There is life after death.
Just look at the Falcons, a team that was unceremoniously buried by fans, "pundits" and even their own quarterback and head coach last year, only to rise from the graveyard of gridiron ignominy here in 2008.
The Falcons are 4-2, and locked in a three-way battle for first place in the tough NFC South, following their somewhat miraculous 22-20 win over the Bears Sunday.
Atlanta has already matched its win total from all of 2007 and stands, today, as the story of the 2008 season.
The Falcons were an utter laughingstock less than a year ago. The organization was humiliated by its face-of-the-franchise quarterback when Michael Vick was toppled by a so-bizarre-you-couldn't-make-it-up dog fighting scandal. Then the club was abandoned mid-season by a turn-coat college coach who found he couldn't cut it in the pros, so he cut out.
Today they're a legitimate threat to win the division and maybe even make some noise in the playoffs. More importantly, the Falcons appear to have the building blocks in place to be a contender beyond 2008.
There's a lot of football still to play. And Atlanta has yet to beat a team that currently boasts a winning record. They were also handled pretty well in their two losses, by division rivals Tampa Bay and Carolina.
But to say that we didn't see 4-2 coming is an understatement. Nobody saw 4-2 coming, including you.
There are five members of the Atlanta medical staff largely responsible for kickstarting the heart of an organization left for dead 10 months ago (we mentioned four in our original version of the story, but kind of left out the GM who looks like he made all the right moves in the off-season).
Arthur Blank – The Atlanta owner looked so lost and ineffective last year we thought a career in politics might be in his future. Vick, a player Blank reportedly treated as a son, stabbed Blank in the back with his legal troubles. Then Bobby Petrino, the college head coach who Blank gave a shot at the big time, simply up and quit in the middle of the season, leaving the team to play out the season without a top coach or top QB.
The colossal personnel disasters gave critics plenty of reason to question Blank's leadership. But the sudden change in fortunes in Atlanta also starts at the top. And, in this case, Blank deserves plenty of credit because he not only stopped the bleeding, he's nursed the team back to health. He did it in the face of intense pressure last year, when the organization seemed to collapse from underneath him.
Matt Ryan – Speaking of pressure, the title of savior always comes with a little. But Ryan seemed to face a perfect storm of over-zealous expectations with too few resources: the No. 1 draft pick from a relatively poor class of QBs joined a bad team with a new coach. It seemed like an impossible situation in which to win quickly. Best case, the Falcons would start to look good in 2009 or 2010.
But, at this point in the season, Ryan has performed as well as anyone could expect – and maybe as well as any rookie in recent memory.
On a day in which the Atlanta running game was checked by the Bears (30 attempts, 75 yards), Ryan carried the team, completing a cruelly efficient and very un-rookie like 22 of 30 (73.3%) for 301 yards, 10.0 YPA, 1 TD, 0 INT and a 116.1 passer rating.
To put those 301 yards into perspective, consider that Vick produced just two 300-yard passing days in his entire six-year career (306 vs. Tampa in 2005 and 337 vs. Detroit in 2002). Ryan has already chalked up one 300-yard performance in his sixth NFL game.
The win over the Bears was also the third time in those six games that Ryan has averaged better than 10.0 YPA. Vick topped 10.0 YPA just seven times in his career. Ryan is on pace to match that mark as a rookie. He's hardly been consistent, but consistent excellent is rare from veteran QBs, let alone rookies.
More importantly, Cold, Hard Football Facts readers know that winning in the NFL is directly related to your ability to pass the ball well. The Falcons themselves stand as proof: the best team in franchise history, the NFC champion 1998 Falcons, was also the best passing team in history.
The very early indications are that Ryan gives the Falcons a chance to be a good passing team for years to come.
Thomas Dimitroff – Blank first stemmed the bleeding when he named Dimitroff, previously a personnel executive with the Patriots, the team's general manager back in January. It was Dimitroff who grabbed Ryan with the No. 3 overall pick in the draft – despite the fact that NONE of the draft "pundits" thought they'd take a QB. And it was Dimitroff who pulled the trigger on all the big off-season moves, including the acquisition of running back Michael Turner and kicker Jason Elam.
He also picked up key veteran starters in tight end Ben Hartsock and safety Erik Coleman, and drafted a starting left tackle in Sam Baker.
But even bigger and ballsier than the acquisitions was the players Dimitroff unloaded: the Falcons lost some of its most visible players from 2007, including DeAngelo Hall, Alge Crumpler and Warrick Dunn.
For all these moves, the Falcons earned a B grade from the Cold, Hard Football Facts in
our off-season Fillability Index. But it looks like we graded Dimitroff too harshly.
Mike Smith – Atlanta's head coach was an anonymous as his generic name would lead you to believe when he was hired by the Falcons in January. He enjoyed some solid seasons as the defensive coordinator in Jacksonville – and was even an assistant who helped coach the legendary defense of the 2000 Ravens.
But this former CFL linebacker did little to inspire confidence from the Falcons faithful. In fact, most teams like Atlanta, desperate to make a splash in the wake of a devastating season, would have thrown a lot of money and power at Big Name Coach.
In fact, given the PR disaster the franchise suffered when it pulled Petrino out of the college ranks, you probably couldn't have blamed the team if it went with veteran Big Name Coach
Instead, Blank took a chance with a generic model coach, and so far it looks like Smith could develop into a winner.
The Falcons defense – Atlanta is not a great defensive club (though defensive end John Abraham did lead the league with 7 sacks entering the Bears game).
However, Atlanta has proved to be a team that's played very, very efficient team-wide defense, as evidenced by its No. 6 ranking in our Bendability Index entering Week 6. Teams that rank high in Bendability are usually doing a lot of little things right on both sides of the ball, while stepping up defensively in key situations.
The win over the Bears will only improve Atlanta's standing: in the critical moment of the game, perhaps one of the critical moments of Atlanta's season, the Falcons defense twice stuffed Chicago on 3rd and goal and 4th and goal from the 1.
When push came to shove, it was Falcons defense that did most of the shoving.
The clutch defense was yet another sign of the new-found life in Atlanta.
