“I was pretty content,” Motts says now. “It was lined up pretty good.”
Motts came home one weekend to celebrate Matt’s 16th birthday, in May 2001. The brothers planned a golf outing, and they jumped into Motts’ Jetta for the drive to the course.
Motts slowed the car near the course entrance and flashed on the left-turn signal. The driver of the car behind them was not paying attention. That car crashed into the back of the Jetta, pushing it into oncoming traffic. The Army fuel truck plowed into the Jetta. That’s all Motts remembers.
Motts woke up hours later, his mother standing over his hospital bed and his right arm in a sling. He had the first of six surgeries to repair his shattered elbow.
Matt Ryan went home that night and stayed up late with his older sister, Kate. They talked into the wee hours about how Matt had thought his brother was dead. They talked about fate, and how no one accounts for things like this when planning the future.
“He was shaken up,” Kate says.
A week later, Mike Ryan called the junkyard where the Jetta had been towed. He asked the manager whether anything could be salvaged. The manager’s response reminded Mike how close his boys had come to dying in that crash.
“The guy said, ‘There’s nothing here. There’s nothing left of this thing,’ ” Mike Ryan says. “That was a strange feeling, to have him tell me that.”
•••
Motts held a football and lifted his right hand to his shoulder. He tried to throw, but his elbow wouldn’t whip forward the way it once could.
The bones in his elbow never healed properly, and the result of multiple surgeries was Motts could not extend his arm. Even now, Motts says, he has about 70-percent range of motion in his right elbow.
But doctors’ prognoses be damned, Motts wanted to play football. When quarterback no longer was an option, he tried moving to defensive back and running back. He even tried coaching. Motts tried for three years, but nothing made him feel as close to the team as he had playing quarterback.
“He thought it was going to work,” says Bill Zwaan, Motts’ coach at Widener. “He finally got enough bad news from the doctors that he said, ‘OK, I’ve got to give this up.’ ”
Matt, meanwhile, watched his brother’s struggle. He felt guilty about continuing to play when his brother could not. He admitted that to his mother one day, and Bernie Ryan called Motts. Matt and Motts met in a room and were honest with each other for the first time about the accident.
Matt told his brother he couldn’t stand playing football, knowing Motts couldn’t do the same. That’s when Motts told his brother he shouldn’t feel guilty. In fact, Motts needed Matt to play. Watching his brother was the only thing that made Motts feel connected to the game, the way he once had.
“He might be living a little bit of his career through Matty now,” says Brian McCloskey, Matt Ryan’s coach at Penn Charter. “And Matty is maybe like, ‘Hey, I’m going and doing this for the family.’ It’s kind of like they’re in it together.”
Motts is 26 now, and he manages the construction of vacation homes along the New Jersey coastline. His flexible schedule allowed him to travel to Boston to watch his younger brother’s college games. He saw Matt throw the winning touchdown pass against Virginia Tech last year, the one that started conversations about Matt’s NFL chances. He saw Matt complete a career at Boston College in which he was 25-7 as a starter and was last year’s Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year.
Matt is expected to be drafted among the top 10, likely going to the Atlanta Falcons or Baltimore Ravens, or maybe even the Chiefs.
He will be in New York, where the draft will take place, and he invited Motts to be there with him. Motts says he wouldn’t miss it.
“Growing up with Matt, we would just play all the time, acting like we were one of those NFL quarterbacks. It really is just a dream; crazy how Matt is actually one of those guys now,” Motts says. “For me, there’s no better enjoyment than watching Matt just go out there and compete and play and have success.
“We always just tried to be perfect. It seems like Matt has done well.”
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