It’s been a banner start to the season for the upstart Atlanta Falcons, who have pulled off home wins over the Carolina Panthers and Green Bay Packers to open the year. Looking forward, the Falcons enter their Week 3 road opener against the 1-1 Detroit Lions on Sunday afternoon with long odds of earning their third straight wins, with oddsmakers at BetMGM Sportsbook giving Atlanta +155 odds of winning. Following the Falcons surprising 2-0 start, BetGeorgia.com broke from Georgia sportsbooks updates and utilized data from ChampsorChumps to see how every team to start 3-0 over the previous five seasons has ultimately fared.
How NFL Teams Starting 3-0 Finish
Below is some information that Georgia sportsbook apps likely won't have in the future. Here’s where recent 3-0 squads have gone on the field in recent years.
A 3-0 Start Would Be a Boost To Falcons Playoff Chances
It’s not farfetched to say that Atlanta should go ahead and plan on making the postseason given the Falcons playoff chances if they win this weekend, based on how recent 3-0 teams have fared at season’s end. Of the last 24 NFL teams to begin the season with three straight wins, 20 wound up making the playoffs, meaning a whopping 83.3% of those squads made the postseason. In the last five seasons, 41.7% of NFL teams that began the year 3-0 made it to their given conference’s championship round or further, while six of the last 10 Super Bowl teams started the season with a 3-0 record.
For Atlanta, the franchise’s last 3-0 start was in 2017, when the Dan Quinn-coached club went 10-6, en route to a playoff run that saw them knock off the L.A. Rams (26-13) in the NFC Wild Card round, before falling to the Philadelphia Eagles on the road, 11-7, in the NFC Divisional round. Fast forward six years, and the 2023 Falcons led by third year head coach Arthur Smith are looking to make it back to the NFL playoffs — beginning with Sunday’s road clash with the Lions. The Falcons Super Bowl odds would see improved numbers as well.
