http://www.nfl.com/n...-2013-faceplantATLANTA -- Last January, at the end of a bipolar Sunday at the Georgia Dome, they were 10 yards away from the Super Bowl.
Ten months later, to borrow from the Rolling Stones' abbreviated psychedelic phase, the Atlanta Falcons are 2,000 light years from home.
As the reigning NFC South champions prepare to host this year's division leaders, the New Orleans Saints, on "Thursday Night Football", they are a shell-shocked shadow of their former selves. Coming off a 41-28 beatdown by the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers four days ago, the Falcons are 2-8 and completely mystified as to how they fell so far, so fast.
With six games left in this lost season, embattled coach Mike Smith and his players are still coming to terms with the notion that they're in the thick of the race for the No. 1 overall pick in next spring's draft, rather than gunning for another shot at the franchise's first championship ring.
"It's disappointing to have our team playing the way we've been playing," Smith said Tuesday night, two days after being given a public vote of confidence by owner Arthur Blank. "I really believe each year in the NFL, the dynamics change, and there's always a different feel to it than the previous year. But yeah, this has been (surprising). We've got to keep fighting through, just like any other season."
According to several sources familiar with the situation, Smith, who won more games over the previous five years than any coach except the New England Patriots' Bill Belichick, has been told personally by Blank he'll return for the 2014 season, regardless of how miserable this one turns out. Not surprisingly, general manager Thomas Dimitroff -- a two-time NFL Executive of the Year who hired the previously unheralded Smith shortly after taking over in 2008 -- is also safe.
Asked after the defeat to the Bucs if he still had complete confidence in Dimitroff and Smith, Blank told reporters, "I do. I absolutely, do. They've earned it over the last five years. This is a tough business ... The guys are proven leaders and proven by success. Their records speak for themselves. They'll do the work that has to be done with my full support."
This is not to say that Blank isn't exceptionally frustrated with the current state of affairs. If the owner had ultra-high expectations coming into the 2013 season, he certainly wasn't alone. The Falcons -- who'd captured their first playoff victory of the Dimitroff/Smith era by winning a dramatic divisional-round game over the Seattle Seahawks at the Dome -- came tantalizingly close to repeating the feat in the NFC Championship Game, jumping out to a 17-0 lead over the San Francisco 49ers and finishing 30 feet from salvation in an eventual 28-24 defeat.
They've been searching for their mojo ever since. Not since 1999 has a team coming off a conference-title-game appearance put up such a poor record through its first 10 games, when the Dirty Bird Falcons followed up their lone Super Bowl appearance with a decidedly ungraceful crash landing.
Just as that '99 Atlanta team was waylaid by the crushing loss of an irreplaceable star (halfback Jamal Anderson's torn ACL early in its second game), this year's Falcons haven't recovered from Pro Bowl receiver Julio Jones' season-ending foot injury in Week 5.