RUNNING OFF COFFEE AND NEW YEAR VIBES — I am (and likely always will be) a believer in momentum.

When I was a freshman in college working as a bright-eyed reporter at the Red & Black, a student newspaper at the University of Georgia, my editor in chief said momentum and the effects of it weren't real. His claim was that its a manufactured and lazy way to essentially say the team wasn't performing at the peak and pace it had previously. It's not the mythical, magical and unexplainable reason a shift in a game happens the way the media sometimes makes it out to be.

Which, OK, I can agree with that, sure. But even in that, I can't say momentum doesn't exist entirely. It's like any emotion. Just because there is nothing tangible to explain why we feel the way we do, that doesn't discredit the feelings we do have in any given moment. In sports, I see and feel momentum all the time, and I think any coach or player would say the same thing. It's real. You can't tell me that its not.

And if you're the Falcons in 2024, momentum has been real for you, too.

When you've had it, things have been good. Really good. The Falcons had all the momentum in the world in the month of October. They left that month having gone on a tear, particularly offensively. They left the second quarter of the season feeling in complete control of their future. They were 6-3 overall, 4-1 in divisional play. Things were good. Momentum was theirs. Until it wasn't.

Then, the pendulum swung the other way in the next five weeks of the season. By the end of November, momentum was lost, and with it went the wins.

It wasn't unlike the Falcons' first half success to second half woes in the overtime loss to the Washington Commanders on Sunday Night Football this week.

The Falcons put together a first half worthy of the 17-7 lead they took into halftime. Coming out of the locker room, however, one play — a third-down, new-life-giving, illegal-contact penalty on DeAngelo Malone — tilted momentum Washington's way. It was momentum that, for the next quarter and a half, they never relinquished.

From the start of the third quarter until the first few minutes of the fourth quarter, it was all Washington. The Commanders put two consecutive double-digit-play drives together to Atlanta's one three-and-out series. I'm talking 29 Washington plays to Atlanta's three. I'm talking 139 net yards for the Commanders to the Falcons' negative-1. I'm talking 14-plus minutes of time off the clock with Washington possession to the Falcons' 2-ish minutes.

This quarter? It was their November.

But I will give it to the Falcons, though: The team wouldn't go quietly.

They mounted a gutsy, final push to bring the score to 24-all in the final minutes of the game. They made noise.

Noise similar to the ruckus made when the Falcons replaced Kirk Cousins for Michael Penix Jr. as the starting quarterback two weeks ago. Similar to the noise made this past week when the Cowboys beat the Buccaneers and put the Falcons back atop the NFC South.

The noise sparked hope and showed the Falcons weren't just going to roll over and take their fate for what it looked like it was going to be. They had a little fight left in them.

But on Sunday night, the fight wasn't enough as the Commanders marched down the field in overtime to seal the win and clinch their spot in the postseason. The fight wasn't enough to overcome questionable decisions made in clock management by this Falcons' coaching staff.

It left the Falcons in no-man's land. A place they've been before, where, sure, they need to beat the Panthers in Week 18, but they also need a miracle by way of a Tampa Bay loss to the Saints to somehow, someway make it to the top of the division.

They do not control their fate. And momentum feels all but gone.

It's why the Falcons' loss to the Commanders Sunday night was a metaphorical microcosm of their entire season. They had their moments. Good moments, in fact. Moments that won them games and kept momentum in their grasp. But as soon as momentum began swinging the other way? The proverbial wheels wobbled and fell off, only for a drastic maneuver — like a Week 16 quarterback change or a fourth-down touchdown pass to Kyle Pitts — to help put the wheels back on for a moment.

But a moment does not make a season. A collection of moments do. And, unfortunately for the 2024 Falcons, there were not enough good moments to push this team to the postseason. That is... without a momentum swing in none other than the Saints' favor. And that seems like a miracle.