Falcons in Super Bowl not so farfetched
December 23
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradley
"For 32 years they were words never spoken as a statement of fact, and even now they've been uttered just once. But it's not inconceivable that we could hear them again come Jan. 18, 2009:
"The Falcons are going to the Super Bowl."
The announcer who delivered that famous radio call on the afternoon of Jan. 17, 1999, believes the improbable could happen again. "Back then, it seemed so preposterous," said Jeff Hullinger, then the Falcons' play-by-play voice and now the morning newscaster on B-98.5 and the afternoon man on WSB. "Now that it's been done, it doesn't seem quite so impossible. They've shattered the myth."
That's true. We can never again say the Falcons can't reach the Super Bowl because history tells us they advanced to Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami. (So, alas, do the court documents in the Eugene Robinson case.) Super Bowl XLIII will likewise be in Florida - Tampa, to be precise. And that season reached a crest in the Metrodome, conveniently the site of Sunday's playoff-clinching victory.
"It's easy to see the parallels," Hullinger said. "Minneapolis occupies a special place in Falcons lore - there was the NFC championship game [of 1999], and the Michael Vick game [of 2002, when the quarterback ran 46 yards for the winning touchdown in overtime; Hullinger called that game, too]. And now this game. That place holds a watershed status."
In 1998, a lot of folks didn't take the Falcons seriously until November. "Not until they won in Foxborough [against New England] and [tight end] O.J. Santiago had that really big game," Hullinger said. "If anything, people have gotten around to believing in this team a little faster."
Still, there are varying shades of belief. For three months the 2008 Falcons were viewed as a feel-good story. Now you look on this team, which hasn't lost consecutive games and hasn't been beaten by more than 15 points and has held its own in the NFL's toughest division, and you're beginning to ask: Well, why not the Birds?
They've already beaten Carolina and Minnesota and Tampa Bay. They'd surely have a chance against Arizona, which just lost by 40 points in New England. And there's no reason to think that toppling the NFC's No. 1 seed would be any more difficult than it was to upend the 15-1 Vikings 10 years ago.
Said Hullinger: "Don't you think they're capable of beating the Giants?"
Well, yes. A team as sound as the Falcons - possessed of a strong running game and a heady quarterback and a defense that keeps making big plays - would have a shot against anybody anywhere. And, owing to Carolina's loss in the Meadowlands on Sunday night, it's possible the Falcons will finish as division champs, which would buy them the No. 2 seed. Which is what they were in 1998."
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