Down South football has a different flavor — and it takes getting used to
In the aftermath of the Falcons’ 30-0 blowout loss Sunday to the Carolina Panthers, my mind didn’t shift.
Bad loss, yes. End of the season, no.
Throw in the towel, not at all.
For me, there’s no rooting interest for the Falcons — or any other team, really. Being in the media strips that fandom away, for the most part.
It’s all about the story.
Then, there’s growing up watching the Detroit Lions. That has its long-term effects, too.
My mind no longer processes in terms of winning and losing — it’s about whether it’s a good game or not, and what teams need to do to win.
No question, the Falcons didn’t do very many winning things Sunday. So, when the fan mail from readers about my quick takeaways started flowing in, my mind went back to my years in Detroit.
There’s a city full of long-suffering Lions fans who have been starved for a winning team for a generation.
Remember 1957? Neither do I. That’s the last time the Lions won a championship. That’s 68 years — when it was the NFL championship.
No, not the Super Bowl. The Lions have never been to one of those.
The Falcons have been to two. Do you know what even the most casual Lions fan would do to say their team has been to one Super Bowl.
I know ... the Falcons didn’t win either of those two — and one of those is a heartbreaking come-from-ahead loss to the Patriots. The numbers 28-3 are burned into most Falcons fans consciousness.
Been there.
Remember that 0-16 season? Lions.
Have you heard of “completing the process” before? That’s the Lions. Calvin Johnson. 2010. Bears.
Have the Falcons lost on a last-second 66-yard field goal?
What about a Hail Mary to the Packers?
A controversial play that wasn’t reviewed when it should’ve been?
Those are the easy ones to remember. There are countless more gut-wrenching Lions losses that have become the norm. So this is nothing new.
“How else can they lose?” many Detroit fans have asked over the years.
And somehow, the Lions seemed to find a new way — seemingly, every week.
Down South now
Football is different here.
Before moving here, there was the talk that football is different in Georgia. That became more apparent when I was flipping through the channels and came across a half-hour local highlights show.
Not unprecedented, but not really a weekly occurrence in Michigan.
But then there was the Buford-Milton high school matchup on ESPN.
High school?
Then, there was The Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece on Buford’s $62 million stadium.
For a high school?
When I covered high school football in Detroit, sometimes there were dozens of fans in the stands. That doesn’t mean the quality of football was any less than it is in Georgia, but the care factor may have been.
There are plenty of those kids who were five-star prospects, and many of those made it to the NFL.
Saturdays were always bigger.
Michigan and Michigan State are the college football staples, but the amount of love for Georgia and Georgia Tech here might give them a run for their money.
There’s nothing quite like Michigan Stadium — the Big House — and a cozy environment with 107,000-plus friends on a Saturday in a crispy, Midwest fall.
Shorts and short sleeves at Sanford Stadium ... in November? We’ll see.
I’m in the South now.
About those Dirty Birds
Remember the Falcons’ quarterback carousel in the 1990s with Billy Joe Tolliver, Chris Miller and others? What about Chris Chandler?
The search for a franchise quarterback isn’t linear — nor is it perfect.
So giving Michael Penix Jr. a fair shot isn’t the end of the world. It’s a small sample size, but he’s had more good games than he’s had bad ones. Despite what my emails from readers might claim, he’s not a wasted pick, he’s not a flop, and he’s more likely a good QB than a career backup.
He needs games, time and reps, and all those games aren’t going to be wins. Six games isn’t enough time to make any sweeping declarations about anybody. Time is on Penix’s side, but he’s green like one of my mother’s garden tomatoes, and he’ll need more.
He needs receivers — the same way that a certain Lions quarterback named Matthew Stafford needed a wunderkind receiver named Johnson.
The Lions have struggled for so long, but some of their most exciting years until recently had a decidedly Georgia connection to them: Stafford from UGA and Johnson from Tech.
And even they needed time.
About the Author
Rod Beard is the Senior Sports Editor for pro sports at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joining the team after 20-plus years at The Detroit News, where he was a beat writer for the Pistons for seven years, after five years covering the Michigan men's basketball team.
