The Around the League Podcast. Never trusted the Wildcat.

Welcome to another edition of The Around the League Podcast. My name is not Dan Hanses. It's Greg Rosenthal.

I'm with Mark Cessler. I'm with Chris Wesseling. I'm with Zach, the gold standard. It's a room full of heroes. We're changing up the intro for one day.

Why not?

Why not, right? Day before Christmas. And listen, the only reason Dan's not here is because our poor friend was caught at the airport roughly what eight or nine hours after his flight was supposed to take off.

Sad Dan, the smart one is back home with his family for Christmas. We're here on Christmas Eve. He is trying to watch the news right now for us on one hour of sleep.

So we appreciate that while we're hanging out in 70 degree weather.

Nice.

There's Christmas in LA, Chris Wesseling. It is. Spending it alone. Good times. I just thought, you know, we don't normally have a podcast on Tuesdays, but just that Chris received.

People are going to want to download some things and listen to them on their iPads. What else would you want to get away, especially if you might need to get away from family for a couple of minutes.

This gives you that buffer just to say, I got to handle some business. Go in the bedroom, listen to 45 minutes of the show.

Here's the reality. It's, you know, the end of the year. People have work off. There's parties. There's more football to talk about right now than there has been all year.

We had the highest traffic day on around the league all season on a Sunday this Sunday. And that's because everyone's alive.

There's so much going on in the playoff picture. These are the big games that we're going to remember. I think all sees all off season long.

You know, life is slowing down for the rest of the world, but this is this is our prime time. And let's get to it. Let's talk about Monday night football 49ers, Falcons, much better game than we thought the 49ers closed down candlestick park in style.

Mark Cessler, let's start with you. I know you enjoyed the game. Were you surprised that the Falcons stayed in it? What were your big takeaways?

I was in the sense that, you know, and you never want to say this about a team. And there's no proof of it. But to the naked eye Atlanta looked to me a month ago, like a team that just had given up.

And then you look at what they've done. They had one couple games out of I think three out of four there. And then they played the Niners right down to the wire last night.

And I thought that, you know, undermaned offense. They don't have Julio Jones. They haven't been the same team without them. They really fought to the end. So I take back. I think a couple of times that I wrote and said on this show that I thought they had just mailed it in since that game that basically the bucks blew them out and everybody accused them of quitting on Mike Smith.

They've beaten the bills and the redskins. They've given the Saints a scare. They've given the 49ers a scare. And they nearly beat the Packers in Green Bay. This has been a competitive team.

Well, and we normally wouldn't spend so much time talking about the Falcons, but they have a big part in this NFC playoff picture coming up and they have Carolina coming to Atlanta this Sunday.

And now Steve Smith probably not going to play in that game. And is that a game now Carolina? I think all these week 17 games where teams are favored but need to clinch. They're not all give me. And I don't think going to Atlanta is a gimme for a Carolina right now.

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