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 theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)