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What if the Falcons win (LOL)/lose against the Seattle Seahawks

I don’t even know why I write the “win” part of this column anymore.

Atlanta Falcons v Seattle Seahawks Photo by Otto Greule Jr /Getty Images

Another week, another L. Thankfully the bye week is coming up, which will spare us a full week of having to watch the Falcons get embarrassed on the football field.

This week, MVP frontrunner Russell Wilson and the 5-2 Seattle Seahawks come to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium for a clash with the Falcons. Wilson is fortunate to be able to bolster his MVP credentials against Atlanta’s pathetic defense. I thought this would be a fantastic showdown before the season started, but I ended up being wrong.

It’s that time of the week again — the game is less than 24 hours from kicking off, and football fever is nearing its weekly climax.

Let’s take a look at the hypotheticals of this game — what if the Falcons win and move their record to 2-6? What if they lose and fall to 1-7?


If the Falcons win

There’s no reason to look at any standings that aren’t the draft order for the rest of the season. I think we’ve reached the point where wins do nothing but hurt the team’s draft position.

A victory would likely buy Dan Quinn some time until the end of the season before he’s fired. There’s no reason for Quinn to be Atlanta’s head coach going into the 2020 season, but Arthur Blank may feel a reluctance to fire him going into the bye week if the Birds are coming off of a win.

Seattle would also really take a backseat to the 49ers in the NFC West race if they suffered defeat at the hands of the lowly Falcons.

If the Falcons lose

They’ll be trucking right along, in lock step with where they’ve been all season. Defeat would keep the Falcons firmly within range of that sweet top 5 draft pick, and may give the team an added sense of urgency to ship off some veteran players ahead of Tuesday’s trade deadline.

This would also likely be Dan Quinn’s final game as Atlanta’s head coach — it’s kind of poetic that it would come against his former team. There really would be no reason for Blank to keep Quinn going into the bye week; and if he did then the fanbase would be well within its rights to question and criticize such a decision.

It was fun looking at the standings and potential tiebreakers earlier in the season, but the draft, and the Saints’ annual playoff collapse, is all we have to look forward to now. This has become our existence for the rest of the 2019 season.