ATLANTA – The evening after the Atlanta Falcons drafted Matt Ryan in April 2008, general manager Thomas Dimitroff stood in a corridor of the team’s Flowery Branch practice facility and let grand ambition creep into his thoughts. The team was resetting. The mention of Michael Vick’s name conjured sour faces inside the franchise walls. Dimitroff had been on the job for only a few months and team owner Arthur Blank talked openly about the rebuild being in the “first quarter” of a grand design.

Despite all of this, Dimitroff leaned against a wall and kept circling back to one optimistic thought. The player the Falcons had just selected a few hours earlier had the ability to change it all. If Dimitroff’s faith was correct, everything was about to change.

“This is the guy who can transform a franchise,” he said of Ryan that night.

Nearly nine years later – and through some very shaky, patience-testing moments – Dimitroff and the Falcons have been proven right. Matt Ryan has officially renovated a franchise that had bottomed out nearly a decade ago. Not all by himself, mind you. But with tweaks, alterations and a few wholesale changes around him, Ryan’s MVP-level play has taken the Falcons to the Super Bowl level that Dimitroff dreamed of when Atlanta made Ryan the third overall pick in the 2008 draft.

Nobody can say it came cheaply, either. Not after the Falcons secured the No. 2 seed in the NFC. Not after Atlanta wiped out the Seattle Seahawks’ defense and Super Bowl-winning quarterback Russell Wilson. And certainly not after Ryan and the Falcons’ offense hammered the Green Bay Packers 44-21 – toppling a second Super Bowl-winning quarterback in Aaron Rodgers.

Next? Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. Winner of four Super Bowl rings. The player who will likely be the second-place finisher to Ryan for NFL MVP. Essentially, the standard. And the exact guy Dimitroff had in mind when he drafted Ryan in 2008.

“I can’t stress enough – [Matt Ryan] has the ability to [lead] not only the offense but the whole team,” Dimitroff said the night he drafted Ryan. “That’s huge. I’ve been around a situation in New England where we had [Brady leading] the whole team. … I think he’ll uplift this team.”

Ryan has done exactly that, with one of the greatest NFL quarterbacking seasons in league history. But Brady is still out there. The standard is still waiting. Even with Wilson and Rodgers in his wake, beating Brady on the grandest stage would be the ultimate finale in a long journey.

“We’ve worked hard to get to this point,” Ryan said Sunday night. “But the challenge is still in front of us. What we set out to accomplish is still in front of us. And we’ll enjoy it, because it’s hard to get to this point. I know that from experience. It’s really difficult to get to this point.”

In a way, Ryan speaks for everyone in the organization. There has been a litany of franchise-shaping turns since Ryan arrived. Over the years, the roster and coaching staff around the quarterback has changed dramatically. So much so that the NFC championship failure following the 2012 regular season triggered a mini-rebuild, bottoming out with the firing of then-head coach Mike Smith after the 2014 season. That single deviation made it look like everyone’s future was suddenly on the line, from the front office to the coaching staff to seemingly every player on the roster.

Maybe even Ryan.

And with hindsight, that likely speaks volumes about time and patience and sticking with a quarterback, not to mention the franchise architects who made him the foundational piece. Looking back now, the picture has changed drastically. To the point that many of the decisions criticized so loudly eventually welded this roster together and made it strong.

Trading five draft picks for Julio Jones, including two first-rounders? In an era where No. 1 wideouts could be found through the draft, naysayers called it recklessly bold. Jettisoning Smith? Some called it scapegoating. Signing good (but not elite) players like wideout Mohamed Sanu and center Alex Mack to so-called “overpaid” deals? Critics panned the contracts as a sign of a desperate front office. Drafting Vic Beasley; signing a past-his-prime Dwight Freeney; focusing on speed over girth on defense – at one point or another, the vultures picked at all of it.

Yet here the Falcons are. Headed to the Super Bowl and brushing off all the critics of a plan that was more of a fine-tuning than a total overhaul. Partly thanks to the even hand and culture put in place by head coach Dan Quinn. Part of it thanks to the creative offensive expansion under Kyle Shanahan. And part of it thanks to a front office – led by Dimitroff – that carefully found the right pieces to surround Ryan.

In a way, the next two weeks and what comes after are the culmination of what Dimitroff and the Falcons were dreaming of when they plucked Ryan in 2008. These are the legacy years. As Dimitroff wished for so many years ago, the rebirth finally hitting a meaningful period of maturity. Not just because Atlanta can now boast that it has reached an elite level in the NFC, but because it got there by going through other Super Bowl-winning franchises and may have the staying power to sustain success beyond this season.

“For me, I hope Matt’s right in the middle [of his career],” Quinn said Sunday. “I don’t think it’s time to talk about legacy stuff. I hope we’re battling for a long time together. Those are conversations for the end of your career – and for Matt and I, I hope we’re right in the middle of it.”

However it’s viewed now, Atlanta’s Super Bowl window is officially open. And Matt Ryan made it happen. At least in that sense, the transformation is finally complete.