From the moment they blew a 28-3 lead and lost the Super Bowl, the Falcons have been asked how they’ll deal with the lingering impact of blowing a 28-3 lead and losing a Super Bowl.
But after wrapping up their offseason program, and as they head into the break before training camp, quarterback Matt Ryan swears the work they’ve done this spring means the loss is behind them.
“We’re already back at it,” Ryan said, via D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “When we started as a team in April, we got together before that as players down in Miami. It was time to move on. It was time to look forward.
“Anytime that we kind of dwell on that is wasted time. We have to focus on trying to become the best football team that this group can be.”
Of course, those are the kind of things every team that loses the Super Bowl says, even if no one lost it quite the way the Falcons did. Not since 1993 has a runner-up reached the Super Bowl again, and the Bills have a certain legacy of their own.
But Ryan stresses the changes the Falcons have seen (losing coordinator Kyle Shanahan, among others) as creating a new challenge for his team which will keep them from dwelling on the past.
“But this year’s group is different and this team is different,” Ryan said. “We have to find a way to become the best football team that we can, find ways to get better and improve. That’s what we are trying to do.
“Our focus is what is front of us. We learned a lot from last year. We’ll take those learning lessons with us, but we have to find a way to make this group the best group that we can be.”
And perhaps the more times they say it, more people will believe the Falcons have truly put the Super Bowl collapse behind them.