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A DRENCHED AND exhausted Matt Ryan walks off the Falcons' steamy practice field and drops into his seat in the shade with an exaggerated groan. As if practicing in the Georgia heat weren't hard enough, the nine-year veteran and three-time Pro Bowl passer also had to contend with his own offensive coordinator in coverage. Kyle Shanahan nearly broke the internet when he jumped in front of a Ryan pass floating toward the end zone -- the ensuing "interception" was a preseason gift for the ever-ready army of trolls. (Relax, everyone, the coach was actually teaching his rookie tight end about route depth.)

Ryan laughed off the viral spiral. In 2015, even while struggling to grasp Shanahan's new scheme, he still ranked fifth in passing yards (4,591) and was the NFL's most accurate passer under pressure. Which is why we thought he'd be perfect to offer a tutorial on the current defensive evolution.

THE MAG: Here's a number that jumps out: In 2012, there were seven QBs with an average release time under 2.5 seconds. In 2015, there were almost triple that, 20. Is that what defenses have done, forced nearly everyone on offense to move faster?

RYAN: Pressure schemes are much different than they were nine years ago, no question about it. That pressure forces offenses to route-adjust and throw quicker and get the ball out of the QB's hands. For me, pressure is when they overload one part of your protection. If you're in five-man protection and you've got three guys blocking one way and two guys sliding the other and they figure out how to bring three guys to that short side? To me, that's pressure. That's the biggest thing that's changed. Nine years ago, if you had five-man protection and they brought five people, there wasn't enough design on defense for them to still get you. Now defenses are dropping out tackles and ends, bringing certain linebackers on certain sides, all this extra design to make the numbers not right from a quarterback's perspective. What you end up with is perceived pressure, which is just as bad. That part has been increasingly difficult and probably leads to why so many guys are getting the ball out quicker.

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Part of that new "design" is specialty personnel packages on what seems like every down now.

In the past, it was all about third downs. Second downs, you never had to worry. Now you do. One of the areas that's changed is second-and-7 or second-and-long, where you're in a passing situation. Now you see a lot of specialty packages come out. It's much more prevalent. Early on in my career, we didn't even used to break down second-and-long. That's how much things have changed.

What does that look like from the pocket?

It looks like nothing, and that's the challenge. It's now become about reading the defensive front, the way they're lining people up. But it doesn't look like it has any kind of structure to it. You've got five guys just walking around. That's one of the things you see more and more of: nobody with their hand in the dirt. So now you come to the line of scrimmage and on top of everything else you have to first identify who the bigs [defensive tackles] are, who the ends are and who the linebackers are. That's tough to do.

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The idea of a classic matchup between a team's best edge rusher and your giant left tackle seems so antiquated. Then you realize that it was, like, five years ago.

That's so different now. Defenses have changed in how they move those guys around so much to try to find your weakest spot and put their best guy there to expose that. When I was getting into the league, you knew exactly where Julius Peppers was gonna line up. But now, with guys like J.J. Watt -- he could be lined up outside, he could be on the left side, he could be on the right side, it doesn't make a difference. He's an equal-opportunity pass rusher -- he goes after everybody from anywhere.

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Watt is also part of this new trend of hybrid defensive players.

That's probably the biggest change: hybrid guys. Look at our rookies: De'Vondre Campbell [fourth-round pick from Minnesota]. You never used to see a linebacker like this, 6-4 and 232 and runs a 4.58. He flies. Back in the day, you'd never have a tight end on a linebacker in third-down situations. It was always a safety walking up. But now with a guy like Keanu Neal [6-0, 211-pound rookie safety, first-round pick from Florida], these guys are interchangeable. You slide him outside and then they've got you thinking, "OK, now we need to pass-protect for a linebacker." You're looking for the 'backer and then, instead, he covers the tight end and they bring a safety off the edge. They got me on that just the other day in practice.

Has it gotten to the point where defenses force you to study and prepare and think so much that you end up with paralysis at the line of scrimmage?

That's why it's so important now to throw everything out from the previous week. Delete everything from your memory and focus on just that next scheme -- that's the biggest thing now about being a quarterback. Every week it's different schemes, different pressures, different hybrids to worry about, so it's control-alt-delete and on to the next defense and then control-alt-delete and on to the next one, for the entire season. If you start seeing ghosts from past games or past schemes, you're just back there thinking too much, like, "Is this this defense or that defense? Am I checking this play off this key or that key?" That's not what you want to happen.

Besides the mental pressure applied by the defense, there's pressure on fundamentals to be as efficient as possible, right?

The big thing in throwing now, you have to be able to throw from any platform because the timing of when things are open is really short and there's so many variables that affect your footwork. Your feet could be facing right, but things change or break down and now I need to throw left. My hips are facing this way, but, same thing, uh-oh, now I need to throw the other way. Footwork, flexibility, changing arm angles, all those things are very important now because you never really know how a pocket is going to shake out.

If you were teaching a young QB to face this next generation of defenses, where would you start?

See spots. That's my thing now. The older I've gotten, the more that's become my thing. Don't worry so much about where defenders should be or where they're supposed to be or all those kinds of things. Just see spots. And design most of your pass plays to be spot-read instead of coverage-based. Instead of getting loaded down thinking, "In this coverage, I'm going here; in that coverage, I'm going there." With so many hybrid players, so many variations of schemes and so much pressure up front and all the things that defenses can do, the way to combat all that is to see spots.

Aaron Rodgers told me the game moves so fast now, all you really can read are flashes of space and color. Is that what you mean?

Windows, yes. You start with a general idea of the coverage, but what's more important now is if you've got a post route that's going [to the deep middle], I need to be seeing this spot of the field, with this spacing, and if that window's not open within this certain timing, then you move on to that next spot and then to the next spot. You've got to feel it now more than ever.

Do these snapshots open and close like a camera lens? And can you prolong them?

Yes, so the key becomes doing things like having your head facing this way to fool the defense, but actually I'm looking at this lens over here, watching out of the corner of my eye to see if it opens, without showing the defense that's what I'm doing. Being able to move somebody to create that little bit of extra space needed to fit the ball in there, that's what's important for quarterbacks now. It's about kinesthetic awareness. Spatial awareness. The game moves so fast now, understanding space by reading body language is probably the most important thing.

We're into neurology and subconscious processing. I mean, when QBs get together, do you guys lament the good old simple days, like five years ago?

We are under constant barrage in the pocket now. Facing it requires a certain feel, a sixth sense. Because the minute you're looking at the edge rush and not downfield, you're toast. That's what separates quarterbacks now, the ability to process all that information in a millisecond, make a good decision based off that snapshot and then to physically be able to get the ball to where you want it to go.

I just realized we haven't even gotten to all the physical challenges of playing QB yet.

Exactly.