The Falcons are on track to contend again after taking the Chiefs to the wire

The Atlanta Falcons have been an NFL afterthought since losing to the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2017 NFL playoffs.

In fact, Sunday night was the franchise’s first prime-time game on NBC in more than five years.

The franchise has floundered in mediocracy since the 2017 season, and teams that miss the playoffs for six straight years tend to gather dust on the shelf like Weezy the penguin in Toy Story 2 and become forgotten.

Outside of the occasional Twilight Zone low-light and fantasy football meltdown, the outside world hasn’t really pay attention to the Falcons in a while. Honestly, with the way they were playing, could you blame them?

After the team’s dramatic win against the Philadelphia Eagles last week on Monday Night Football and to-the-wire loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night, the team’s hoped-for relevance through signing Kirk Cousins has come through.

People are talking about the Falcons again, some of it with real sympathy about that jaw-drop of a missed defensive pass interference on the Chiefs late in the fourth quarter. The missed call was bad, Atlanta can’t really talk about it without getting fined, life goes on in Flowery Branch and elsewhere.

Despite losing in frusturating fashion to Kansas City on Sunday night, the Falcons pulled a Rocky and went the distance with the champs. Moral victories do not show up on the win-loss column, but it’s hard to not appreciate how long it’s been since Atlanta played this fiercely on the big stage against a great team. It wasn’t perfect, but it was promising.

The not perfect part: The Falcons are 1-2 and still ironing out any litany of wrinkles as Cousins continues to find his footing post-Achilles tear, key injuries start to develop and Raheem Morris’ new coaching staff continues to learn on the job.

This football team is nowhere near where it wants to be right now, which is a big reason it couldn’t complete the Kansas City upset under the big lights.

The promising part: when Patrick Mahomes praises a team’s ceiling, your ears perk up a bit.

After years and years of not really mattering all that much to the general NFL equation, the Falcons might actually be ready to pull a chair up to the big boy table and play meaningful football again against meaningful teams.

That is absolutely huge for a franchise that has felt suspended in quick sand for years now, one that’s plenty numb to all of those 28-3 jokes by now.

The Falcons are used to either being the butt of the joke or completely left out of the conversation altogether, which is a direct byproduct of years of personnel and coaching mismanagement. However, the last two weeks for the Falcons in particular have been a national obstacle, and they nearly went 2-0 against the expectations of many.

The team also nearly went 0-2, which is why you shouldn’t book your tickets to New Orleans in February if you’re a Falcons fan. Morris’ team still looks like it’s in transition to something better, and hiccups and headaches are to be expected. Cousins is giving the team a shot of needed veteran adrenaline, but he’s also prone to mistakes and galaxy-braining himself in the wrong direction. The two coordinators are very green, and the roster still needs more talent down the road to really take it far in a playoff run.

However, the future actually feels bright for the franchise for the first time in ages. It’s not a wishy-washy hope built on “maybe Desmond Ridder will be the next great third-round quarterback,” either.

Cousins usually gets off to a slow start in September before the hallowed month of “Kirk-tober” begins, which should help Atlanta gain real momentum going into the midway point of the season if all breaks right.

The New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers looked mortal on Sunday, and the Carolina Panthers rode high on the instant benefit of swapping out a quarterback for an unprepared opponent. The NFC South is still anyone’s for the taking three weeks in. The Falcons have a fighting chance to win it outright with the way things are right now.

That’s what the franchise has lacked since that 2017 season, a real, “proof is in the pudding” sample size to believe in what’s happening on the field, even if it’s still a work in progress. There are no guarantees as to what this team’s ceiling is, but if an elite rival player like Mahomes is optimistic about it, that should at least mean something.

Maybe, after years and years of diminished results, the Falcons will actually rise back up to the NFL central stage and stay there?

This team is definitely on track to contend again. It’s not all the way there, not by a long shot, but you see the tantalizing progress in action.