Red alert 🚨 pic.twitter.com/3vwpFEkiyt
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) July 20, 2023
The Atlanta Falcons created a stir on Thursday, announcing on social media that they’ll be wearing throwback red helmets for home games with the Green Bay Packers (on Sept. 17) and Washington Commanders (on Oct. 15) as well as their inevitable loss to the New Orleans Saints (on Nov. 26).
These helmets feature the iconic F-shaped dirty bird logo outlined in white, worn from 1990 to 2002 — a stretch in which the Falcons went 92-115-1 (a winning percentage of .445) with humiliating playoff losses in Super Bowl XXXIII and a 20-6 divisional-round dismantling in 1998, the demise of their famed 14-2 squad.
The Saints went 97-111 in the same stretch (a winning percentage of .466) and only really suffered the indignity of hiring Mike Ditka to run their franchise into the ground, though we’ll throw the Falcons a bone and acknowledge their 27-20 win over the Saints in New Orleans during the 1991 wild card round. There, we acknowledged it. Now let’s move on.
What about more recent history? The Saints have won 8 of their last 10 games with the Falcons, dating back to 2018, including the last three in a row. They haven’t lost in Atlanta since 2017. Hopefully they pack some unique uniforms of their home for a high-profile rivalry game. The all-time series history is tied up at 54-54, not including that playoff game (congrats, we mentioned it twice), so this is an opportunity for the Saints to put some debates to bed.
