Falcons fans are used to watching national football media disrespect and marginalize their team. Matt Ryan is arguably the best fit for the MVP award but writers are still calling him a fraud. The Falcons are being written off as eventual playoff losers. Some are arguing for less qualified players at MVP.

Some are coming around after the team avoided a historic crash like 2015. Included in them: Luke Kerr-Dineen of USA Today. He calls the New England Patriots the very best team in the NFL. But he thinks their biggest weakness can be exploited thanks to Atlanta’s best side of the ball.

The formula for beating the Pats — if there is one — is not in trying to restrict their offense, but rather cracking them open on defense. Looking around the 2016 NFL playoff picture, and factoring-in Derek Carr’s devastating injury, there’s only one team best-equipped to do that.

His stats show Tom Brady and the offense have been frighteningly consistent. A balanced team is just unlikely to beat out Bill Belichick, because the Patriots will do the sum of it all just a little bit better.

As we’ve seen this year, the Falcons are anything but balanced. The defensive unit, at their very best, can be described as competent. The offense? I’ll let Kerr-Dineen describe it.

Atlanta score more points per game than any team in the NFL, and of teams involved in the playoffs, it’ll come in with the highest number of offensive yards, average yards per game, and expected points per game. They’ve done it all facing the toughest schedule in the league, and as ESPN’s Bill Barnwell notes, it’s good enough to rank them “in the 99th percentile of offenses since the AFL-NFL merger of 1970.”

/impressed whistling noise

I can’t think of any other time someone has suggested the Falcons are the only team that may be able to topple the Patriots. In the Mike Smith era, we were easily handled by Belichick. With Atlanta’s prolific offense under Kyle Shanahan and aggressive nature under Dan Quinn, this year may be different.