That sound that has been following you around like the Kokomo Hum is NFL fans and writers complaining that this season has been “bad” and “not fun” and “boring.” They’re not wrong, but the grumbling has become white noise as we tip into the second half of the regular season. That undulating din is drowning out the great teams gasping for breath, hoping someone will notice them.
A Raiders-Falcons Super Bowl would solve the NFL’s ‘fun’ problem
Only two teams can give soul back to the NFL.
Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images
That’s why the Raiders and Falcons need to play each other in the Super Bowl.
This season, teams, for the most part are: 1) Good but boring, or 2) Exciting but terrible. Six teams have at least six wins through Week 9. You would hate to see most of them in the Super Bowl. The Cowboys are in the midst of a return to glory that only Cowboys fans are excited about. The Broncos and Chiefs pride themselves on winning ugly. The Patriots are, as always, the worst of all options.
Oh, but the Raiders and Falcons, THAT would be sweet. The two teams already played in Week 2, and it was regarded, then, as a maybe/maybe-not important early season scuffle between two teams with highly variable season prospects. Through nine games, we can say that both teams are playoff caliber. In hindsight, that Week 2 matchup was one of the biggest games of the season so far.
After a scoreless first quarter, that game became an offensive storm.
The two teams combined for 847 yards of offense over the final three quarters of the game — an average of 282 yards per quarter or what would be more than 550 yards per team spread out over a full game that we could see in Houston this February.
There were seven lead changes after the offenses got going. The Falcons held on for a 35-28 win, but don’t think that Matt Ryan and company did everything. They took a 28-21 lead in the fourth quarter on this nonsense ...
... then stuffed the Raiders on a pivotal fourth-and-2 to retake possession and march 50 for a two-score lead that proved to be comeback-proof.
Both teams look better now than they did early in the season, but the Raiders’ defense especially.
The Raiders gave up more than 400 yards of offense in six of their first seven games, and fewer than 350 yards in their last three. Khalil Mack came alive against the Broncos on Sunday night, recording two sacks and turning the Raiders defense into a terror on third downs — the Jaguars, Buccaneers, and Broncos converted a combined 28 percent of their opportunities.
The Falcons have given up the third most points in the league, but that doesn’t matter much when Ryan is playing like an MVP. Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman are versatile and yet complementary running backs. Julio Jones is arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL right now — and it’s an easy argument, frankly. No one who is as pivotal to his offense (51 receptions, seventh in the NFL) is as productive as he is (19 yards per reception, fifth). He leads the NFL in receiving yards and is pulling away. He had 300 yards in one game.
A Raiders-Falcons Super Bowl would be a knee slapping good time. Here’s why.
They score a ton
The Raiders are third in the NFL in points scored. The Falcons are first. It’s as easy at that.
They play in cities that deserve championships
This may be the last hurrah for the Oakland Raiders, with a move to Las Vegas looking more likely by the day. The stadium is ancient and derelict by NFL standards, and the team hasn’t had a winning season since 2011. Despite all that, the Black Hole manages to create something like a college football atmosphere inside the Coliseum every week.
Atlanta, meanwhile, is riding the longest sports drought among any city that has had all four major sports. The Braves’ 1995 title is the city’s only significant sports banner, with a lot of sadness sandwiching it. Atlanta maybe isn’t as deserving as, say, Cleveland was when the Cavaliers finally broke through, but it has been plenty tortured. One Super Bowl appearance isn’t Browns and Lions bad, but it isn’t much
They weren’t supposed to be good
Both teams can shout, “No believed in us!” and actually mean it. Last season, they went a combined 5-13 in their last nine games of the season, each. Immediately after Super Bowl 50, the Falcons had OddsShark’s 19th-best odds of winning Super Bowl LI, and the Raiders were 24th behind midseason dumpster fires like the Rams and Jets.
Seriously, the NFL needs this
Not from a marketing perspective. The most lucrative matchup for everyone (including this website) would be Patriots-Cowboys — two massive markets, two historically great franchises, and the NFL’s two best teams right now. It’d be perfect. Everybody in the world would tune in, and it might even be a good game.
But it wouldn’t be anything new, and if the NFL wants to find its soul — which was misplaced years ago, according to all the kvetching — then Raiders-Falcons is exactly what it needs. We know it’s going to be a great game because we’ve already seen it. NFL fans hate everybody’s team including their own, but they would probably hate Raiders-Falcons the least among teams with a real chance to go to Houston.
It’d be the best possible matchup for football’s sake. These teams thrive on points, chaos, and the adrenaline fuel of their fan bases. It’d be the purest celebration of what’s good about the sport, a cheap buffet of deep-fried touchdowns, the exact sort of junk that the NFL excised from its diet to the detriment of its spiritual well-being.
Raiders-Falcons is the antidote to everything we’ve hated about the NFL this season, and I’ll be rooting like hell for a rematch on Feb. 5.
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