As much as it can be said that any team “deserves” to win the worst division ever, the Falcons deserve to win the NFC South. This is almost akin to being the world’s fastest sloth — even if you are, what’s the point? — except that there’s actually a point to being the champ of a division that cannot see its winner have a winning season.
No matter its record, a division winner plays host to a postseason game. The NFL’s only division champ with a losing record was Seattle, which won the NFC West at 7-9 in 2010. That was Pete Carroll’s first season, long before Russell Wilson arrived, but the Seahawks showed the power inherent in a home playoff game. After finishing the regular season with four losses in six games, they scored 41 points against the Saints in Round 1 and got to play again. True, they lost in Chicago the next week. Still, they weren’t one-and-be-done-with-you.
A stipulation: The Falcons aren’t very good. An observation: They’re better than they were. They lost five of their first seven games on (de)merit. In plunging to 2-5, the Falcons lost by 14, 13, 10, 14 and 22 points. Of their first five conquerors, only two are above .500 today, and only one (Cincinnati) is positioned to make the playoffs. Back then, the Falcons weren’t just losing; they were losing badly to not-very-good opposition.
The season should have changed with the trip to London, but the Falcons flew home having lost the un-loseable game. They would lose another 28 days later. On Monday night, they were all but snowblown off the frozen tundra in the first half by Green Bay; they wound up giving themselves a real chance to win a road game against the NFL’s hottest team on a cold night when they trailed 31-7.
With better clock management/coaching against the Lions in Wembley and the Browns in the Dome, and with a slightly better first half at Lambeau Field, the Falcons could easily have won six in a row. That would have made them 8-5, as opposed to 5-8, and would have all but clinched the division. As it is, Football Outsiders still projects New Orleans as the favorite to win the NFC South, as if a division so lousy warrants having a favorite, but the Saints look far worse than the Falcons.
New Orleans has the softer closing schedule — they play at Chicago and at Tampa Bay, with the Falcons visiting the Superdome in between — but is 1-4 over their past four games with the four losses coming at home. Some still see Carolina, which won 41-10 in New Orleans on Sunday, as a threat, but that was the Panthers’ first victory since Oct. 5, and it came before Cam Newton suffered two fractures in his lower back in a car accident Tuesday.
In a division where nobody has played well, the Falcons are playing the least-worst. Even the maladroit Mike Smith didn’t get in the way of the rally that had chortling Cheeseheads sweating through their anoraks Monday night. Two months ago, the Falcons couldn’t have staged such a finish. But the offensive line has — hip, hip, hooray! — gotten a bit better and the running game has ticked upward, and Julio Jones has managed more receiving yards in the past two games (448) than in the preceding five (428).
We say yet again: This is essentially a two-man team, but the two men are exceptional. When Matt Ryan is throwing well and Jones is running free, the Falcons are dangerous. (“Matt got hot,” was the explanation offered by Aaron Rodgers, the best in the business, for Monday’s second half.) They’re dangerous enough that they might — might, I said — be able to outscore their worst-in-the-league defense, which induced one punt and no turnovers en route to yielding 43 points and 502 yards at Lambeau.
On a wee-hours drive back to Milwaukee, two AJC correspondents were amused by the carping on the Packers postgame show. The way Julio Jones embarrassed our defense, went the callers’ lament, doesn’t augur well for the playoffs. Not that the Cheese Crew necessarily expects to see the Falcons again. But it might. As flawed as this team is, it’s the best of a historically bad lot.
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