Atlanta’s seventh win marks a fairly rare milestone in franchise history

The Falcons did more than keep themselves on top of the NFC South with their win against the Cardinals yesterday. They also won their seventh game, marking only the 24th time in the team’s 51 year history that they’ve attained that mark. That means, of course, that Atlanta’s enjoyed a decent win total in less than half of its seasons as a franchise.

The Falcons have finished with seven wins a grand total of eight times in their history, which is one of those fun stats to quiz your friends with if you hate them and they hate the Falcons. This does a nice job of illustrating just how forlorn the Falcons have been throughout most of their history—as if you needed a reminder—and that Dan Quinn’s off to one of the better starts of any Falcons head coach. Since that magical Super Bowl run in 1998, we’ve enjoyed the most productive stretch in Falcons history, and now we’ll wait to see if Quinn is the coach who can get Atlanta over the Super Bowl hump.

In case you’re wondering, here’s the number of times the Falcons have won more than seven games, broken down by win total:

8: 2

9: 4

10: 2

11: 2

12: 2

13: 2

14: 1

With a reasonable schedule left, the Falcons should wind up clearing the eight win bar, and their ceiling for the year is currently 12 wins. Hope and pray they get there, and hope that someday we look back and this list of win totals doesn’t look quite so depressing.