Spring is back in Ryan's step for final BC fling
Each day was tough, not because of what he did, but what he couldn't do. The pain was always there. Sometimes piercing, sometimes throbbing. Always there.
It had been that way for Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan since the first game of last season against Central Michigan in which he suffered a high left ankle sprain.
Ryan played with the pain. Then it got really bad after a game against Virginia Tech when Ryan cracked a bone in his left ankle.
Former BC coach Tom O'Brien, who had recruited Ryan, talked to the doctors, studied the X-rays, then talked to Ryan's parents, Michael and Bernice, outside the locker room after the Virginia Tech game. "I told them we had two options," O'Brien said earlier this week by telephone from his office at North Carolina State, where he took a job in December after 10 seasons at The Heights. "We could have the surgery and he'd probably be back for the bowl game. Or we could try and get through the rest of the season."
Ryan came out of the locker room and said, "I'm playing," O'Brien recalled.
"He's a great kid and the toughest player I've ever been around."
BC played 13 games last season. Ryan played in 12, taking a day off in a home victory over Buffalo. Other than that, he was ready to play, taking off the walking cast he wore during the week when he had to put on his uniform.
Ryan was tougher than a sprained ankle, tougher than a broken bone. Tape it up. Game on. It's always been that way for the kid who was so cool and so quiet that he picked up the nickname Matty Ice as a freshman at William Penn Charter School just outside of Philadelphia.
All he wanted to do was play. That's why he came to Boston College.
His leadership skills were apparent at William Penn in his senior year when he was captain of the football, basketball, and baseball teams. "I had a good year," said Ryan, a 6-foot-5-inch, 221-pound senior captain ready to go into his final season at BC 3 1/2 months after he receives his undergraduate degree.
Ryan, who had a pin placed in his ankle in January to stabilize it, is only now playing football the way he remembered from a year ago -- without pain. He will make an appearance in today's Jay McGillis Memorial Spring Game (1 p.m.), do more rehab, pick up his degree (he majored in communications) May 21, and enroll in summer school for graduate courses, which he will also take in the fall.
The recovery process has been long, frustrating, and, he said, rewarding. "I just had to get back to the normal fundamentals of footwork," said Ryan, who was good enough on one foot to earn first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference honors last season. "Being able to throw the ball and land on my heels. Stuff like that."
"He's been amazing in how he has picked things up," said Jagodzinski, who noted he has no problem in letting Ryan call audibles at the line of scrimmage. "I have every confidence in his ability to do a lot of things."
Ryan said the learning process has been ongoing. "Coach Logan is big on fundamentals," said Ryan. "He's helped me a lot to get back to where I need to be. And while being in a cast for five weeks [after surgery] was tough, it gave me an opportunity to sit down with the new coaching staff and pick up the system. It has really helped me getting adjusted."
BC has won a bowl game in each of Ryan's first four seasons at The Heights. Last year, the Eagles won 10 games. But they again failed to win a conference title or make it to a Bowl Championship Series game. Both are on Ryan's to-do list.
"If we're going to be a program we ultimately want to be, we have to win, we have to push it through the ceiling," said Ryan. "We've been close, but we have to push it through, we have to do whatever it takes. We're going to have to do it."
As Ryan talks, the intensity of the words, the emotion, is palpable. Now, it's more "Matty Fire" than "Matty Ice."
"OB would come up to my locker after games and tell me that if I wanted to be walking the next week, I had better get my butt back to my room and just lie down," said Ryan. "And that's what I did. I watched a lot of college football."
So while his suitemates and teammates were being college kids on Saturday nights, Matty Ice was in front of the TV.
A speed bump came when O'Brien made the ACC transfer to N.C. State. "Different philosophies," said Ryan, talking about the two staffs. "Hopefully, I can take the best from both and make it work."
Ryan has done that throughout his career at BC. Sometimes he wins games with his arm, sometimes with the force of his personality, his sheer will.
"You don't win games just on Saturday," said Ryan. "The ways these guys prepare, they know they are going to win some games just because they are better than the other team. When I get in the huddle, I'll do a few things. Sometimes I will get in their faces. Sometimes I will tell them some lies. Whatever I think will work. I'm intense when it comes to being on the field. They all know I'm trying to get the best out of them."
The best Matt Ryan has is pretty good. If the Eagles' success of last season can be matched or topped, Ryan's star could also rise. ACC Player of the Year. And even the hushed H word -- Heisman.
"I've come full circle," said Ryan. "Four years ago, I played my first game against Wake Forest, who we open up with this year [Sept. 1]. Things have worked out well for me. I'm graduating and I feel a sense of accomplishment in doing that. I'm ready to move on to a different part of my life."
Athletic director Gene DeFilippo said a Globe story reporting newly hired offensive line coach Jack Bicknell Jr. received a three-year contract was wrong. "He did not get a three-year contract," said DeFilippo. "That's inaccurate." DeFilippo did not deny the salary for Bicknell -- who was hired away from Texas Tech -- was in excess of $200,000 per season.
Assistant coaches, other than coordinators, generally work on one-year deals. But BC had to make a few runs at Bicknell, the former Eagles center on the Doug Flutie 1984 Cotton Bowl team and son of former Eagles coach Jack Bicknell.
Bicknell, who was fired after eight years as head coach at Louisiana Tech last season, was hired by Texas Tech coach Mike Leach in January after turning down BC's tight ends job in December.
When offensive line coach Jim Turner got into a dispute with Jagodzinski and cleaned out his office, the Eagles made another run at Bicknell and were turned down again. But they persisted, with an offer from DeFilippo that not only included a salary of more than $200,000 and the title of assistant head coach, but a down payment on a house in the Boston area.
BC elected its captains: Ryan, offensive tackle Gosder Cherilus, defensive end Nick Larkin, and linebacker Jolonn Dunbar. 