It’s tempting to think that people learn from the mistakes of the past, but the truth is that many of us never do. So it is apparently going for the Atlanta Falcons, who are 1-3 and stumbling badly at the exact moment when the division appeared to be opening up and a win against the scuffling Titans would have put them right back into it.
The year the Falcons didn’t learn from, evidently, was 2014. We all remember the team’s “toughness crusade,” as D. Orlando Ledbetter at the AJC memorably put it, and the funneling of money into the lines in a desperate attempt to get a disappointing football team back on track.