It is obvious to me that they have never come back from the 28-3 debacle, and will not likely come back from it without major changes. Their actual W/L record since that game happened to them, has been abysmal.

It has the trajectory of, 28-3 was their high water mark, and everything slowly collapsed from that point forward.

I don't want them to change a thing -- I like the Falcons sucking. But in reality, at some point they are going to need to clean house and start over, burn some sage, and get on with the rebuild. 28-3 was a thing that happened to them -- they have obviously "lost their mojo" (to borrow from Austin Powers) and now big changes will need to be made to get it back. Like the Minnesota Vikings and Buffalo Bills always losing Super Bowls in the 1970s, you can't really come back from something like that, it will drive your fan base and your players crazy. The new players get infected with the contagion from the old players, the crowd feeds off the negative energy, they know what's coming, it's ugly and it won't go away until they make big changes.

Its like the Falcons eventually got exposed in the grand daddy of them all on Defense. Its not just they havent recovered from it, their defense has looked as bad or worse since the 3rd and 4th qtr of that SB.

Their drafts have been bad, they remind me of the Packers under McCarthy his last 3-4 years where they never really hit on anyone, Falcons hit on Hooper by luck in the 5th I think, but I wouldnt be sold on Hooper performing to any level past this year if they clean house, similar to how Cam Meredith was in Chicago for 1 year and went into a power house offense the next.

Good comparison though the Packers dug their own hole by completely ignoring free agency for years.

I never believed they were really that great of a team during Rodgers' prime cause they would get blown the hell out embarrassingly in the playoffs. NFC favorites every year and would look like garbage when they finally ran into a decent team in the playoffs. Their fans talk about 2014 a lot, but I'm fairly confident if they win the NFCCG, New England would've took care of them with ease in the Super Bowl. The Pats had barely lost to them in the regular season at Lambeau and Bill B rarely ever loses to the same opponent twice.

They were always several pieces away from being a true legit contender, but playing in a crappy division and racking up 5-6 easy wins vs Chicago, Minnesota and Detroit used to mask that.

Even this year, I'm still not convinced the Packers are that good. They're beating up on a crappy division yet again, and haven't looked impressive in any of their wins. They beat the Vikings before Kirk Cousins got hot and even in that game, they struggled. They barely beat the Chiefs without Mahomes and 3 of their defensive starters and looked very beatable that whole game.