Falcons have to rebuild
One of the key tasks facing the Atlanta Falcons this season will be to rebuild their tarnished image after the whole Michael Vick fiasco. I think this will actually be fairly easy for the team to accomplish, particularly if they use a good market research firm to help them get a feel for the way fans are thinking. I believe that most fans realize that the organization had nothing to do with Vick’s dogfighting activities, so it won’t take much for them to move on.
The Falcons will still sell out their home games, they’ll still sell jerseys and other logo merchandise (just nothing with #7 on it), and they’ll still generate decent revenues all the way around.
Whether they make the playoffs or not is another matter altogether… but that wasn’t exactly a lock with Vick calling the signals anyway!