The curse of Super Bowl 51
ATLANTA, Ga. (BVM) — 28-3. You could sum up most of the Atlanta Falcons failures in recent years to that sequence of numbers. The failures have become so egregious that the Falcons have fired the head coach and general manager that were responsible for getting them to that Super Bowl. It was not surprising though, as the Falcons have started the 2020 NFL season 0-5.
28-3. If you looked at the 2020 Falcons team in a vacuum, it would be hard to understand how the Falcons have started the season off so poorly. They have a former MVP at quarterback, a top-three wide receiver, an experienced offensive line and talented players on the defense. So what went wrong?
28-3. What went wrong for the Falcons is the same thing that went wrong for them in Super Bowl 51. They couldn’t hold onto a lead.
28-3. After falling to Seattle week one, the Falcons had a chance to bounce back the following week against Dallas. It seemed at first the Falcons would bounce back nicely; they held a 15-point lead with only four minutes left in the game. It would take a monumental collapse by the Falcons for them to blow the game. Thankfully for Dallas, Atlanta knew just how to do that.
28-3. After some terrible drives by the Falcons and a couple of touchdowns by Dallas, the Falcons once insurmountable 15-point lead had shrunk down to just two. All was not lost for the Falcons, as they just had to recover an onside kick and they would win the game. Instead, the Falcons decided to just watch the football as it traveled the ten yards it needed to and Dallas recovered the football.
28-3. To the surprise of no one, especially Falcons fans, Dallas would kick a field goal to win the game. While the loss was heartbreaking, an 0-2 start is nothing you can’t recover from in the long NFL season. The Falcons would just need to make sure they won the next week against Chicago.
28-3. Same story, different opponent. The Falcons once again held a double digit lead in the fourth quarter, only to blow it. You could see it coming from a mile away; Nick Foles looked like Patrick Mahomes, the Falcons defense couldn’t buy a stop and the playcalling once again was atrocious. The Falcons deserved to lose that game and they did.
28-3. The Falcons would follow up those devastating defeats with lackluster performances against Green Bay and Carolina, leading us to the mess we have now.
28-3. If this were the Premier league, the Falcons would have found themselves relegated to a lower division. Unfortunately for Falcons fans, this is not the case and the Falcons will have to finish out this already miserable 2020 campaign. It would not be surprising to see franchise cornerstones Julio Jones and Matt Ryan traded at some point this season, as it seems the only solution right now is to blow it up.
28-3. Will the Falcons blow it up? Only owner Arthur Blank has the answer to that question. The way this season has played out so far, a top-2 pick in the draft seems likely. The Falcons could commence the tank and draft either Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields, two Georgia boys who could reinvigorate hope into Falcons fans who have been hurt so much already. It is a hard sell for any team to try and lose, but the window has definitely closed for this Falcons team.
It’s not hard to pinpoint where things started to go wrong for this Falcons team and there is no better way to describe the Falcons these past four years than these two numbers. 28-3.
