Falcons Fans Have Lots to Cheer About

Let the Fal­cons Fans look back at what appeared to be yet another dis­mal Atlanta Fal­cons foot­ball season.

Sure, the Fal­cons had their share of ups and downs through­out the sea­son. It started out with a pre-season that imme­di­ately drew atten­tion to a porous secondary.

Those wor­ries abated when the Birds flew out of the gate with a 4–1 record includ­ing last minute hero­ics to beat the Chicago Bears. Their was plenty of hope, enthu­si­asm and even unwar­ranted high expectations.

Then the Fal­cons for­tunes seemed to take a turn for the worse. A Fal­cons team that prides itself on defense got shred­ded two weeks in a row. The Dal­las Cow­boys who up to that point was hav­ing their own prob­lems scor­ing dom­i­nated the Dirty Birds 37–21. Clearly, there were big holes in the Falcon’s sec­ondary as well as a non exis­tent pass rush and kick­ing game. The vul­ner­a­ble Fal­cons defense along with an incon­sis­tent offense was evi­dent as the Fal­cons lost four of the next five games.

Atlanta took another cou­ple of blows when star run­ning back Jamal Ander­son injured his ankle and Quar­ter­back Matt Ryan was side­lined with turf toe.

All in all it was a tumul­tuous year for the Atlanta Fal­cons, how­ever I believe this time is dif­fer­ent. Upon exam­in­ing all aspects the pos­i­tives inex­tri­ca­bly out­weigh the negatives.

First and fore­most, look­ing at the Falcon’s Sched­ule did any­one think they would really fin­ish with a win­ning record? Remem­ber this is the Fal­cons fran­chise famous for not hav­ing expe­ri­enced back-to-back win­ning sea­sons. After mak­ing the play­offs last year, they arguably had the tough­est sched­ule in the NFL this year.

Matt Ryan showed fur­ther improve­ment fin­ish­ing the sea­son with 22 touch­down passes, the most of his career. Ryan also added another dimen­sion to the Fal­cons with the no hud­dle offense.

Jason Snelling emerged as a for­mi­da­ble back up run­ning back as he bull­dozed ahead for 147 yards in the Fal­cons his­toric vic­tory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The young Fal­cons Defense allowed 20 points or fewer nine times dur­ing this sea­sons foot­ball cam­paign. They fin­ished strong keep­ing the Fal­cons in the game against the offen­sive jug­ger­naut New Orleans Saints. The Fal­cons “D” only gave up a measly twenty points dur­ing their final three games.

Roddy White has proven he is one of the elite receivers in the game, mak­ing us ask the ques­tion why wasn’t he named an All-Pro?  Mean­while Tony Gon­za­lez pro­claimed there’s still more left in the tank and was a con­stant red zone threat.

Although it may have been a dis­ap­point­ing sea­son because the Fal­cons missed the play­offs, there is plenty of upside. The Atlanta Fal­cons are a young  and cohe­sive team. Under the direc­tion of Gen­eral Man­ager Thomas Dim­itroff the never say die Fal­cons won their last three games. Not only that, the Atlanta Fal­cons fin­ished with back-to-back win­ning sea­sons for the first time in their 44 year fran­chise his­tory. That was the longest run in major league sports, the curse has been lifted.

So Fal­cons Fans, you really do have a lot to cheer about, it’s called a future!

Falcons Fall Short in Nail Biter

The Atlanta Fal­cons ral­lied from a 14 point 4th quar­ter deficit. All in all it wasn’t enough as the Fal­cons lost a close one in over­time 34–31 to the New York Giants.

The Good:

Matt Ryan gave it every­thing he had and all-pro tight end Tony Gon­za­lez grabbed a clutch touch­down pass with 28 sec­onds left in the game to help tie the score a 31 all. Jason Snelling had a solid game fill­ing in for Michael Turner while rush­ing for 76 yards and two TD’s.

The Bad:

Jason Elam missed another easy field goal. Remem­ber he missed one last week in the fourth quar­ter that would have given the Fal­cons the lead.

The Ugly:

Fal­cons defense was awful again allow­ing a whop­ping 456 total yards. The Fal­cons D let the Giants con­vert over 50% of the time on third down. The pass defense clearly needs to be revamped although the poor pass rush didn’t help any.

The Fal­cons have lost four of the last five but there is hope. The Atlanta Fal­cons Sched­ule gets a lit­tle eas­ier the rest of the sea­son and they face off against Tampa Bay next week. Matt Ryan and the Fal­cons offense can be proud of what they accom­plished, over­com­ing a four­teen point fourth quar­ter deficit at the Meadowlands.

Falcons Roll Past Redskins

Michael Turner led the Atlanta Fal­cons over the Wash­ing­ton Red­skins 31–17 at the Geor­gia Dome today.

Fal­cons went into half­time with a com­fort­able 24–3 lead. Fal­cons got off to an early start when quater­back Matt Ryan con­nected with future Hall of Fame tight end Tony Gonzalez.

Later in the sec­ond quar­ter Michael Turner added a 30 yard scam­per. This helped the Atlanta Fal­cons as they went into half­time with a com­fort­able 24–3 lead.

The Red­skins came out of half­time strong shut­ting down the Fal­cons offense while scor­ing touch­downs in the 3rd and 4th quarters.

Clearly the momen­tum of the game had changed as the Wash­ing­ton Red­skins nar­rowed the lead 24–17.

Then Michael Turner lit­er­ally took con­trol of the game with his pow­er­ful run­ning. With 11:23 left in the fourth quar­ter Michael Turner took the hand­off, broke a LaRon Landry tackle and ran through Dean­gelo Hall like he wasn’t even there. Turner rolled 58 yards for his sec­ond touch­down of the game.

It was ironic that DeAn­gelo Hall’s inabil­ity to tackle Turner led to touch­down that put the game away after pub­licly ridi­cul­ing the Atlanta Fal­cons all week.

Turner looked liked the run­ning back he was last year when he fin­ished sec­ond in the NFL rush­ing for 1699 yards. It was the sec­ond week in a row that Michael Turner ran for more than 150 yards. Turner fin­ished with 168 yards with two rush­ing touchdowns.

Mean­while the Fal­cons broke a two game los­ing streak improv­ing their record to 5–3. Next week they go to Car­olina to face their divi­sion rivals, the Panthers.

Atlanta Fal­cons vs. Car­olina Pan­thers tick­ets for sale here!

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