The Atlanta Falcons Want To Be At Their Best

Normally, Falcons fans are split between unreasonable optimism and unreasonable pessimism. That obviously changed this season.

At 6-0, there's a pretty clear division between fans who believe the brilliant start is the Falcons playing truly excellent football and those that think a little luck is involved. At the risk of being at the business need of a few thousand torches and pitchforks, I do think the Falcons have gotten a little lucky.

As you undoubtedly know, I don't entirely care how they got there. 6-0 is still undefeated.

I'm not the only one who has noticed that the Falcons have strung together a couple of shakier efforts, though. No less an authority than Matt Ryan is talking about it:

"We’ve been good enough to win and at the end of the day, that’s what you need to do," Ryan said. "I think it’s going to be important for us, this bye week, to try and find ways for us to play our best and to look critically at ourselves and try and improve."

Or, you know, Dunta Robinson.

"This game took a lot out of us as a defense (so) this off week, in those respects, is right on time," Falcons defensive back Dunta Robinson said. "We’ve still got a long season ahead of us. We are not where we want to be. We are 6-0 going into the bye (but) we know we are going to get everybody’s best shot so we’ve got to take it to another level."

Look: The Falcons are undefeated, as I already mentioned. I never really get tired of talking about it. But no team should be entirely happy unless they're whipping every team by a 100-0 score, which is no team ever. The Falcons know they let a couple of average teams hang with them for far too long, and they're intent on correcting that.

This certainly makes the Eagles game interesting. On one hand, Andy Reid and Michael Vick are fighting for their jobs. On the other hand, that team is a lukewarm mess and the Falcons are going to be rested and looking to stay undefeated. I don't like Philly's chances all that much, and that's a surprising thing to say after the last couple of years.

Long story short: The Falcons are great, need to improve a bit. Talk out the why and how.