By BRUCE LOWITT
In a mea culpa for their insensitive treatment of Ohio State kicker Noah Ruggles a week ago, the Atlanta Falcons’ halftime show during Sunday’s victory over Tampa Bay featured highlights of their Super Bowl meltdowns against New England and Denver and a fistful of other miserable moments during their mostly pathetic 57 years of existence in the National Football League.
“What we did was just plain stupid. Then again, with all the crap we put on the field each Sunday, we figured maybe we could take the fans’ minds off our usual s—shows,” Rich McKay, Falcons president and CEO, said Sunday night of the tweet the team put out after their New Year’s Day victory over Arizona at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
It showed Ruggles’ last-second field-goal attempt sailing wide left in OSU’s 42-41 New Year’s Eve college football playoff loss to Georgia, alongside Atlanta kicker Younghoe Koo’s last-second field goal the next day that beat the Cardinals 20-19.
The tweet said “this is how you make a game-winning field goal at @MBS Stadium,” an obvious shot at Ruggles, ignoring that the college senior was kicking from 50 yards out while the field goal by Koo, a five-year NFL veteran, was a 21-yard chip shot – plus the fact that the Buckeyes were playing for a shot at the national championship while the Falcons were en route to their fifth straight losing season.
“Here’s how brilliant we are,” said Terry Fontenot, finishing his first year as Falcons general manager. “We traded Brett Favre to Green Bay. We didn’t trade away dog-fighting star Michael Vick. In 2007 we hired Bobby Petrino to coach us and he quit after 13 games. We turned a 10-7 lead against the Saints into a 45-16 loss in 2011, and a 14-7 lead over the Packers later that year into a 48-21 loss. We blew a 17-0 lead, losing 28-24 to the 49ers in the 2013 NFC championship game. And then there’s the Super Bowls. We blew … Oh, hell, 17 winning seasons in 57 years. We blow.”
The biggest intermission highlight Sunday was the second half and overtime of Super Bowl LI in Houston’s NRG Stadium – featuring a Lady Gaga halftime performance – when the Falcons ga-ga-gagged, blowing a 28-3 lead and losing 34-28 to the Patriots.
“I had a near-perfect rating of 144, for heaven’s sake. Where the hell was our defense?” quarterback Matt Ryan said in a taped interview shown on the Atlanta stadium screens. “Thank goodness I’m here (in Indianapolis) so I don’t have to watch that s—show again.” Ryan spent this season as a part-time starter with the Colts.
In Super Bowl XXXIII, Atlanta safety Eugene Robinson turned it into a s—show a day early, getting arrested for solicitation of prostitution the same day he received the Bart Starr Award that goes to the NFL player who “best exemplifies outstanding character.” Then the Broncos ran up a 31-6 fourth-quarter lead and won 34-19.
“Where the hell was our defense?” quarterback Chandler, intercepted three times and sacked twice, said on the field during Sunday’s halftime, surrounded by several of his equally embarrassed 1988 Falcons teammates.
The Falcons removed the tweet shortly after it appeared, but the damage was done.
“Yeah,” Fontenot said. “Koo will continue to bank his $4,850,000 annual salary while Ruggles’ memory bank will forever replay the moment he could have been a hero. I guess we blew that, too.”
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