Why We're Lucky To Be Falcons Fans

We have our targets as Falcons fans. We like to ride the team for not providing quick news, and we like to get on our beat writers for not providing us with heaping bushels of news every day. Sometimes that's fair, sometimes it's not.

What's important to keep in mind, however, is that the Falcons are a regular garden of sunshine compared to many organizations around the NFL. D. Orlando Ledbetter might grind his axe sometimes when the Falcons duck his questions, but he can freely wander around, check in on practices and ask questions of the team's officials.

I bring this up because the Saints are instituting a media blackout. No one can attend minicamp, so Saints fans are left to speculate as to what the team is up to, how rookies look, etc. There's nothing that compels teams to let reporters in here, and the Saints quite clearly have never been a media-friendly team. Canal Street Chronicles did a nice little article on it.

What's truly obnoxious about this tactic is that it has plenty of supporters among Saints fans, who praise the team's "total focus" as though having reporters there watching and asking questions for ten minutes afterwards was somehow going to derail what the team's trying to do. The fans are the ones who are ultimately hurt by the lack of information that naturally follows such a move, and that's not even mentioning the fact that the Falcons, you know, let fans in to many of their off-season practices. The Saints are just the worst.

So I come to praise the Falcons. Even if they won't tell us just how much PK Manley weighs.