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Good, not great


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As fans, it is easy to be myopic about our team, and this board has a lot of fans to be sure...

  • "Falcons are winning it all this year"
  • "Falcons will have the best offense in the NFL this year"
  • "Falcons will have a top 5 defense this year"
  • "Beasley and Takk are going to ball out in 2019"
  • "Falcons have the (second) best front office in the NFL" (current thread)
  • Etc., etc.

The truth is, every fanbase thinks their team, their QB, their... whatever is the best in the NFL or will be the best this year, but of course this cannot be true for every team.

The ultimate measure of greatness is winning, making the playoffs and winning the Super Bowl.  By these standards, the Falcons have been good, but not great over the Dimitroff era.

Playoff appearances:

Since the 2008-2009 season, 30 of the 32 teams in the NFL have made the playoffs at least once.  Cleveland and Tampa Bay are the exceptions.

  • One team has made the playoffs ten times (New England).
  • Four teams have made the playoffs seven times (Seattle, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Green Bay).
  • Atlanta is in a group of six teams that made the playoffs six times (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Kansas City).

Super Bowl appearances/wins:

  • One team has been in the Super Bowl five times in this period (New England).  They won 3 times.
  • Three teams have been in the Super Bowl two times (Seattle, Pittsburgh and Denver) and won it once.
  • During this period, five teams have won the Super Bowl in their only appearance (New Orleans, Green Bay, New York Giants, Baltimore and Philadelphia).
  • Atlanta is in a group that went once in this time frame, but lost (Atlanta, Arizona, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Carolina and Los Angeles Rams).

Some takeaways:

  • Love 'em or hate 'em, New England has been the class of the NFL over this 11 year period.
  • Without a Super Bowl victory (which you can say we should have had), you can't rank us above the teams that do have one during this period.  That puts us in the 11-16 range overall.  That's good, but not great.
  • If we could go to the Super Bowl this year AND win it, we would jump to the top 2-5 range (with Seattle, Pittsburgh and Denver).
  • Dallas can't talk **** to us.

 

 

 

 

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There’s a lot of teams doing worse than the Falcons in this league.

You forgot one thing teams need a bit of luck and good fortune to help them be successful.Some put themselves in better spots than others for sure.

Falcons outside of this decade let’s be honest have been garbage you can’t sugar coat it any other way.Outside of the last decade on a consistency basis the Falcons were a team that made up the numbers.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed over the mentioned era is we have won back some of that being spoken about as being a legit franchise across the board.

We aren’t easy beats and with the team we have now expectations have risen.I been on this team since 80-81 season and in the outside given time I can’t say I’ve looked foward to every football season like I have the last decade.

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8 hours ago, kiwifalcon said:

There’s a lot of teams doing worse than the Falcons in this league.

You forgot one thing teams need a bit of luck and good fortune to help them be successful.Some put themselves in better spots than others for sure.

Falcons outside of this decade let’s be honest have been garbage you can’t sugar coat it any other way.Outside of the last decade on a consistency basis the Falcons were a team that made up the numbers.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed over the mentioned era is we have won back some of that being spoken about as being a legit franchise across the board.

We aren’t easy beats and with the team we have now expectations have risen.I been on this team since 80-81 season and in the outside given time I can’t say I’ve looked foward to every football season like I have the last decade.

I agree with you 100%. That's what I mean by "good, not great".  

We all want a little more, but we are definitely in the top half of the league, maybe in the top 10 over this period.

It's OK to want a little more.  I hope the team wants it as bad as we all do.

 

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Agree, the Falcons are not great, but they've managed to become pretty solidly entrenched in the good category now for a number of years. As one who has been watching since 1966, there have almost never been better times to be a Falcon fan than these ~ and the next three or four seasons could see this team take that last step up to greatness.

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13 hours ago, Tmodel66 said:

As fans, it is easy to be myopic about our team, and this board has a lot of fans to be sure...

  • "Falcons are winning it all this year"
  • "Falcons will have the best offense in the NFL this year"
  • "Falcons will have a top 5 defense this year"
  • "Beasley and Takk are going to ball out in 2019"
  • "Falcons have the (second) best front office in the NFL" (current thread)
  • Etc., etc.

The truth is, every fanbase thinks their team, their QB, their... whatever is the best in the NFL or will be the best this year, but of course this cannot be true for every team.

