No Playoffs Since 2017: Falcons Struggle to Find Spark After Seattle Blowout

ATLANTA – For eight straight seasons, the Atlanta Falcons have ended their year in disappointment. Sunday’s 37-9 loss to the Seattle Seahawks continued that streak, underlining just how far this franchise has fallen and how far it has to climb.

Eight years is a long time for anything, but especially a franchise yearning for a winning record.

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To put it in a different perspective, a person born the last time the Falcons went to a playoff game would be in the second grade. High school seniors graduating this spring will have gone through their formative teenage years without a team they can attach to.

Just one Falcons player (Jake Matthews) was on the roster the last time they achieved that goal. Many of those players are no longer playing in the NFL.

Losing is painful, and the Falcons have had to deal with a lot of it.

“It's frustrating,” safety Jessie Bates said. “They should be frustrated as well. Got to figure it out.”

That feeling in that locker is understandably palpable, but the Falcons have four games left to run out the stretch of the season. After their seventh loss in their last eight games, Kirk Cousins knows that this team needs a spark, but where it comes from may be up for debate – a reporter even suggested after the game that a chair may need to get a Bobby Knight treatment, saying the team felt a bit too mellow.

"You know, I don't know about chair throwing, but he's got me thinking a little bit,” Cousins joked. “I've given some speeches in my day and done some pregame chants and that kind of thing, and did it last year. It has its place. It has its place. It can also be forced, and it can be really cringe. And, so you’ve got to have emotional intelligence to know when it works and when it doesn't, and you’ve got to read the room a little bit. But I understand what he's saying. He has a point, and there's moments where it matters.”

That may be what they need right now, but right guard Chris Lindstrom had a slightly different perspective than his quarterback.

“Obviously, the season hasn’t gone our way. We’re not going to the playoffs, and we have a responsibility for four games to try to go out there and win, and to finish the season the way we want,” he said. “There’s a lot of pride in our team and the organization and our approach to that. So, the mindset is just doing our job to be the best that we can every single day with that. That’s the approach I’m going to take for the next month is trying to be the best guard in the NFL to give us the best opportunities to win.

“I think everybody has that mindset individually. I know it didn’t go well. I know it’s not what you guys want to hear, and it’s not what the fans want to hear, but the mindset fighting for the next month will not change.”

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Thursday will be the first of a four-game crawl to the end of what has become a season to forget. All of their goals are out the door, but they can still play spoiler against their division rivals in Tampa Bay.

“Our fanbase deserves a winner,” head coach Raheem Morris said. “And the only thing we can do is try to find a way to go win this Thursday football game. You can't make any promise that you can't keep at this moment. The only thing you can do is try to give them the best efforts you can give them.”