Talk:1986 Atlanta Falcons season

Learn more about this page

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

National Football League Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject National Football League, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the NFL on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.National Football LeagueWikipedia:WikiProject National Football LeagueTemplate:WikiProject National Football LeagueNational Football League articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Georgia (U.S. state): Atlanta Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state), a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of Georgia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Georgia (U.S. state)Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)Template:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)Georgia (U.S. state) articles

Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article is supported by the Atlanta task force (assessed as Low-importance).

Atlanta task force To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Assess : Rate Atlanta related articles from Unassessed Atlanta articles and Category:Unknown-importance Atlanta articles.
Citing sources : Unreferenced Atlanta articles
Cleanup : Cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category, the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.
Infobox : Atlanta articles without infoboxes
Map : Wikipedia requested maps in Atlanta
Photo : Wikipedia requested photographs in Atlanta
Stubs : Work on stubs in Category:Atlanta stubs.
Other : * Help out with articles placed in Category:Atlanta articles needing attention
- Add {{WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)|class=|importance=|atlanta=|atlanta-importance=}} project banner to Atlanta-related articles to talk pages and assess.
- Maintain and further improve articles already of high-quality.
- Get Atlanta into Featured article status.
- Improve groups of articles to meet the standards for a Good or Featured Topic.

WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state) To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Crooked Creek (Georgia), Ed Defore Sports Complex, Audery Mill Creek, More (Georgia)... More (U.S.)...
Assess : Rate articles from Unassessed Georgia (U.S. state) articles and Unknown-importance Georgia (U.S. state) articles.
Citing sources : Unreferenced Georgia (U.S. state) articles
Cleanup : Cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category.
Geographical coordinates : more Georgia (U.S. state) articles missing geocoordinate data
Infobox : Georgia (U.S. state) articles without infoboxes
Map : Wikipedia requested maps in Georgia (U.S. state)
Photo : Wikipedia requested photographs in Georgia (U.S. state)
Stubs : Work on stubs in articles in Georgia (U.S. state) stubs, Georgia (U.S. state) radio station stubs, Georgia (U.S. state) road stubs and Georgia (U.S. state) geography stubs.
Other : *Deletion sorting: Please see the collection of discussions on the deletion of articles related to Georgia (U.S. state) - compiled by WikiProject Deletion sorting
- Help out with articles placed in Category:Georgia (U.S. state) articles needing attention
- Notability: Articles with notability concerns, listed at WikiProject Notability
- Tag the talk pages of Georgia (U.S. state)-related articles with the {{WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)}} banner.
- Get Georgia (U.S. state) to a featured article quality standard

Merged articles edit

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I merged the other 1986 Falcons season article with this one. Here is the contents of the old article, in case anyone wants to integrate some of it into the article: Quadzilla99 10:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This article reviews the Atlanta Falcons 1986 season.

Season review edit

The Falcons went in to the 1986 season with little to no expectations. Dan Henning the Atlanta coach was going into his 4th year as the head coach having going 7-9 in 1983 and with terrible 4-12 records in 1984 and 1985. Many saw it as Hennings last chance to save his head coaching job, Atlanta entered the season with no real talent except for a couple of players such as Gerald Riggs, Scott Case, Bill Fralic and Jeff VanNote.

David Archer was the starting quarterback heading into the season. They started with an impressive 4-0 start, however their schedule was rather easy beating their then NFC West rivals the New Orleans Saints 31-10 in the Louisiana Superdome. They opened at home in Atlanta with a 33-13 victory over the then St. Louis Cardinals (Arizona Cardinals now). Then after a thrilling 37-35 win in Dallas they beat the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23-20.

The first loss came to the Philadelphia Eagles whose strong defense coached by Buddy Ryan took care of the Falcons 0-16. Henning wouldn't let the loss affect his team as they beat the playoff bound Los Angeles Rams 26-14 from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Things seemed to be going great for the team as they were able to tie the powerhouse San Francisco 49ers 10-10. Following the tie to the 49ers the wheels fell off and the Falcons lost all their momentum, their now stellar 5-1-1 record and undefeated 2-0-1 NFC West division record meant nothing as they dropped five straight games, starting with a 7-14 loss to the Los Angeles Rams then a 17-25 loss to the defending AFC East champions and the AFC conference champions.

They returned home to face the 8-1 New York Jets who rolled over everybody they played the Falcons still had a good 5-3-1 record but it didn't matter as New York beat them by two touchdowns 28-14 dropping them to 5-4-1. The next week a 10-13 heartbreaker of a loss to the Chicago Bears knocked them to .500, and 4th in the NFC West. They then ended their five game losing streak with 0-20 loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

The now 5-6-1 Falcons handed the Miami only one of their for losses 20-14 in the Orange Bowl. A embarrassing loss to a team in the Indianapolis Colts who started the year 0-13, which was the Colts first win of the year. By that time the fans had become uninterested and the players discouraged with a 6-8-1 record they knew they were out of the playoff picture with Los Angeles and San Francisco already in the Falcons dropped their last home game 9-14 to New Orleans. They concluded their season with a 20-6 victory in the Pontiac Silverdome.

After the Season edit

Dan Henning who hadn't impressed the Atlanta Falcons front office with his 22-41-1 record over four years so they fired him. He was replaced by Marion Campbell who lasted only 43 games in Atlanta compiling an awful 11-32 record. No matter what the coaching changes were the Falcons, from 1980-2000 made the playoffs five times in 1980, 1982, 1991, 1995, and 1998

Rankings for 1986 Season edit

Atlanta was 6th in scoring defense allowing 280 points, 21st in scoring offense scoring 280 points. Passing; 246 completions of 452 attempts for 3046 yards. David Archer threw for 10 of the teams 14 passing touchdowns, Turk Schonert threw the other four. Archer had nine of the teams 17 interceptions, and Schonert was picked the other eight times. The team rushed for 12 touchdowns nine of which came from Gerald Riggs, one from Schonert, one from William Andrews, one Cliff Austin.

Add topic