Any Optimism Left After Awful Start to Coach Smith's New Falcons Era?

It's hard imagining Arthur Smith's head coaching debut with the Atlanta Falcons going any worse than it did against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Knee-jerk reactions are part of the NFL and really, the sport of football. Playing once a week leads to a lot of fans, the media, and sometimes even coaches and players, overreacting to one game.

Week 1 in the NFL often produces the biggest overreactions. If a team has an extremely good or bad performance in October or November, there are other games to use as a barometer. It's easier to call that extreme performance a fluke or aberration.

Maybe by October, the Atlanta Falcons first game under new head coach Arthur Smith will prove to be that. One can only hope after the Falcons lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 1, 32-6.

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Smith and the players said the right things after the blowout loss. Smith placed the blame entirely on himself, and the players talked about still having 16 more games to go -- the same amount of games that made up an entire season in years past.

Should we oblige and give the Falcons a mulligan? 

That's hard to accept for a fan base as fragile as the Falcons'. A fan base that hasn't seen its football team have a winning record at ANY point in the season since 2017.

If the Falcons had been competitive, losing by a single possession or even 10 points to the Eagles, remaining optimistic would be easier. But after a four-possession defeat -- a performance that saw Smith and the Falcons new offense fail to score a touchdown?

Before the season, I considered myself in the optimistic part of the fanbase. If everything went right, I saw the Falcons winning eight or nine games and maybe competing for the extra wild-card spot that now exists in the NFL playoffs.

Obviously, everything won't go right for the Falcons this season. Pretty much the exact opposite happened against the Eagles. 

So where's the team's new ceiling for even the most optimistic Falcons fans falling to? Five wins? Six wins? Even lower?

Prior to the season, I labeled 11 of their 17 games "winnable." The opponents in those games were the Eagles, Giants, Washington, Jets, Cowboys, Patriots, Jaguars, 49ers, Lions and Panthers twice. Coming into the fall, the two games against the Saints didn't appear as daunting either because of the retirement of Drew Brees.

Well, a lot can change during the course of one week in the NFL. The Eagles matchup is already a loss, the Cowboys and 49ers featured potent offenses in their first game and the Saints made mince-meat out of Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. 

Of course, if the Falcons routinely play like they did Sunday this season, really no game will be winnable. That, in addition to the schedule immediately looking a bit tougher, would hurt the optimism around any fan base. 

At the very least, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next on the schedule, the Falcons appear all but certain to begin the 2021 season 0-2. That means it will be an uphill climb for the Falcons to reach .500.

The Falcons last held a .500 record going into Week 10 of the 2018 NFL season.

For teams trying to rebound from a four-win season and franchises looking to build a new culture under a different head coach, fast starts are so important. Instead of that on Sunday, the Falcons' September record since 2018 fell to 2-10.

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Maybe things will turn around sooner rather than later. They do have plenty of games left to go in 2021. 

But it's probably safe to say even the most optimistic Falcons fans will likely need some true convincing to still believe a winning season in 2021 is possible.