Atlanta in January is a study in how high you can climb before the fall. After the 2016 season they took the NFC Championship Game and dismantled Green Bay 44-21 to reach the Super Bowl, looking like the best team in football. What happened in that Super Bowl is a number I will leave on another page. But the run to get there was genuinely dominant, which is what makes the rest of it so cruel.

The collapses

It is not the only big lead the Falcons have watched evaporate in January. After the 2012 season they led the 49ers 17-0 in the NFC Championship Game at home and lost it. The franchise has a real talent for getting within reach of the Super Bowl and then finding a way to let it slip, a pattern that has worn a groove in the fanbase.

The long quiet since

And lately there has been nothing at all. Atlanta has not reached the playoffs since the 2017 season, one of the longer active droughts in the league, a stretch of near-misses and rebuilds with no January football to show for it. The collapses, at least, meant they were close. The drought does not even offer that.

A dominant run to a Super Bowl, a habit of surrendering January leads, and a long recent absence. Falcons fans, your team has authored some of the hardest-to-watch endings the playoffs have produced, and I say that with sympathy, not mockery. I know what a vanished lead feels like. I would not wish the Atlanta version on anyone.