Tag: NFL

In honor of the Atlanta Falcons introducing their first uniform redesign in 17 years, we're taking a look back at the team's closet from 1966 to now.

The Falcons battle the Saints at home on Thanksgiving, Ponce City Market decks out for the holidays, and Chaka Khan performs at State Farm Arena.

It’s called the Alliance of American Football. It's billed as a spring developmental league for the NFL and an off-season football and gambling fix. But the history of American football is littered with pro leagues that failed. Will the AAF be different?

Nicknamed the "party with a purpose," the annual event, which this year took place at Cobb Galleria Centre, brings in a chef to represent each of the 32 NFL teams, as well as a "player rep" for each team—former players, many of whom are Pro Football Hall-of-Famers.

As Atlanta prepares to host the Super Bowl, we take a look back at one of the biggest years in Atlanta football history—the 1998 Falcons season.

What does it take to host a Super Bowl? The host committee is expecting a wave of more than 1 million visitors over the 10-day hoopla that culminates in the Big Game on February 3 at the 75,000-seat Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The event will mark Atlanta’s third Super Bowl and the first in 19 years. Let’s hope for zero freak ice storms this time.

When Arthur Blank told his team he wanted Mercedes-Benz Stadium to be certified LEED Platinum, he recalled, “there was complete silence. Now sometimes silence, in a legal sense, can be construed as assent. In management, though, it could mean you’ve gone out of your mind.”

The night the losing finally ended only to come roaring back once again, there was a quiet peace inside one man’s house out in Roswell. Yes, the night Atlanta almost won the Super Bowl—finally shaking off that dubious nickname of Loserville—and somehow still lost the Super Bowl, life went on. If only, perhaps, because that man knows the hounding howl of disappointment better than most.

Arthur Blank knows his 31-year-old quarterback, Matt Ryan, so well that the two men often text each other, but even he was surprised last night when he saw Ryan told Pro Football Talk that he'd like to still be playing at Tom Brady’s age of 39. “Matt never told me that, so it made my night.”

He could do it all: Score touchdowns. Steal bases. Rap. Okay, maybe not rap. But Deion Sanders was a freakishly talented athlete, and for three seasons in the early ’90s, the stars aligned so that he was both a Falcon (feared pass defender) and a Brave (feared base runner).