Early season history is on the Atlanta Falcons side

Let’s face it. Sports fans, including the Atlanta Falcons fans, love patterns. After the Falcons dropped the season opener last year, fans loved to recite: “The Falcons lost their first game when they went to the Super Bowl in 2016-17.”

But teams are different. The league changes year to year. So which pattern should the Atlanta Falcons look for this year?

Well, there are a couple.

For starters, Matt Ryan has never started a season 0-2. Pretty impressive. Look at last year. Atlanta dropped a questionable game on the road to start the season against the Eagles, the team they’ll face next week, and lost a couple of key players in the process. They responded with a divisional win at home against Carolina.

In fact, you have to go back to 2007 to find the last time the Falcons dropped two consecutive games to open the season. And here’s the pattern you don’t want. That season, they opened on the road against none other than the Minnesota Vikings. The team that handed them a 28-12 loss on Sunday.

But where does this year’s Atlanta Falcons team go from here? Well, up right? At least everyone is leaving this game healthy for the most part. Nobody is 100 percent after playing an NFL game and after watching Jaguars quarterback Nick Foles break his clavicle, the Falcons are lucky considering how porous the offensive line was at times.

And fortunately history is on their side. While slow starts have been a thing for Atlanta, both in games and for the season. They tend to respond come week two. It’s also expected when key players sit out for the preseason.

You have to get a rhythm and sometimes that takes more than just practice. The Falcons return home, in a primetime game, to face off against another NFC power: the Philadelphia Eagles. They’ve got to protect their home field and come out much sharper than Sunday if they want to keep their streak alive of not dropping back to back games to start the season.