Matthew Thomas Ryan (born May 17, 1985) is an American football quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL). After playing college football for Boston College, Ryan was drafted by the Falcons with the third overall pick in the first round of the 2008 NFL Draft. Ryan was Boston College's starting quarterback from 2005 to 2007, leading them to three bowl victories and a 25–7 record in 32 starts. He threw for 200 or more yards 15 times and is third all time in school history in passing yards and in pass completions. He earned MVP of the game honors at the 2005 MPC Computers Bowl. In 2007, Ryan led his team to an ACC Atlantic Division championship and was named ACC Player of the Year. During his rookie year, Ryan started all 16 games for the Falcons and led them to the playoffs with an 11–5 season record. He earned honors as the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year. In 2016, Ryan was the NFL's Most Valuable Player and led the Falcons to Super Bowl LI, where they were defeated by the New England Patriots. There is a standard design used by all teams participating in the captaincy program. The patches are in team colors and are worn on the front left or right breast (depending on other patches, etc. worn by the specific team). The number of gold Stars on the patch represents the number of years that player has been named captain by a team. If he has been named captain for longer than four years, the "C" on the patch is gold. On some teams' color rush jerseys, plus the Cincinnati Bengals' white uniforms, the Stars (and "C", for captains with over 4 years of service) use team colors. During special recognitions, the patch may be a different color; e.g., pink for breast cancer awareness; or camouflage for military service recognition. In 2018, NFL introduced a new multi-color captain patch for Crucial Catch which the NFL and the American Cancer Society come together to end cancer. Some teams (e.g. Pittsburgh and New England) do not use the patch on their jerseys but still designate captains. The decision to wear or not wear patches can come from the Coach or a team vote. Pittsburgh and New England have never used the patch during the respective lengthy tenures of their head coaches Mike Tomlin and Bill Belichick, although they have named permanent captains. To date, these two teams and the Ravens have never worn the patch. Other teams who do not use the patch designate captains weekly. John Harbaugh has followed this practice since becoming head Coach of the Baltimore Ravens. In the case of the Green Bay Packers, the team named weekly captains during the regular season, but would switch to assigning captains (who wore patches) whenever they qualified for the playoffs. The Kansas City Chiefs followed the same practice in the 2019 regular season and postseason, naming six captains in advance of their divisional round game versus Houston. With the hiring of head Coach Matt LaFleur in 2019, the Packers began assigning 3 weekly captains alongside 3 permanent captains. By and large, teams do not adorn the jerseys of weekly captains with patches. However, in 2019 the Carolina Panthers voted Gerald McCoy as a captain for their week 2 matchup with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—McCoy's former team—and affixed a patch to his jersey. He continued wearing the patch as the season continued in light of an injury to Kawann Short. Similarly, Efe Obada was voted a team captain for the Panthers' NFL London game in week 6, as London is Obada's hometown. In 2019, the NFL changed captains' patches slightly, removing the white outline at the patch's edge. Also, instead of Stars "filled-in" with gold coloring to indicate years as a captain alongside "unfilled-in" white Stars (i.e. a player who was in his second year as a captain would have 2 gold Stars and 2 white Stars on his patch), the patch now simply has gold Stars indicating years served.