FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- In his previous 11 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, left offensive tackle Bob Whitfield, the senior veteran on the roster in terms of his continuous service to the franchise, has received plenty of messages.

Good-will wishes. Hate mail. Letters seeking autographs. Missives that included hideous invective. Even a few marriage proposals.

	Michael Vick threw 16 TD passes last season and rushed for eight.

But what Whitfield experienced recently, while topping off his tank at a local gas station, might be the most graphic illustration yet of how stoked the city of Atlanta has suddenly become over a team it has principally treated like an orphan during the massive lineman's roller coaster tenure with the franchise.

"This guy came up to me and started giving me a bunch of offensive (play) diagrams," recalled Whitfield of the unusual encounter. "I mean, he's handing me four or five plays, and saying like, 'You know, these could work good for Michael Vick, man.' And then, for maybe the next 15 minutes, he's drawing up even more plays. You know me, I'll talk to just about anybody, right? But after a while, I finally had to tell him, 'Uh, you might want to call Coach (Dan) Reeves with this stuff, brother.' I mean, imagine that, huh?"

For the colorful Whitfield -- a standup-comic-in-waiting, who bides his time between his career in the NFL and that of the budding entrepreneur, who has built the once-fledgling Patchwerk Studios into one of the most sought-after recording studios in the country -- the moment was indeed nearly unimaginable.

A lifetime Falcons player, one who figures to be among the few in recent club history to actually begin and conclude a successful career with the once-moribund and now reborn franchise, Whitfield has pretty much seen it all. There was the magical 1998 season, of course, when the Falcons shocked the world and even themselves by advancing to Super Bowl XXXIII. But mostly Whitfield and his Falcons teammates have operated from the perspective of a bunch of guys starting up from the bottom of a toilet bowl.

But that was before Vick arrived three years ago. Before novice owner Arthur Blank, the co-founder of The Home Depot and, ergo, a man well-versed in reclamation projects, purchased the franchise. And before the Falcons went to legendary Lambeau Field, where Green Bay had never lost a playoff game, and ran the Packers out of the place.

So now, instead of fans somehow procuring his home phone number and leaving bilious messages on the answering machine, Whitfield has strangers idling up to him and trying to pawn off hastily drawn-up pass routes for new and flashy wide receiver Peerless Price.

It's as if another of the city's homeless has found shelter. Time was when restaurants in town would have quickly flipped over the "Closed" sign when they saw a Falcons player approaching the front door. In these heady days, though, there aren't many players who have to pick up the dinner tab.

	Back-to-back struggles
	In the 37-year history of the franchise, the Atlanta Falcons have never posted consecutive winning seasons, and 2003 affords the team yet another opportunity to shake that dubious distinction. In the previous eight winning campaigns, the best follow-up that the Falcons managed was a .500 record in 1972. Here is a look at the previous winning season and how Atlanta fared the following year:
	Season	Record	Following year
	1971	7-6-1	7-7
	1973	9-5	3-11
	1978	9-7	6-10
	1980	12-4	7-9
	1982(a)	5-4	7-9
	1991	10-6	6-10
	1995	9-7	3-13
	1998	14-2	5-11
	Note: (a) Strike-shortened season.

Dubbed the "City Too Busy to Hate" during the height of the civil rights movement, most fans still somehow found time to deeply despise the Falcons organization. Now the sports fans here, who became jaded by the success of baseball's Braves (and rankled by the lone World Series title), hope their professional football team can spoil them as well.

Certainly these are new days, and a new daze, for Falcons veterans.

"You go into a restaurant now," said flashy cornerback Ray Buchanan, "and it's like they make you feel like you're Michael Vick or something, you know? Hey, it's not all that long ago that, even if you were the most famous guy on the whole roster, the people didn't want to be seen with you out in public. We were like lepers or something. Now they can't get enough of us. The turnaround kind of blows your mind."

It has, indeed, been a remarkable transformation for a franchise that will go into the 2003 season still holding the distinction of never posting consecutive winning campaigns in its 37-year existence. Not counting the 9-6-1 record of 2002, good enough for second place in the surprisingly competitive NFC South and a wildcard berth, the Falcons have rung up only eight previous winning seasons.

Their aggregate record in the seasons following a year written in black on win-loss ledger book: A dismal 44-80. That included four seasons of 10 or more defeats.

In the three seasons immediately following the Super Bowl XXXIII appearance, Atlanta won just 16 games, tied for the worst three-year record ever by a team after a berth in the title contest. The club's training complex, in Suwanee, Ga., once a state-of-the-art site, was in disrepair. Franchise patriarch Rankin Smith Sr. had died in 1997, a year before the team went to the Super Bowl, and his children, while every bit as gracious as "The Old Man," seemed every bit as confounded, as well, about how to produce a winner. One of the league's best stadiums, the Georgia Dome, site of two Super Bowl contests, largely was still being panned by the locals.

