The Falcons Show Their True Colours In Loss To The Vikings

Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

Uninspired, characterless, embarrassing. Chances are, if you use any negative adjective to describe the Falcon’s performance against the Minnesota Vikings, it will fit. A week after dispatching division rivals the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Falcons put on a performance worthy of the 2013 season. Going up against a Minnesota team ravaged by suspensions and injuries the Falcons allowed the Vikings to walk all over them in a defensive display that quite rightly has fans questioning the longevity of Falcons management and coaches.

To many, the Vikings game was simply another step on the road for the Falcons, a road trip up north towards another imminent Falcons victory. The display against the Bucs had quashed any reservations about the holes on this team and the Falcons were well on their way to asserting themselves as an NFC powerhouse once again.

To any fans who brought into the hype of this team after the Bucs win, you were duped. While the Bucs game was impressive it had far more to do with Tampa Bay than it did the Falcons. This Falcons team isn’t good and unless significant changes are swiftly made this team will continue to wallow in mediocrity. Just for clarities sake, everyone has a different interpretation of the term ‘good’. In this instance a ‘good’ team refers to a team capable of making the playoffs, and that is not the Falcons. The Falcons aren’t necessarily bad, they are somewhere between the two, stuck in a sort of purgatory, a middling grey area where unless changes are made they have little chance of escaping.

The week 2 loss to the Bengals brought up a lot of old demons for the Falcons but we accepted it because the Bengals are a good team. This week we shouldn’t accept it, we should be shouting for change.

There is no doubt that the Falcons lack high quality players, especially on the defensive side of the ball, but it is also far too easy to blame performances like this on the players. This team has more than enough talent to perform to an acceptable standard and for too long we have accepted poor play as simply a result of poor players. While the players could definitely play better the problem goes much deeper.

Far too often this team shows up with the wrong mentality and seemingly no ambition to play with any sort of fight. This is an issue with the coaches and the way the team approach games, the way they interact with players, the mind-set that is preached behind closed doors. As we have long suspected, the problems with this team are not just superficial, they go deep down into the bowels of the franchise and unless there are drastic changes made there is little hope these problems will get resolved.

Unfortunately for Falcons fans displays like the Vikings game have become a regular occurrence over the last 12 months. During the off-season the team looked like it was making progress but as we sit here a quarter of a way into 2014 its clear all the team was doing was spinning in circles.