The 2008 Atlanta Falcons season was the 43rd season for the team in the National Football League. Overcoming a disappointing 4-12 record, quarterback Michael Vick's dog fighting scandal and head coach Bobby Petrino's abrupt resignation in 2007, the Falcons, who were expected to be in a rebuilding phase, completed the regular season with a surprising 11-5 record and earned the #5 seed in the NFC Playoffs under first-year head coach Mike Smith; however, the team would fall to the eventual NFC champion Arizona Cardinals in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
Mike Smith was named 2008 NFL Coach of the Year, and quarterback Matt Ryan earned the Offensive Rookie of the Year Award.
Read more about 2008 Atlanta Falcons Season: 2008 NFL Draft, 2008 Offseason, Roster, Staff
Famous quotes containing the words falcons and/or season:
“Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
The union of this ever-diverse pair!
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.”
—George Meredith (1828–1909)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)