Promising start leaves sour taste

ATLANTA - First, the good news.

The Atlanta Falcons' season is officially over. It can't hurt to watch anymore.

Now the bad news.

No matter how miserably the Falcons played in the second half of the season - and in particular on Sunday against the Carolina Panthers - they are still not eligible to draft Reggie Bush.

The only way you can describe the Falcons' performance on Sunday is with the "Q" word. They flat out quit - though that implies they actually started to begin with.

"This makes me sick to my stomach," said Falcons linebacker Keith Brooking.

"I hadn't (been) whipped like this since I was a junior against Clemson," said rookie linebacker Darrell Shropshire, a former South Carolina player.

Until the Falcons scored a meaningless touchdown with 1:18 remaining to establish the final at 44-11, this finale was slated to be the worst home loss since 1967 - the second year in the franchise's history. The only thing that last score proved is that the book says when you're trailing by 35 with just more than a minute remaining, you go for two points.

This was the lingering taste that will be the legacy of the 2005 Falcons season that started with such promise. The

Falcons failed to even achieve the one potentially salvaging grace available to them Sunday - to erase the embarrassing fact that never in the franchise's history has Atlanta posted back-to-back winning seasons.

In a town where the Braves have won 14 consecutive division titles, it doesn't seem like too much to ask.

"I feel bad about letting down our fans," said an unusually contrite Falcons coach Jim Mora. "We had a chance to go 9-7 and get rid of that 40-year problem that we have, and we didn't get it done."

They didn't even get it started. And it seems like only yesterday - or the seven seasons - that Atlanta owned this divisional rivalry with Carolina. The Falcons were 12-2 against Panthers from 1998 to 2004. In the Georgia Dome, the Falcons were 9-1 all-time in the Interstate 85 series.

Until Sunday, the most famous quitting incident ever associated with this rivalry happened in 1998.

That's when the Panthers got whipped so thoroughly in a 51-23 undressing that Carolina quarterback Kerry Collins actually walked into his coach's office and quit the team the next day.

Mora went a different direction after Sunday's debacle.

"I'm upbeat," he said. "It's going to be hard to change my mind."

I don't even know what to say about that, so let me abruptly segue onto a new tangent. Sunday's show was further proof that the final week of the NFL regular season becomes more and more of a joke every year.

Let's just say bowl games from Shreveport, La., to Boise, Idaho, haven't cornered the market on meaningless football around the turn of the new year.

First you have teams like the Colts and Seahawks who have homefield clinched and bench key personnel because they don't want to risk losing any superstar players before the playoffs.

Then you have the matchups such as the Texans and 49ers where neither team really wants to win and forfeit the right to draft the next great franchise player in Bush, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner from Southern Cal.

In between the extremes you have games like the one waged Sunday at the Georgia Dome. The Falcons had nothing to gain and the Panthers had everything to lose. There's no surprise which team showed up.

"We answered the bell," Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme said.

The Falcons didn't answer their wake-up call - though you had a hard time finding anyone who would admit it.

"They didn't roll over," said Panthers rookie linebacker Thomas Davis, a former Georgia player. "You can never say that about a team like Atlanta."

Mora, still smarting from a week of bad press regarding his bad temper, certainly wouldn't say it.

"I feel like the character of our team is such that we don't quit," Mora said. "I don't think that we played well at all, but I don't think that there was a guy on our team that quit. I hope when I look at the film it confirms that for me."

I hope he doesn't expect the film to add 10 percent of effort. What you saw was what it was - a disturbing display of unmotivated football by a team that has been going backwards since October.

Through 40 years, the Falcons have provided more than their share of disappointing seasons. But this one might have been the worst.

Just when you believed they'd turned a corner and made this a real NFL town, Atlanta tanks and brings back all the old frustrations that have haunted the franchise since its inception.

All that remained was the loser's "wait 'til next year" mantra.

"The sky is the limit for this football team," said franchise quarterback Michael Vick, trying to spin it positively for the future. "This year is over with, and it didn't go the way we wanted it to go. ... Next year has to be better."

There is no guarantee on that. Let's just hope they show up next season.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.