Matt Ryan leads Falcons past Seahawks, 36-20, and into NFC championship game

Reporting from ATLANTA —  All that talk of nasty playoff weather in Kansas City, and it was the Seattle Seahawks who ran headlong into an Ice storm.

Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan, nicknamed Matty Ice, put on a frozen-in-time performance Saturday in what could be the last game in the 25-year history of the Georgia Dome. He threw for 338 yards and three touchdowns to beat Seattle, 36-20, in a divisional game before a packed and raucous house.

“The grit that guy has is unbelievable,” said receiver Mohamed Sanu, who caught five passes for 44 yards and a touchdown. “The determination to get the ball out, get it to his playmakers, and let us do us, is remarkable.”

If top-seeded Dallas were to beat Green Bay on Sunday, the Cowboys would play host to the Falcons in the NFC championship game. If the Packers were to win, they would go to Atlanta for one final game in the dome before the Falcons move to their asymmetrical, $1.5-billion stadium being constructed next door, one with a 100-yard bar and a roof that twists open like the aperture of a camera.

The true wonder Saturday was Ryan, who came into the game with a 1-4 record in the postseason and a team known for its warning-track power. The Falcons always seem to cruise through the regular season, then hit a wall in the playoffs. This time, they picked right up where their No. 1-ranked scoring offense left off two weeks ago.

A high point came in the second quarter, when Ryan orchestrated a nine-play, 99-yard drive that he capped with a 14-yard scoring pass to running back Tevin Coleman.

“That drive was kind of a synopsis of what we did the entire day,” Ryan said.

The Falcons have scored at least 29 points in nine of their last 11 games, and averaged 33.8 for the season. (By way of comparison, the Falcons scored 540 points this season, exactly as many as Kurt Warner and the “Greatest Show on Turf” St. Louis Rams did in 2000.)

The game was also a showcase for Kyle Shanahan, Atlanta’s offensive coordinator who was thought to be a shoo-in for one of the many head-coaching vacancies after this season. There have been a flurry of hirings, however, and now only the San Francisco opening remains. The two onetime front-runners among offensive coaches, Shanahan and New England coordinator Josh McDaniels, are still available.

On multiple occasions Saturday, including on a 53-yard pass to Devonta Freeman, Ryan released the ball as a Seahawks pass rusher was driving him into the ground. So the guy who threw the pass was just about the only one in the stadium, or in a TV audience of millions, who didn’t see the completion.

“That’s one of those things where you’re kind of on the ground and just listening to see what happens, and hoping you put enough touch on the ball,” said Ryan, whose two career postseason victories have come against Seattle.

The Atlanta defense did its part, too, sacking Russell Wilson three times — matching Seattle’s total against the more stationary Ryan — and intercepting him twice, although one of those came on a ball that popped up out of a receiver’s hands. The Falcons also collected a safety after Wilson’s foot was stepped on by one of his offensive linemen, and he fell back into the end zone.

A week after the Seahawks ran for 161 yards against Detroit and controlled the ball for nearly 37 minutes, they were held to 60 fewer rushing yards and had the ball for about 10 minutes less.

“We wanted to keep him in the pocket for the most part, and we did a great job with that,” safety Keanu Neal said. “Sometimes he had to force some balls, and it allowed us to make some plays with him.”

Falcons Coach Dan Quinn was Seattle’s defensive coordinator for both of the Seahawks teams Coach Pete Carroll guided to the Super Bowl, so this game had special meaning for them.

The Seahawks had their moments. Wilson had a pair of touchdown passes, and Devin Hester returned a punt 80 yards to the Atlanta seven-yard line… only to see it nullified by a holding call. The Falcons couldn’t exhale until late in the game, knowing the experience and explosiveness on the Seattle side.

“We have great confidence in who we are,” Wilson said. “We have great confidence in what we’re going to be able to do as a team, coming up soon.”

The problem, then, is the definition of soon. For the Seahawks, it’s seven months. For the Falcons, it’s seven days.

sam.farmer@latimes.com

Follow Sam Farmer on Twitter @LATimesfarmer