I'm going to let Mark Bradley of the AJC take this one:

We’ve all assumed the season ahead won’t be kind — both ESPN and Sports Illustrated have tabbed the Falcons the NFL’s worst team — but there’s a difference between unkind and utterly wretched. That’s why the Sporting News Pro Football yearbook arrives with such a thud. This august publication picks the Falcons to go 1-15.....

 

The belief here is that these Falcons will win more than one (or two). Of their 16 games, only four will be against teams that finished 2007 with winning records. Smith’s defense should keep matters close enough often enough for this team to go 5-11, and who would have thought that picking a team to lose 11 times would qualify someone as a raving optimist?

I've said this before and I'll say it again: when you try to rank a team before it even gets to training camp, you are engaging in something that is deeply insulting to the intelligence of the average fan. If you are, like the Sporting News, picking an improved team to win exactly one game in 2008, then you're also clearly not taking the time to do your research.

First of all, the Falcons are more stable at quarterback. They have a bruising back in Michael Turner and a staff who might--MIGHT--actually use Jerious Norwood every now and then. Their linebacking corps is outstanding, they have a kicker who is actually about ten years younger and a coach who could peel potatoes on the sidelines and still be more competent than Bobby Petrino. Sure, their secondary and offensive line isn't going to be good at all, but one win? This team has too much talent to end up with one win unless decimated by injuries.

Last year when ESPN and others picked the Falcons to be the worst team in the league, my hackles went up and I (correctly) said that teams like the Dolphins would likely be worse. And while last year's Falcons were a hellish ride straight out of Beelzebub's sweetest dreams, they still avoided that designation. This year, I just have to shake my head at the advent of the laziness that leads "experts" to slap a team down the basement stairs because they don't care to see how they've improved. I think Bradley's guess of 5-11 is a lot closer to what we'll actually see this year.

Then again, how can we know without seeing how the roster shakes out?