Fast forward to 2003 and those same fans who used to make up excuses to stay away from the Georgia Dome -- the favorite laments were that football wasn't supposed to be played indoors, that the environment was too sterile, that the downtown facility lacked space for the traditional Southern tailgating -- now can't get a ticket into the place. The Falcons, who at one stretch of three years had just three home games televised locally, are sold out for '03 and there is now a season ticket waiting list.

To this point, at least, everything Blank has touched has turned to gold. The Falcons' new complex, in remote Hall County, is the envy of most franchises.

And, oh, yeah, there's that Vick guy, as well.

"Let's be honest, he's the biggest reason there's a buzz around this team," acknowledged two-time Pro Bowl inside linebacker Keith Brooking, the second-most recognizable guy on the roster. "The hype, all the stuff we hear about, it comes mostly from No. 7. Do we really deserve all the credit we're getting? Let's see, we won nine games last year, didn't win the division (title), won just one time in the playoffs. The way I see it, no matter how much excitement is out there, we still have a lot of work to do. And I've been around here long enough to know that you take nothing for granted."

When he refers to "here," Brooking isn't just speaking of the Falcons organization, but of the Atlanta metropolitan area. One of the few home-grown stars in franchise history, he is a native of Senoia, Ga., played at East Coweta High School, had an All-American career at Georgia Tech, and was selected by the Falcons in the first round of the '98 draft. In February, rather than relocate in free agency, Brooking signed a long-term contract that included a $10.6 million signing bonus.

But staying in Atlanta only emphasizes how long Brooking has been in the area, plenty long enough to have lived and died with the Falcons, long before he ever pulled on a helmet with a bird on the side of it. One of the game's top inside linebacker, unless you are viewing him through whatever prism is used by outspoken ESPN analyst Bryan Cox, the insightful Brooking knows all too well the franchise's history.

So in a locker room peopled by true believers, he remains a skeptic, at least until he and his teammates prove they are prepared to meet the expectations of others who have made them a chic Super Bowl pick for 2003.

	“	You go into a restaurant now and it's like they make you feel like you're Michael Vick or something, you know? Hey, it's not all that long ago that, even if you were the most famous guy on the whole roster, the people didn't want to be seen with you out in public. We were like lepers or something. Now they can't get enough of us. The turnaround kind of blows your mind. ”
		— Ray Buchanan, Falcons cornerback

Not that the expectations aren't welcomed by a team that has just five survivors from its Super Bowl XXXIII appearance. Atlanta remains a college-type town, where the loyalties are more with the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, where many of the professional football fans are imports from the Northeast or the Midwest. The transient nature of the city was one of the several crutches formerly employed to explain a dismal lack of ardor for the Falcons, and players incessantly griped that games at the Georgia Dome often were akin to being on the road, because Atlantans were outnumbered by visiting fans.

The locals' current love affair with the Falcons, though, is unlike anything that previously transpired here. Even when the team featured one of the NFL's highest-powered attacks, an offense led by Steve Bartkowski in the '80s, the Falcons didn't generate the manner of anticipation with which the city now views the current edition.

Truth be told, the Falcons weren't supposed to go to the Super Bowl in 1998, but merely caught lightning in a bottle and they rode the legs of Jamal Anderson and the arm of Chris Chandler to the championship game. By 1999, having experienced little "bump" from the previous magical season, the Super Bowl berth was seen as a fluke.

Brooking's caution aside, the veterans who went through that manic-depressive two-year stretch insist this time is different, and seem to welcome the national attention that has been afforded them. Vick certainly is the magnet that draws the mini-cams and the tape recorders, who has made the tiny speck on the map that is Flowery Branch, Ga., a must-stop on preseason itineraries, but this is a team deeper in talent, on both sides of the ball, than it has been for many seasons.

It isn't yet a team with swagger, but there is a palpably quiet confidence that pervades the locker room, and even Vick conceded the Falcons ought to be "pretty good" in 2003.

Some of the accompanying fanfare is termed "fluff stuff" by Whitfield, who notes that the team's new uniforms, imagery, and aura "won't mean a damned thing" if there is even a little slippage from the progress made in 2002. He and Buchanan were quick to point out before a Wednesday afternoon practice that the Falcons are hardly as obscure as the club that went to the Super Bowl five years ago.

"I think there's a maturity in this locker room now," said Buchanan, "and maybe a sense of responsibility that comes with having people talking about us so much. And we better have that because, with No. 7 around here, we're not sneaking up on anybody this time around. We're comin', man, and everyone knows it."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.