Happy 3-28 to everyone but Falcons fans
ATLANTA — Hello from Atlanta, friends! Here, it’s a pleasant, sunny spring day. Everywhere else in the country, it’s HA HA ATLANTA CHOKED DAY GET IT GET IT GET IT?
Yeah, we get it. March 28. 3-28. The exact score that the Falcons led the Patriots by, way back in Super Bowl LI, before executing the most catastrophic, inexcusable, why-couldn’t-you-just-run-the-ball faceplant in modern American sports. We know. We all saw it. Atlanta had the chance to put a stake in the Patriots dynasty that night, and the Falcons blew it. We know that, all right? WE’RE SORRY, AMERICA.
On 3-28, we eat cake.#WhoDat pic.twitter.com/eI7ZTRTlIw
— Chris Yandle (@ChrisYandle) March 28, 2019
And oh, how that collapse burned. I was covering the game that night — no sportswriter’s ever really an impartial observer — and I had to push away from the laptop to avoid slinging it into the night. I wrote my way through it and I came to terms with 28-3 that evening.
OK, not that particular evening. But within a few weeks of that evening. Honest.
Sure, the Falcons haven’t had a chance to right that wrong, and they might never get it. But that’s the wonderful thing about the endless, churning maw that is the 2019 news cycle: we’ve had hundreds of stories to stoke our rage since then. Sure, Super Bowl LI was two years ago, but it feels like 20.
So as the pain recedes and the scars heal, let’s shake off the sorrow. Matter of fact, let’s take a look at what the two fanbases doing the most gloating — the victorious Patriots and the anything-for-an-edge-over-ATL Saints — have fared since then.
New Orleans and Atlanta have spent the last half-century engaged in the NFL’s finest low-key slow-burn rivalry. You’d expect Who Dat Nation to celebrate a Falcon flameout, and oh, they did, with Mardi Gras floats and murals and endless Twitter jokes.
But let’s just consider how New Orleans has fared on the field since Super Bowl LI. I think it’s safe to say that no team in NFL history has ended two seasons on consecutive gut punches quite like New Orleans has: first by letting Case Keenum (Case Keenum!) beat you with a Minneapolis Miracle, and then by watching the Rams roll you in overtime after a terrible call broke against you — which never happens to anybody else, New Orleans.
I’m not going to say this is karma sharpening its knives on your soul, New Orleans, but I’d think long and hard before keeping up the grave-dancing.
Oh, and while we’re at it: at least Falcons fans accepted their loss as the harshest possible swing of a cold, unforgiving pendulum. We didn’t cry like babies with full diapers for three months, throwing tantrums across four states and whining loud enough that the NFL instituted a new rule just to shut us up. Bourbon Street’s cleaner than it’s ever been thanks to the swell of post-NFC championship tears, and don’t think we haven’t loved it all.
And as for you, New England: well, you remain the beacons of slippery just-good-enough-to win excellence you’ve always been. You folded against the Eagles, which was a delight to see, and then you got the good fortune to go up against a Rams team that somehow forgot how to complete a damn pass on the biggest stage of the year. It was an ugly win, but hey, ugly’s how y’all roll in Boston.
But your time’s coming, New England. You know it. You feel it in your soul every time you see yet another Belichick disciple stumble to a 7-9 record. You know that your entire dynasty, miraculous as it is, rests on the backs of just two men, and we’re in their endgame. You know that when Brady and Belichick are gone, you’re in for an endless, desolate slog of three-touchdown losses, of Jets and Bills and Dolphins dancing in the Gillette end zone as the memories of those six rings fade farther in the distance. And when that day comes — and it’s coming sooner than you think, Patriots fans — we in Atlanta will raise a glass to you and your sterling regular-season performances.
We’ll set aside every January 15.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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