Flat Falcons can’t wave 2018 goodbye soon enough

During the Atlanta Falcons’ latest embarrassment, the bored fans at Lambeau started doing the wave.

The announcers made note, the live-feed followed. The wave. The fans of the then-4-7-1 Green Bay Packers, who had just fired their head coach, had gotten so tired of watching their really-not-great football team succeeding that they’d resorted to doing the wave.

The wave.

Let’s wave this season, goodbye, folks, and never speak of it again.

The Falcons started sparking a few little flickers of hope’s flame early in this one, but of course, someone sneezed and dropped the match into the water. And then they tripped and fell down a gigantic flight of stairs, at the bottom of which was a pit of hungry lions.

The Falcons got devoured like a plate of fine cheese in Wisconsin Sunday, and you have to wonder how much is left of them to eat. Every loss that cascades down in this five-game streak only rots out even more the immediate foundation of this team.

It’s a strong-enough foundation to withstand a 28-3 Super Bowl collapse, so it will weather a five-game skid and eventual losing season just fine. But it will do its damage for now.

As much as you need to trust Dan Quinn to lead this team, there are going to be some consequences for the 2018 season. A lot of the causes the team couldn’t avoid, but a few of them, they could.

Nonetheless, this is a bad football team at the moment, and the spirit just isn’t going to be there right now to totally uphold the team’s vaunted culture. It will probably return next summer, but they’ll have to restore faith in the mentality of this team going ahead. Things shouldn’t have gotten this bad. That’s on Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff to rectify.

The team probably needs another win to bump up the maladies that flow through the locker room and give the players a little something to build on for next season. There are no guarantees, though. If they look like this the rest of the way out, they may not win another game.

As for now, again, they’re just bad. They play to the final whistle, but it’s not like that matters. There’s just not a lot left to say about the 2018 Falcons. We’re heading to a top-10 draft pick, and we’re probably going to see some roster and coaching change. There will be more to ponder after the Buccaneers game.

Let’s hope they show more fight down the stretch, at the least. They owe everyone that, mainly themselves. Right now, they’re as lifeless as a casual crowd wave at Lambeau on a cold December afternoon.