed, 20-second windows to make points. “I’m telling you, when we all get in the room together, it’s a blast,” Watt says. “We’ll just go to dinner and it’ll turn into a three-hour dinner because we’re sharing stories.” Effectively, Watt says, Ryan’s camaraderie and presence will have the effect of turning the studio into a makeshift living room.
“He’s got a little fire in him,” says Cowher, who recently spent time with Ryan at a summer golf outing and ended up drinking and debating football with him well past midnight. “He’s got a great understanding of the game. He looks like the All-American kid. But this guy knows how to get under people’s skin.”
CBS is banking on it. But Kaliski knows it will still take time for Ryan to tap into the personality everyone is eager to see. He’ll have some growing pains, some flubs. He’ll also add a perspective the show has never had. “It’s only rewarding when you’re providing value,” Ryan says. “Am I adding to the show? Am I making the show more entertaining? I think there’s that space of constantly having to reevaluate how you’re doing and whether you’re good at it.”
“That’s the challenge,” he adds. “And I kind of like that.”
