On Sunday night in Houston, Atlanta finally made fans sit up and take notice – because no one will forget such a crushing and incomprehensible loss

The Atlanta Falcons seemingly had two possible fates as the team entered Super Bowl LI against the Patriots.

1) They could win their first championship and finally secure some relevance in the national consciousness; or

2) They could lose the big game and fall right back to forgotten status, same as the franchise’s only other runner-up team did in 1998.

Matt Ryan, Super Bowl LI and the art of the perfect choke Read more

But it turns out there was also a third option for the Falcons: lose in such crushing and incomprehensible fashion that no one will ever forget them, the destruction forever seared into the hippocampus of a nation. Yes, the Atlanta Falcons finally have an identity – and it is historic defeat.

Anyone old enough to remember Santonio Holmes playing in a Super Bowl knows it’s common to hear after any remotely entertaining championship game that it was the greatest ever or that it had the best or most clutch or unforgettable performance of all-time. That is rarely the case, of course. There have been 51 Super Bowls featuring in the neighborhood of 5,000 players. Many of those games were exceptional, and all of them featured outstanding performances. But calling what’s top-of-mind the “best” is an easy and lazy way to make insta-history – and the content consumer rarely seems to mind. You’ll struggle to find people flocking to an article that trumpets a Super Bowl as the 11th greatest of all-time.

But what the Falcons did on Sunday night – or what the Patriots did to them, if you prefer – truly stands apart in the history of professional football. Blowing a 28-3 lead late in the third quarter would be hard for a team to stomach in week three. Doing it in the Super Bowl, though? There’s no way to even quantify how awful that is. But here are a few attempts:

• Before the Falcons’ collapse, teams that held a lead of at least 17 points at the end of the third quarter were 133-0 all-time in the NFL playoffs.

• The biggest lead the Falcons franchise had blown before Super Bowl LI was 21 points, and that came in a meaningless game against the Lions in late October of 2014. Even worse: only five franchises in history have lost a game, including in the regular season, after leading by 25 points or more at any point in the contest.

• For those who prefer visual learning, there’s this one: Atlanta’s win probability hit 99.8% with 4:54 left in the third quarter. Granted, statisticians have had a rough few months with their probability charts, but 99.8 and 28-3 should be comforting numbers for a football team any way you slice it.



• Marky Mark got up and left the game in the third quarter.

Play Video 1:01 Reaction after the New England Patriots stun the Atlanta Falcons to win Super Bowl LI

The worst playoff loss in NFL history before Sunday night was undoubtedly the old Houston Oilers blowing a 35-3 lead early in the third quarter to the Buffalo Bills and their backup quarterback Frank Reich. But that was a wildcard game with far less on the line. Historic chokes by Greg Norman and Jean van de Velde in golf majors also come to mind as all-time failures, but those came in an individual sport. That was just one guy messing up. The Falcons’ collapse, and New England’s comeback, was very much a team effort.

The Falcons could have lost in standard fashion. Maybe a semi-competitive but forgettable defeat, like their 34-19 Super Bowl loss to John Elway’s Broncos 18 years ago. Or losing on a late field goal, just as the Patriots have vanquished other teams in Super Bowls past, achieving the three-point loss Vegas predicted. Those would have been run-of-the-mill football defeats. Boring. Very Falcons. Instead, they walked into the hottest flames of defeat we have ever seen and came out something completely different on the other side.

In the past year, both the city of Cleveland and the Chicago Cubs got knocked from the ranks of the historic losers with no obvious candidates to take their place. The Falcons, despite being title-less throughout the franchise’s first 50 years, lacked the resume to stand out from the pack. They were the team that churned out year after year of bland mediocrity, never flirting with total, 0-16 failure but never getting anywhere near a trademark, gut-punch defeat in a game that mattered. They have it now. They have their Bartman game. They have their Jose Lima, Earnest Byner, Michael Jordan-over-Craig Ehlo game. They have 28-3. They have achieved a sports moment no one will ever forget. The Falcons exist now.

Texas rangers called in to help find Tom Brady's missing Super Bowl jersey Read more

But it’s more than just the Falcons. The way the Super Bowl LI defeat went down also validates Atlanta’s case for tortured sports city status. The Falcons remain title-less in their half-century-plus of existence and now boast the worst loss in NFL history. The Braves have just one World Series title – won 20 years ago – in their 51 years in the city and squandered a decade of having baseball’s best pitching rotation. Now they have back-to-back seasons with more than 90 losses. Atlanta has lost not one, but two NHL teams in the past 37 years, while the Hawks have long been the NBA’s version of the Falcons: officially an existing professional sports team, or so you’ve heard. Add it all up and the city’s three teams have one title in 151 seasons combined – and one in 170 seasons if you count the Atlanta tenures of the Flames and Thrashers. No wonder Atlanta teams keep getting new stadiums. The old ones have nothing but bad memories.

Matt Ryan, Julio Jones, Grady Jarrett, Dan Quinn and the rest of the Falcons are talented and young enough make it back to the Super Bowl again and leave with a positive outcome. Maybe it happens; maybe it doesn’t. But they’ll always have Super Bowl LI, the game they made fans sit up and finally take notice of the Atlanta Falcons. It’s just unfortunate that we all then had to look away in horror.