The Atlanta Falcons have been a lot of things since Arthur Blank bought the team. They’ve been a gritty, run-first squad with the most dynamic quarterback in NFL history and a strong defense. They’ve been a pass-first dynamo with a shaky defense and some of the brightest stars in the NFL. They’ve been, often for years at a time, a bad football team, though obviously never by design.
These Atlanta Falcons are better than the Atlanta Falcons that came before them in almost every metric that matters, but at best they have always been Achilles being dipped in the river Styx by a well-meaning mother holding too tightly to the heel.