History Has Spoken: The Falcons’ Hot Start Isn’t Going to Last

This has been fun, Falcons. Sunday’s upset of the Panthers was remarkable. So was Monday Night Pinball against the Saints last week. And Julio Jones is always a treat. You scored 152 points in four games. Yowza! You also allowed 124. Our fantasy cups runneth over.

Now it’s time to start being the plain old Falcons again. 

The 3-1 Falcons start a two-game road trip to Denver and Seattle on Sunday. It’s a brutal two-game stretch. Granted, we said they were facing a brutal three-game stretch before they hosted the Panthers and crushed them. But Jones and Matt Ryan will be facing the Legion of Boom and a Broncos secondary that may be better than the Legion of Boom.

It’s a far cry from the budget-friendly Panthers secondary of James Bradberry, Bene Benwikere, Robbie Rookie, Notta Norman and Cameron Capspace.

The tough upcoming schedule is an obvious reason to not buy into the Falcons. It doesn’t take a deep statistical dive to find others. The Falcons have four sacks, one of them by cornerback Desmond Trufant on a blitz. Opponents convert 44 percent of their third downs against them. The pre-Panthers opposing schedule of the Buccaneers, Raiders and Saints (15th, 31st and 32nd, respectively, in the NFL in yards per game allowed) suggests the Falcons’ offensive stats are a little puffy right now.

But there are other reasons to throw cold water on the Falcons’ torrid start. They’re the same reasons you had that deja vu feeling when you saw Jones streaking into the end zone Sunday.

The Falcons are notorious fast starters. 

Everyone remembers last year: a 6-1 start, 137 points scored in their first four games, wins against opponents that looked pretty tough when the schedule was printed (like the entire NFC East).

Then they finished 8-8, the kind of downturn that is certainly keeping some fans from leaping on the bandwagon this year. But there was nothing unusual about last season from a Falcons point of view. The 2006 Falcons started 3-1 and 5-2, only to finish 7-9. The 2005 Falcons started the season 6-2 but finished 2-6.

Atlanta was great from 2008 to 2012, when, in general, it started and finished strong. But even during the Falcons’ time as contenders, there were misleading starts. They started the 2009 season 4-1 before fading to 9-7, due in part to a two-game Ryan injury.

There’s no obvious underlying cause to the Falcons’ hot starts and eventual fades. Yes, they are a dome team that may run into weather problems later in the season. But they have won plenty of road games in tough environments early (like the Raiders in Week 2 and the Giants-Cowboys road trip last September) and lost lots of dome games late. So perhaps there’s a false pattern at work here: Just because the Falcons fooled us a few times doesn’t mean they are fooling us now.

Unfortunately, there is another pattern that suggests the Falcons are on a sugar rush, not a Super Bowl run.

Teams that start out like the Falcons generally fade. 

Clubs that begin the season averaging more than 30 points per game often go on to great things: the 2013 Broncos (44.8 points per game through four games, won AFC title), …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com