The Falcons begin the road to a Super Bowl in Atlanta today

The Super Bowl is over. We had long since closed the book on the Falcons 2017 season, with its exciting moments and deeply frustrating finish, but we had to wait for the Patriots and Eagles to close things out for us. Now that we’re officially past that, though, it’s time to start talking about an exhilarating and terrifying possibility.

That possibility, of course, is that the Falcons might become the first NFL team ever to play a Super Bowl in their own stadium.

Atlanta won the rights to host the Super Bowl in the wake of their new Mercedes-Benz Stadium being built, and right away the talk turned to whether the Falcons would be the first time to make (and hopefully win) a Super Bowl on home turf. The Vikings came tantalizingly close to doing so this year, as they made the NFC Conference Championship before the Eagles beat the crap out of them.

The Falcons don’t have a “window,” per se, but they do have a lot of big contracts coming up in the years ahead. They also have one of the strongest rosters in the NFL at the moment, meaning a Super Bowl run looms as at least a semi-realistic possibility for them if they stay healthy and put together a quality offseason.

I rarely say this, but given the history at stake, anything short of a Super Bowl’s going to be a bit of disappointment in 2018. The Falcons need to try to stay relevant for as many years as possible, but I don’t know if things will ever line up as well for them to make history as it will this season.

Let the offseason begin!