Fun to Look Back at the Falcons’ Bone-Dumb Days

A shameful 38-17 loss on an October day in 1985 left the Falcons without a victory in five games and caused rookie defensive end Mike Gann to say, “We hit rock bottom today.”

From the next locker came the low growl of an old warrior.

Jeff Van Note said, “Not rock bottom. This is no comparison to rock bottom in this team’s history. I’ve been here a long time. I’ve been at rock bottom. This isn’t it.”

At the time, Van Note wore a full and glorious Hemingway beard, its curls shining white against the dark of his hard eyes. “The grizzled veteran,” the grizzled veteran said, smiling at time’s work. For 18 seasons and 246 games, he gave the failing Falcons two dollars’ work for every dollar’s pay. Enough to grizzle anybody.

From their first game in 1966 through most of their 33 seasons, the Falcons have been the sorriest of the sorry. In those dear, departed days when I wrote columns for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, headline writers fairly captured my sentimental mood about the Falcons:

“Nation’s Laughingstock”

“The Weekly Calamity”

“Snoreball’s Back At The Stadium”

“It Doesn’t Get Any Worse Than This”

“Beaten To A Bloody Pulp”

“Carcasses, Devoid Of Any Sign Of Life”

So you’ll pardon me if I find it hard to believe that the sorry birds of wretched memory are now the Dirty Birds of Super Bowl fame. And indulge me as I allow others to sing of the moment’s Falcons heroes, the stars Jamal Anderson and Jessie Tuggle, Chris Chandler and Eugene Robinson.

Jeff Van Note’s my man, even a dozen years into an ungrizzling retirement, doing radio commentary on Falcons broadcasts. He came to the Falcons as an 11th-round linebacker and left as a Pro Bowl center. His only regret is the Ernie Banks lament: He never danced the big dance.

His Falcons had one chance. In 1981, they figured to beat the Cowboys in a playoff game that would put them in the National Football Conference Championship Game against an Eagles team they’d beaten in their 12-4 season. they led the Cowboys, 27-16, with seven minutes to play, only to lose by three.

“We could’ve gone to the big game,” Van Note said. “Everybody blamed the defense. But the coaches called the dogs off. Our offense went conservative. We had strange years before and strange years after, but that year was the strangest. It was our highlight and our lowlight.”

Because they were so close, it hurt the worst. But anyone figuring which of the Falcons’ truly miserable seasons is the most truly miserable has heavy lifting to do. My friend Gandy knows that.

A neighbor in our little town a half an hour south of Atlanta, Gandy was the town’s mayor, and he had a possum on his tooth. He’d gone fishing with a buddy who had a rainbow trout etched into a molar. So Gandy told his dentist, “Do me a possum.” Because the dentist had never seen a possum, Gandy went to his freezer, fetched a frozen critter and dropped it off with the receptionist.

Gandy watched the Falcons stumble all those years. He finally came to an analysis John Madden might have envied. “The Falcons ain’t just ordinary dumb,” the mayor said. “They’re bone-dumb.”

Long exposure to such bone-dumbness convinced me the Falcons’ brainlock was a permanent condition. The thought it might be cured and that Owner Rankin Smith Sr. would make the Falcons a winner never occurred to me until, oh, three hours after they beat the Minnesota Vikings.

The Falcons’ litany of misery dates from 1965. Smith thought he had hired Vince Lombardi until Lombardi backed out. Though Paul Brown was available, Smith said he didn’t want to insult the great man by making him second choice. Instead, Smith hired a Lombardi assistant, Norb Hecker. And so began 33 years of wandering in the desert.

Even Smith’s hiring of Dan Reeves two years ago seemed typically unpremeditated. Twice fired in five seasons, Reeves was damaged goods. But he’s a Georgia boy to whom Smith felt a kinship. The owner almost hired Reeves in 1977, along with Bobby Beathard as G.M., before deciding on Leman Bennett and Eddie LeBaron.

The sad irony is that now, with the Falcons in the land of milk and honey, the owner is gone. Smith died in October 1997 without seeing the good work done by his last hire. For the first time, he’d given a coach total authority over the franchise’s football operations. Reeves used it to create the first Falcons team to reach an NFC Championship Game, let alone beat the league’s best team in that team’s stadium to get to the Super Bowl.

“I had confidence in Dan,” says Van Note. “But anybody who watched the Falcons struggle last year [starting 1-7] had to have doubts--not that he wouldn’t get the job done eventually, but to do it this quickly, wow. It’s surprising, it’s exciting, everybody’s having a good time with it. Just riding the wave.”

Riding the wave. Those feel-good words were Mark McGwire’s mantra en route to 70. Now we hear it from a Falcons hero. Who’d have ever thunk it?