One of the benefits of the holiday season is that you can slow down and reflect on the year that just passed, and with hindsight and time comes some form of clarity. I now realize that eating an entire cookie tray of nachos paired with a tumbler of whiskey was a huge mistake, and I now realize that the relative success of the 2016 and 2017 seasons quickly conditioned me to drink too deeply of the well when it came to the Falcons.
The truth is, the Falcons were too thin, too reliant on a handful of stars on defense, and too prone to boneheaded mistakes.