At the end of offseason workouts, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan said that he and his teammates have put their Super Bowl loss to the Patriots behind them and shifted their focus to what’s in front of them rather than on the lead that evaporated in Houston.
Running back Devonta Freeman agrees with Ryan that the team can’t “dwell on the things that went wrong” and that they need to “seize the moment” moving forward, but he isn’t claiming to be completely over going from 25 points up to losing the game in overtime.
“It’s hard to move on from something like that,” Freeman said on Sirius XM NFL Radio with Bruce Murray and Brady Quinn. “I don’t think I’ll ever move on from something like that. To be honest, I think it’ll always play in the back of my head, just because I know, I feel like we’re going to get a Super Bowl this year. And I feel like this could have been two [Super Bowl wins in a row]. I could have been close to Tom Brady, you know what I mean? It’ll always play in the back of my head and the back of my mind.”
It’s been a long time since the Bills completed their run of four straight Super Bowl losses and they were the last Super Bowl loser to return to the game the next year, so history is working against Freeman’s feeling that the team will be in Minnesota next February. Keeping their heads in the present and not the past will be vital to the Falcons’ chances of changing that, although Freeman’s answer is probably a bit more honest than one that says the mental blows from their loss have been wiped away.