Photo by All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsAn Avatar Outdrew Everything This Team Has Put on the Field
The most-watched thing the Falcons produced this week came out of the social media department, and the club has not said a word about why. The attention is real. The football is 2-4.
The best-performing unit in the Falcons building this week was the social media team. Not a compliment.
Here is the scale. More than 11 million views by early Thursday afternoon, per FOX 5 Atlanta. More than 15 million by 5:44 p.m. ET the same day, per USA TODAY. Four million more while one Thursday afternoon went by, on a profile picture.
Nobody came for a helmet stripe. They came for a comparison to Nazi-era imagery, not my argument today.
I did not count every post this club made this year. I do not have to. The Washington Post filed. So did a sports desk in Australia by Friday morning. Name me the Atlanta drive that got that list.
Now the part that should bother you. The operation did its job. The club put Sunday's throwback in writing on September 10: "Week 7: Oct. 25 vs. San Francisco 49ers -- Throwback." Chris Creamer of SportsLogos.net told NBC News that matching an avatar to a throwback is "a very common thing" across all sports.
The most routine task on the list became the loudest thing this club did all season. Its entire public answer, per NBC News: it does not have a new logo, and nothing further. The picture was gone by Thursday afternoon, swapped for a red 1966 helmet, unexplained.
This team is 2-4 overall, 0-3 at home. San Francisco arrives 6-0 Sunday at 1 p.m.
Attention is the one thing this franchise has scaled all year, and it will not say a word into it. Sunday the picture becomes a jersey. Tell me I'm wrong.
The Tilt
The social media team is the only unit in this building reaching anybody.
— Dex Ponce
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