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NEW YORK — Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan was quizzed by many teams in the weeks leading to Saturday's NFL draft. No team wants to make a mistake when selecting a franchise quarterback, but no team in this draft could less afford an error this year, at that position, than the Atlanta Falcons.

It was a year ago at the draft where Michael Vick publicly professed he was not involved in a dogfighting operation police had discovered at his Virginia home days earlier.

Neither Vick, nor the Atlanta Falcons' owner, Arthur Blank, could imagine the nightmare that was about to engulf them. Maybe that was why Blank was the only owner to meet with Ryan.

Vick is in prison, and on Saturday, minutes into this year's draft, Blank's team took the final step toward ending the Vick era, and a year they would rather forget.

With the third pick, the Falcons passed up the best player available and one they had considered until the final days, LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey, and instead went for Ryan, the one player who can most quickly put a new face on the franchise.

A month ago, Blank held open the possibility that Vick could return to the Falcons after he finished serving his sentence. With the selection of Ryan, though, Vick's chance to regain his job appeared to end.

A few days ago, one draft analyst said he was not sure if Ryan was better than Brady Quinn, the former Notre Dame quarterback who last year slipped to the 22nd spot before the Cleveland Browns took him.

But for Atlanta, that may be just fine. If Ryan, like Quinn, does not have the strongest arm or the quickest feet, he does share something else with Quinn: a clean background.

The only other quarterback selected in the first round was Joe Flacco of Delaware. The Baltimore Ravens, who had earlier traded out of the eighth pick, traded back up to the 18th pick to take Flacco.

That was surprisingly high for Flacco, who was projected to go later in the first round or early in the second along with other quarterbacks like Brian Brohm, who was selected by Green Bay with the 56th overall pick, and Chad Henne, who went to Miami with the next pick.

But the Ravens, whose starting quarterback, Steve McNair, retired, need a starter for the next decade as badly as the Falcons do and Flacco had the strongest arm in the draft.

Flacco's stock had risen so rapidly this off-season that only two weeks ago, his father said an ideal situation would be for Flacco to find a family he could live with, because his son does not know how to do laundry or cook.

Flacco's selection was the only real surprise of the 3 1/2-hour first round, which had a run on offensive tackles (eight taken) but no receivers chosen. None of the top prospects slipped down the draft board, an awkward occurrence in recent years.

After the Miami Dolphins' selection of offensive tackle Jake Long with the first overall pick was made official, the St. Louis Rams took defensive end Chris Long, the son of Hall of Famer Howie Long. Dorsey, dogged by concerns about leg injuries — the Falcons were concerned about the medical reports, one of the factors that tipped their decision to Ryan — went to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The New England Patriots, whose every mention was greeted with boos from Jets fans at Radio City Music Hall, traded out of the seventh spot — the first of eight trades in the first round.

The Patriots, whose defense has struggled to stop the run and in the Super Bowl struggled to pressure Eli Manning, later selected linebacker Jerod Mayo, bringing youth and speed to the league's oldest linebacking corps.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick said the uncertainty about Junior Seau's future did not contribute to the decision to draft Mayo, although he seems very likely to play Seau's position. Belichick rarely drafts linebackers in the first round because his defenses are so hard to learn.

But when Mayo visited the Patriots, they reviewed several plays and adjustments, then had Mayo redraw the plays for them.

TEMPE — The Arizona Cardinals fielded offers to move up or down in the first round of the NFL draft on Saturday.

They decided to stay right where they were — at No. 16 overall, where they selected Tennessee State cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie.

"We had calls from people above us and calls from people behind us, and we weighed all of that," general manager Rod Graves said. "But we just felt like Dominique was certainly better than the options, and we felt good about making the selection."

The club expects Rodgers-Cromartie to beef up a pass defense that ranked 28th in the NFL a year ago.

The Cardinals think so highly of Rodgers-Cromartie that they compared him to former Pro Bowler Aeneas Williams in the first sentence of the press release announcing his selection.

They hope it's an apt comparison. Like Rodgers-Cromartie, Williams was a small-school product, selected out of Southern by the Cardinals in the 1991 third round.