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Monday, November 28, 2005
Players eagerly await next step
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — They answered one question in Detroit: They are not, as was briefly feared, on the road to ruin. This week brings another question, a tougher one: Just where are these Falcons headed?
“This is about a playoff berth, a Super Bowl,” said DeAngelo Hall, the burgeoning cornerback. “We’re good enough to go there. Last year, we thought we lost a game [the NFC championship in Philadelphia] we should have won.”
And this is how it works in the careening world of professional sports. One week you’re wondering if you can beat anybody; the next you’re thinking you can handle everybody. The Falcons went to Detroit and beat a bad team the way you’re supposed to beat a bad team, and now they believe again. They believe they can go to Charlotte and beat a team widely considered the best — not just in their division but in the NFC.
“This is championship football right here — bar none,” Keion Carpenter, the strong safety, said. “In order to get where we want to go, we’ve got to win this game.”
Sure, the Falcons could still make the playoffs if they lose to Carolina, but their offseason vision of themselves — heir to Philadelphia as the NFC’s next great power — would take another hit. These guys carried great expectations into September, and those consecutive home losses to the Bays (Green and Tampa) seemed to serve as a sobering blast of reality. Winning in Charlotte would go a long way toward proving that the Falcons are really and truly better than they’ve played to date.
Toward that end, Detroit was a necessary new beginning. “It was a steppingstone,” Carpenter said. “And now we get the next steppingstone.” Then, giving the Lions the benefit of the doubt: “Anytime you can go out and dominate a good team, it builds your confidence.”
Nothing that has happened, not even the back-to-back losses, has put a dent in the Falcons’ self-assurance. Some of that comes from Jim Mora, who’s a can-do kind of guy, and much of it stems from having the incomparable Michael Vick on the roster. “He’s the best player in the league,” Hall said Monday. And then, just to balance the ol’ ambition scales, Hall announced that his goal is “to be known as one of the best defensive backs ever to play this game.”
This doesn’t sound like a team that will be satisfied with a wild card. This sounds like a team with a greater point to prove. The Falcons gave the football-watching nation a taste of their worth on Thanksgiving, but that was only a taste served up against an opponent so moribund that it just sacked its coach. “I don’t think we answered the question last week,” Hall said. “I think we’ll answer the question this week. … How we play this week should define our season.”
That’s a lot to thrust on any regular-season game, but the Falcons really haven’t had anything approaching a defining win since opening night against Philly. From here on, they’ll play only one lightweight — New Orleans in another Monday-nighter. Everything else will be big-time. The Falcons, it must be noted, don’t appear to be trembling at their mission. They appear to welcome it.
“This is why you play the game,” Carpenter said. “It’s easy to go out and play when you’re 3-13, but players are made in these games right here.”
The Falcons have a slew of gifted players. The guess here is that these players also possess the requisite grit. They can win Sunday. They can take this division. They can go just as far as they did last season, and maybe further still.
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