History Has Spoken: The Falcons' Hot Start Isn't Going to Last
This has been fun, Falcons. Sunday's upset of the Panthers was remarkable. So was Monday Night Pinball against the Saints last week. And Julio Jones is always a treat. You scored 152 points in four games. Yowza! You also allowed 124. Our fantasy cups runneth over.
Now it's time to start being the plain old Falcons again.
The 3-1 Falcons start a two-game road trip to Denver and Seattle on Sunday. It's a brutal two-game stretch. Granted, we said they were facing a brutal three-game stretch before they hosted the Panthers and crushed them. But Jones and Matt Ryan will be facing the Legion of Boom and a Broncos secondary that may be better than the Legion of Boom.
It's a far cry from the budget-friendly Panthers secondary of James Bradberry, Bene Benwikere, Robbie Rookie, Notta Norman and Cameron Capspace.
The tough upcoming schedule is an obvious reason to not buy into the Falcons. It doesn't take a deep statistical dive to find others. The Falcons have four sacks, one of them by cornerback Desmond Trufant on a blitz. Opponents convert 44 percent of their third downs against them. The pre-Panthers opposing schedule of the Buccaneers, Raiders and Saints (15th, 31st and 32nd, respectively, in the NFL in yards per game allowed) suggests the Falcons' offensive stats are a little puffy right now.
But there are other reasons to throw cold water on the Falcons' torrid start. They're the same reasons you had that deja vu feeling when you saw Jones streaking into the end zone Sunday.
The Falcons are notorious fast starters.
Everyone remembers last year: a 6-1 start, 137 points scored in their first four games, wins against opponents that looked pretty tough when the schedule was printed (like the entire NFC East).
Then they finished 8-8, the kind of downturn that is certainly keeping some fans from leaping on the bandwagon this year. But there was nothing unusual about last season from a Falcons point of view. The 2006 Falcons started 3-1 and 5-2, only to finish 7-9. The 2005 Falcons started the season 6-2 but finished 2-6.
Atlanta was great from 2008 to 2012, when, in general, it started and finished strong. But even during the Falcons' time as contenders, there were misleading starts. They started the 2009 season 4-1 before fading to 9-7, due in part to a two-game Ryan injury.
There's no obvious underlying cause to the Falcons' hot starts and eventual fades. Yes, they are a dome team that may run into weather problems later in the season. But they have won plenty of road games in tough environments early (like the Raiders in Week 2 and the Giants-Cowboys road trip last September) and lost lots of dome games late. So perhaps there's a false pattern at work here: Just because the Falcons fooled us a few times doesn't mean they are fooling us now.
Unfortunately, there is another pattern that suggests the Falcons are on a sugar rush, not a Super Bowl run.
Teams that start out like the Falcons generally fade.
Clubs that begin the season averaging more than 30 points per game often go on to great things: the 2013 Broncos (44.8 points per game through four games, won AFC title), 2007 Patriots (37.0, you know how it ended) and 1999 Rams (32.5, Super Bowl victory, Greatest Show on Turf) are among the most memorable examples.
But all of those teams had good defenses to support their unstoppable offenses. Teams that score lots of points, but allow almost as many, generally don't sustain their success for the whole season.
Below is a list, compiled with the wonderful tools at Pro-Football-Reference.com, of all the teams that ever started the season by scoring at least 130 points but also allowing at least 100 points in their first four games. There are many decent teams on the list, but only off-brand Greatest Shows and no 18-and-woes.
- 1981 Chargers: 10-6, lost in second round of the playoffs. The Chargers offense blew our minds back in the days of the Atari 2600. It eventually came face to face with the ultimate nemesis of most offensive juggernauts: cold weather.
- 1999 Redskins: 10-6, lost in second round of the playoffs. Norv Turner's best Redskins team started 3-1 and finished second in the NFL in offense but 30th in defense.
- 2000 Rams: 10-6, lost in first round of the playoffs. This was the Greatest Show on Turf between the two Super Bowl seasons. Losing Kurt Warner for five games hurt. Losing games by 54-34 and 38-35 final scores after a 4-0 start also hurt.
