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As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > December > 22
Monday, December 22, 2008
Falcons in Super Bowl not so farfetched
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For 32 years they were words never spoken as a statement of fact, and even now they’ve been uttered just once. But it’s not inconceivable that we could hear them again come Jan. 18, 2009:
“The Falcons are going to the Super Bowl.”
The announcer who delivered that famous radio call on the afternoon of Jan. 17, 1999, believes the improbable could happen again. “Back then, it seemed so preposterous,” said Jeff Hullinger, then the Falcons’ play-by-play voice and now the morning newscaster on B-98.5 and the afternoon man on WSB. “Now that it’s been done, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible. They’ve shattered the myth.”
That’s true. We can never again say the Falcons can’t reach the Super Bowl because history tells us they advanced to Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami. (So, alas, do the court documents in the Eugene Robinson case.) Super Bowl XLIII will likewise be in Florida — Tampa, to be precise. And that season reached a crest in the Metrodome, conveniently the site of Sunday’s playoff-clinching victory.
“It’s easy to see the parallels,” Hullinger said. “Minneapolis occupies a special place in Falcons lore — there was the NFC championship game [of 1999], and the Michael Vick game [of 2002, when the quarterback ran 46 yards for the winning touchdown in overtime; Hullinger called that game, too]. And now this game. That place holds a watershed status.”
In 1998, a lot of folks didn’t take the Falcons seriously until November. “Not until they won in Foxborough [against New England] and [tight end] O.J. Santiago had that really big game,” Hullinger said. “If anything, people have gotten around to believing in this team a little faster.”
Still, there are varying shades of belief. For three months the 2008 Falcons were viewed as a feel-good story. Now you look on this team, which hasn’t lost consecutive games and hasn’t been beaten by more than 15 points and has held its own in the NFL’s toughest division, and you’re beginning to ask: Well, why not the Birds?
They’ve already beaten Carolina and Minnesota and Tampa Bay. They’d surely have a chance against Arizona, which just lost by 40 points in New England. And there’s no reason to think that toppling the NFC’s No. 1 seed would be any more difficult than it was to upend the 15-1 Vikings 10 years ago.
Said Hullinger: “Don’t you think they’re capable of beating the Giants?”
Well, yes. A team as sound as the Falcons — possessed of a strong running game and a heady quarterback and a defense that keeps making big plays — would have a shot against anybody anywhere. And, owing to Carolina’s loss in the Meadowlands on Sunday night, it’s possible the Falcons will finish as division champs, which would buy them the No. 2 seed. Which is what they were in 1998.
As Jessie Tuggle, an integral part of the Super Bowl run, said last week: “When you get in the playoffs, anything can happen. Why couldn’t this team do it?”
Four months ago these Falcons were 150-1 to win the Super Bowl, the longest shot on the board. They’re now listed at 16-1. The wind is at their backs. Not only are they winning, but a slew of other contenders are losing.
Once we’d have laughed ourselves silly at the thought of hearing those eight words — “The Falcons are going to the Super Bowl!” — anytime soon, but there should be no laughter today. It could happen. It really could.
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Bradley’s Buzz: All hail the men of Smitty!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A great story and a pretty fair coach
Who saw this coming? Nobody. That’s why the Falcons’ rise to the playoffs is, as Don Banks of SI.com proclaims, “simply astounding.” And that’s why, according to Pat Yasinskas of ESPN.com, Mike Smith is the NFL’s coach of the year.
And here, from Sporting News Today, is a word you don’t often see applied to the Falcons — dynasty. Clifton Brown — or at least Clifton Brown’s headline writer — invokes it. (Many thanks to Baracked The Vote! for the tip.)
Also on SI.com, former colleague Steve Aschburner provides five things that were learned from Sunday’s game. Four of them have to do with the Vikings — Steve lives in the Twin Cities, you should know — but Lesson No. 2 involves a “feel-good story,” and that one has nothing to do with the Vikes.
I’ve hesitated to link to anything Bill Simmons writes for ESPN.com because I don’t much like sports writing weighed down by a ton of pop-culture references. But I offer this Simmons-ism because he ranks the Falcons the NFL’s sixth-best team, and he did this even before they’d won in Minnesota. So read the paragraph that concerns the Birds and skip the next eight paragraphs, which are devoted to Christmas gifts for guys.
And here, from Corey Dade of the Wall Street Journal, is a Q & A with Arthur M. Blank. You’ll be shocked to learn that AMB much prefers this season to last.
Breaking down the Hawks
Here’s a instructive take from Charley Rosen of Foxsports.com. Rosen, who used to coach basketball and has long been one of the keenest analysts around, breaks down the Hawks’ narrow loss to the Celtics and has loads of insights on the local club. To wit: Josh Smith always backpedals on defense because he’s looking to block a shot, and Mike Bibby almost never goes to the basket.
Rosen pays compliments, too. (Lots of them, actually.) And his final assessment is that the Hawks are a dangerous team but probably are two years from being a bona fide title contender. Which sounds about right.
The one observation that doesn’t ring true is Rosen’s assessment of Marvin Williams being by far the most athletic Hawk. Do you think maybe he meant Josh Smith?
Who wants to mess with Tex?
As Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports writes, the Angels just followed Boston’s lead and withdrew from the Mark Teixeira auction. And here we pause to note that the Angels and the Red Sox are two of the richest teams in the sport. Which tells us something about Scott Boras and his asking price, and which makes those hopes of last winter — that Tex would take a hometown discount to re-up with the Braves — seem positively quaint.
Required reading for all college football fans
Know how some writers — this one, for example — keep saying there will never be a true college football playoff because the bowls are too rich and too powerful? Here’s a terrific story from Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports on just how rich and how powerful they truly are.
The Real Deal or a real steal?
According to Chris Mannix of SI.com, Evander Holyfield was jobbed out of a decision against the hulking Nikolai Valuev in Zurich on Saturday. I wish I could work up a case of righteous indignation over this, but I just can’t. I figure any 46-year-old former champion who has to go to Zurich to fight a 7-foot Russian is leaving himself open for just about anything.
Here I go again, writing about Kentucky basketball
There are those out there who just wait for the moment when I mention “Kentucky” and “basketball” so they can throw up their hands and shout, “See? He’s doing it again!”
For the record, I was born in Kentucky and graduated from UK and worked at the Lexington Herald-Leader covering, among other things, Kentucky basketball. Also for the record, I haven’t written a word about Big Blue hoops in more than a calendar year, for the simple reason that Billy Gillispie has turned Kentucky into a program barely worthy of comment.
That said, I’d be derelict in my Buzz duties if I didn’t point out that Jodie Meeks, a junior guard from Norcross, scored 46 points for Kentucky against Appalachian State on Saturday. It was the highest total by any Wildcat since 1970, and here, from the aforementioned Herald-Leader, is Mark Maloney’s game story. And here’s a column by John Clay.
And how, you’re asking, is the guy who was pushed aside to make room for the overmatched Gillispie doing? Tubby Smith’s Minnesota Golden Gophers are 10-0, having just beaten Louisville, which is coached by Rick Pitino, who was Smith’s predecessor at UK. Here’s Myron P. Medcalf of the Minnesota Star-Tribune on Tubby’s latest triumph. And here’s the famous Andy Katz of ESPN.com proclaiming Minnesota his team of the week.
(Found a Buzz-worthy link? E-mail me at mbra14@gmail.com. Much appreciation and an online shout-out could be yours.)
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