By The Chief
So, it looks like you’ve found yourself face to face with the Falcons of Atlanta. Before we get into anything, I need to clear up a few things. First off, they are indeed a football team. I know any reasonable human wouldn’t consider a team not referred to as “The Football Team” to actually be one, but that person would be wrong. Well, they would kind of be wrong. The Falcons do play football, but they don’t play football well. It seems as though when the *insert NFL welcomed the Falcons into their stadium for a game this last Sunday, they forgot to utilize the proven steps that a team needs to follow in order to beat them. Just so this doesn’t happen again, we’ve gathered together the steps that you need to take to guarantee that if you come across the Atlanta Falcons you won’t have a problem taking them down in a game of football.
Step 1: Fill your team with living, breathing humans. Preferably you would like to go with men in the range of 22-30 years old who have experience playing football, although this is not 100% necessary. You can use some big kids or women who have no problem taking a hit if you’d like. It won’t make much of a difference.
Step 2: Do not score any points in the beginning. The Vikings actually did follow this step pretty well. The key to beating the Falcons is to lull them into as high a sense of security as possible. The Falcon offense will continue to score points until they get to a place where a comeback is possible. Use this strategy until you are down somewhere between 17 and 24 points.
Step 3: This is where it gets fun. At this point, Matt Ryan and the Falcons are making Sunday afternoon plans on the sideline due to an unearned sense of security about a victory that will never come. Just around the end of the 3rd quarter you can begin to score. Start out slow. Take the ball down the field in a way that will get Matt Ryan to say “aww, good for them”.
Step 4: Sit back as the Falcons have their inevitable 3 and out. They will do this 100% of the time.
Step 5: Get your offense back on the field and for the most part do what you did in step 3. This is where it gets a little tough, and where the Vikings went wrong. Instead of hitting the Falcons with another long, majestic touchdown drive and sending them into a realm of panic out of which they would never be able to emerge, they had a 3 and out. This allowed the Falcons’ confidence to remain high and they went out and scored again. When step 5 is over, Matt Ryan should be in a very scary state of complete panic.
Step 6: Roll it on. The more you score, the more anxious Matt Ryan will get, and the less capable he will become. And as their captain loses his mind, so does the rest of the team. You can use this opportunity to score as many points as is necessary to give the Falcons a ray of hope that they can actually win this. However, we all know it won’t happen.
Step 7: The game is now over and congratulations, you won! Now you can go to the middle of the field and shake Matt Ryan’s hand. He will most likely look very defeated and questioning his talent as a football player. This is next step is probably the most important.
Step 8: When Matt Ryan casually complains to you that he “thought he had that one,” you must tell him this line word for word. “Nah, you played great. I guess we just got lucky today”. This will ensure that he goes into the next game with confidence that it wasn’t his fault and the next team can run the steps right back.
And that is how you beat the Atlanta Falcons in a football game. Any questions can be directed to the creator of this strategy. His email is billzgotskillz@newenglandpatriots.com.