Atlanta Falcons: 5 Things fans should be thankful for this Christmas
By Derek Snyder
The Atlanta Falcons have had a pretty good season thus far, but what are five more things fans should be thankful for this Christmas season?
What a fun year it’s been for the Atlanta Falcons and their dedicated fan-base, as 2017 has treated the Dirty Birds nation to an NFC championship, numerous regular season victories and their first MVP in franchise history.
While there are many other reasons for Atlanta fans to be thankful, I decided to come up with five-specific reasons that are most-pressing heading into Christmas.
Again, there are a plethora of things that Falcons fans need to be intentional about being thankful for this holiday season, but none are more important than these, especially heading into 2018.
5. NFL Schedule-makers
Heading into the 2017 season, I wasn’t too pleased with how the Falcons schedule was laid out for them. Not only did they not have an NFC South match-up scheduled until early-November, but they started the year out with three-straight NFC North games and then four-straight AFC East games. Not to mention, they were going to play the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys in back-to-backs weeks.
However, what may have been an attempt to give the Falcons a “Super Bowl Hangover”, actually gave this team a great opportunity to sneak their way back into the NFC Playoffs for the second-straight year.
Not only were wins against the Packers, Lions, Seahawks, Cowboys and Saints huge at the time, but those victories have Atlanta a huge tiebreaker over five teams currently in the playoff-race before Week 15. Call me crazy, but that couldn’t have worked out better for Dan Quinn’s Falcons.
With that said, if the Dirty Birds find themselves back in the postseason, Atlanta fans can thank the schedule-makers who put their season on paper. They were clearly given a tough hand, but so far, they’ve handled their business just fine.