- 2000 Broncos: 11-5, lost in first round of the playoffs. Kyle Shanahan's dad constructed a great offense out of Bob Griese's son (Brian), Christian McCaffrey's dad (Ed) and Terrell Davis' former fullback (Mike Anderson). This is the best all-round team of this bunch, full of Super Bowl holdovers.
- 2002 Bills: 8-8: One of the weakest teams on the list. Thirty-year-old Drew Bledsoe led two victories in overtime shootouts early in the year but endured 54 sacks as the season wore on.
- 2002 Chiefs: 8-8: Dick Vermeil, Priest Holmes, Tony Gonzalez, an offensive line full of Hall of Famers and no defense. This team lost by scores of 37-34, 41-38, 35-34 and 39-32.
- 2008 Chargers: 8-8: Lost in second round of the playoffs. Norv Turner again! This was the Philip Rivers-LaDainian Tomlinson-Antonio Gates-Vincent Jackson monster that kept losing 39-38 and 37-32 games, though they slipped into the playoffs. This bears repeating with the Vikings doing well: Never make Norv Turner a head coach.
- 2008 Broncos: 8-8: A late-era Mike Shanahan team with Jay Cutler at quarterback that lost its final three games by a combined 112-54 score.
- 2014 Falcons: 6-10: Yes, the Falcons offense came out smoking hot just two years ago, beating the Saints 37-34 and clubbing the Buccaneers 56-14, while also scoring 28 points in a loss to the Vikings. You could add these Falcons to the list of teams with misleading starts in the last section if you'd like, though they only finished 2-2 during their hot offensive start.
The teams listed above started their seasons with a combined 23-13 record. They went 56-52 the rest of the way. Their average record was 8.8 wins and 7.2 losses. They combined to win three playoff games, and one was after an 8-8 season and another at the start of the Reagan administration.
Maybe this year's Falcons are destined for nine or 10 wins and a one-and-done playoff appearance. That sounds reasonable, especially with the playoff tiebreakers they are starting to build up (two divisional wins, a head-to-head victory against their likely rival for the division title). But there is a lot to suggest they are similar to the other teams on the list above, right down to the Shanahan family ties. Ryan could well be having the season Bledsoe, Trent Green, Rivers and others had before him.
There is no "roster reason" for the sudden improvement.
If Vic Beasley was tearing up opposing offensive lines or Mohamed Sanu had 30 receptions instead of 13, there would be reason to think that this is a different Falcons team than the one we saw in 2014 and 2015. If recent draft picks besides Trufant were suddenly playing at a Pro Bowl level, it would be good evidence that the franchise has turned the corner.
The best player on the defense right now, other than Trufant, is probably 36-year-old Dwight Freeney. A few young players on both sides of the ball are playing fairly well, like left tackle Jake Matthews, defensive tackle Grady Jarrett, the running backs.
But Beasley has just one sack, and a lot of the same, old Falcons youngsters—cornerback Robert Alford, safety Ricardo Allen, second tight end Levine Toilolo—are playing at about their same, old, not-so-great level. The Falcons brought back Sean Weatherspoon (out with an Achilles injury) after a year on the Cardinals bench and signed A.J. Hawk this week. Those aren't exactly signs of a youth quake.
These Falcons are not the 2015 Vikings, with young talent bursting out everywhere. They are a veteran team of Ryan, Jones, Freeney, Jacob Tamme, and linemen Alex Mack, Andy Levitre and Chris Chester. There is no reason to believe these players are trending forward. It's more likely they are using their experience and a solid offensive system to storm out of the gate, win some shootouts with so-so opponents and then surprise a contender dealing with its self-inflicted wounds.
So enjoy the run, Falcons. Maybe we will see you in Seattle, Green Bay or Minnesota in January, getting the grits pounded out of you. Maybe not. The bigger question is whether the Falcons are rebuilding themselves as a powerhouse under Dan Quinn. Maybe they finish 9-7 this season, then the young defense coalesces and they finish 12-4 next year.
It's way too early to look that far down the road. But most of the teams on the list above were at or near the downside of their runs as contenders, not at the beginning. And most of the fireworks in this year's hot start have come from a 31-year-old quarterback and his sixth-year veteran receiver, not Quinn-era arrivals.
This could be the start of something great in Atlanta. But it's probably just another false Falcons start.
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