Somehow, beating the Cardinals by nearly 30 points convinced oddsmakers that the Falcons were for real. Weird.
The Falcons and Panthers have been massively disappointing in very different ways this year. The Falcons, thanks to injuries and plain ol’ poor play, have been pretty bad since the beginning of the season, with a brief three game run to haul them up to .500 the one outlier. The Panthers, meanwhile, were one of the better teams in the NFC before they dropped into the toilet in glorious fashion in recent weeks, despite their game effort against New Orleans.