Atlanta Falcons: 2017 Expectations Something New For Franchise and Fans

The Atlanta Falcons, coming off of the worst Super Bowl collapse in history, open training camp this week. The general expectation for this team is a new feeling for fans.

It still seems too soon. The NFL Network has been airing “the” Super Bowl for days now, and I turn the channel in disgust. There are the occasional foul words for whoever the sad sack is that programs this TV terror. But the Atlanta Falcons are about to open camp for 2017 on Wednesday, and expectations for this team fly high. That is something new.

As a kid in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I’d open every season about this time with my trusty Falcons schedule. I would go through each week and circle games that I thought “we” would win, games that “we” possibly could win, and games that “we” have a “cold day in hell” type of chance of winning. The number usually settled on, for even the most optimistic of outlooks, was 7-9. The more realistic was 5-12, and that is if we could beat teams that were also awful.

Truth be told, my problem today with the Detroit Lions goes back to those days. They were not good. We were not good. And it seemed like we played every year. A perennial powerhouse match-up of 5-12 teams. They had Barry Sanders. They usually won, relegating my beloved Atlanta Falcons to 4-13 rather than a respectable 5-12.

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Those days are over, though. The two biggest hurdles to success in 2017 will be physical and mental health. What I mean by that is it isn’t the traditional things that held Atlanta back: Poor ownership, poor coaches, poor players.

The Atlanta Falcons can match talent and explosiveness, in all three phases of the game, with any team in the National Football League. Arthur Blank is a world-class owner. Dan Quinn is a first class Head Coach.

The question that everyone quietly murmurs is, “are they beyond February?”. In addition, the rigors and brutality that the average NFL season puts on a team invariably means injuries.

Last year it was Desmond Trufant and Jacob Tamme, most notably. The mental and physical health of this team is the question in July.

In spite of this, franchise and fan expectation couldn’t be higher. In doing radio, and writing this column, I’ve yet to come across a fan who doesn’t think Atlanta can, or could, go 10-6. Those are the realistic fans I know who usually are even-keeled.

The optimistic fans are talking Division Titles and Conference Championships. And nobody laughs them off when they espouse wild winning theory. There is a silent nod of possibility.

The national media will pour forth all kinds of aphorisms and axioms about how no team has rebounded from such a cataclysmic collapse. And they will be right.

But one of the hidden stories is that most fans, while still dismayed, shrug and say, “So what? Have you seen this team? Everyone is back.”

That is new. Because in 1991 we would say, and not in a good way, “So what? Everyone is back.” And it meant something completely different.

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