The Atlanta Falcons are 9-5.
I'm no math wiz, but in a 16-game regular season, that means that they've already clinched a winning season, no matter how the final two games play out.
That's significant when you consider this makes the first winning season since 2004, when the Falcons went 11-5 and sprinted all the way to the conference championships, defeating the Rams 47-17 along the way before losing to the Eagles 27-10. (The team went 8-8 and 7-9 the final two years of Jim Mora's regime.)
But it's amazing given last year's dispiriting chain of events, from a suspended star quarterback to a standoffish rookie head coach who didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stick it out an entire season before high-tailing it to coach college players in Arkansas to an abyssmal 4-12 record.
It's also pretty impressive given the top-to-bottom restructuring of the organization, including a new GM, a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback who has surprised just about everyone with his poise.
Then again, it's not all that surprising, considering the lunchpail work ethic this team has displayed all season. That was all too evident during yesterday's nail-biting overtime victory over the Buccaneers. I'm probably not the only one who felt a sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach after that blocked punt that led to Tampa Bay tying things up at 10-10 with seconds remaining. That's a conditioned response, learned from years of watching teams decked out in Atlanta Falcons jerseys blow promising games. But that response isn't appropriate to this team.
Are these Falcons perfect? Of course not. You can make arguments about Ryan's performance yesterday, about Mike Smith's coaching abilities, about all kinds of things. You can almost always find things to chip away at. There are always nits to pick. But this Falcons team has proven—to the city, to the league, to the nation—that it's for real. Even if they lose the final two games of the season, even if they somehow miss the playoffs, they will have won more games than they lost, and won the admiration and respect of a grateful city.
And right now, that's more than enough.