The ultimate measure of greatness is winning, making the playoffs and winning the Super Bowl.  By these standards, the Falcons have been good, but not great over the Dimitroff era.

Playoff appearances:

Since the 2008-2009 season, 30 of the 32 teams in the NFL have made the playoffs at least once.  Cleveland and Tampa Bay are the exceptions.

  • One team has made the playoffs ten times (New England).
  • Four teams have made the playoffs seven times (Seattle, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Green Bay).
  • Atlanta is in a group of six teams that made the playoffs six times (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Kansas City).

Super Bowl appearances/wins:

  • One team has been in the Super Bowl five times in this period (New England).  They won 3 times.
  • Three teams have been in the Super Bowl two times (Seattle, Pittsburgh and Denver) and won it once.
  • During this period, five teams have won the Super Bowl in their only appearance (New Orleans, Green Bay, New York Giants, Baltimore and Philadelphia).
  • Atlanta is in a group that went once in this time frame, but lost (Atlanta, Arizona, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Carolina and Los Angeles Rams).

Some takeaways:

  • Love 'em or hate 'em, New England has been the class of the NFL over this 11 year period.
  • Without a Super Bowl victory (which you can say we should have had), you can't rank us above the teams that do have one during this period.  That puts us in the 11-16 range overall.  That's good, but not great.
  • If we could go to the Super Bowl this year AND win it, we would jump to the top 2-5 range (with Seattle, Pittsburgh and Denver).
  • Dallas can't talk **** to us.

 

 

 

 

Totally agree....and our window for Lombardi is closing.

Ryan/Julio better get it done soon! 

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3 hours ago, Tmodel66 said:

I agree with you 100%. That's what I mean by "good, not great".  

We all want a little more, but we are definitely in the top half of the league, maybe in the top 10 over this period.

It's OK to want a little more.  I hope the team wants it as bad as we all do.

 

I’d say a bit better than good being relevant and turning the franchise into a contender in less than 10 years is better than good.If you have a look at the other teams round us in 2008 draft I think we are doing a lot better.

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13 hours ago, kiwifalcon said:

There’s a lot of teams doing worse than the Falcons in this league.

You forgot one thing teams need a bit of luck and good fortune to help them be successful.Some put themselves in better spots than others for sure.

Falcons outside of this decade let’s be honest have been garbage you can’t sugar coat it any other way.Outside of the last decade on a consistency basis the Falcons were a team that made up the numbers.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed over the mentioned era is we have won back some of that being spoken about as being a legit franchise across the board.

We aren’t easy beats and with the team we have now expectations have risen.I been on this team since 80-81 season and in the outside given time I can’t say I’ve looked foward to every football season like I have the last decade.

The Falcons have been pretty good since 1998. From 1998-2008 they had a super bowl appearance and a NFC championship appearance in 2004. 

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1 hour ago, mattyicefalcon said:

Totally agree....and our window for Lombardi is closing.

Ryan/Julio better get it done soon! 

the Falcons window will be open for at least the next 5 years. I am sure we will have a couple of bad years in there where we have to deal with turnover, injuries etc but as long as we have Matt Ryan the window is open.

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23 minutes ago, kiwifalcon said:

I’d say a bit better than good being relevant and turning the franchise into a contender in less than 10 years is better than good.If you have a look at the other teams round us in 2008 draft I think we are doing a lot better.

2008 was the beginning of a major turnaround, which got us to the Super Bowl by 2016, but greatness will be showing that the ending of Super Bowl LI was just a bump in the road and not our high water mark.  

 

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8 hours ago, Falcons Fan MVP said:

The Falcons have been pretty good since 1998. From 1998-2008 they had a super bowl appearance and a NFC championship appearance in 2004. 

I gotta disagree they turned the corner when TD and MS were hired and taking Matt Ryan are 3 indicators for me which turned this franchise round.

98 felt like a fluke too me because one injury Jamaal Andersen and the season was done the very next year.

Again outside of a couple of decent years with Vick we were still a shot in the dark franchise no real consistency.

2008 on man is the years this franchise came of age in my eyes the rest of it were like a few rays of sunshine but mostly darkness.

Its why TD and co get so much crap because they have risen expectations that never existed before.

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