ATLANTA -- Aaron Rodgers doesn't let you feel comfortable, so even with a 24-0 halftime lead the Atlanta Falcons weren't. The first 30 minutes of Sunday's NFC Championship Game couldn't possibly have gone better for them, but nobody was throwing any parties yet.
"No. 12 isn't human," one Falcons official said at halftime, invoking Rodgers in an effort to keep from prematurely celebrating an inevitable victory over him and the Green Bay Packers.
That was a view from the suite level, but on the sideline it felt different. The way the world perceives the Falcons differs greatly from the way the Falcons' players perceive themselves. When their 44-21 victory was in the books and they wore white caps proclaiming them NFC champions, the Falcons shrugged at the memory of their halftime lead.
"Our mentality was just to keep scoring," wide receiver Julio Jones said. "Nobody can stop us but us."
It was Jones who, moments after halftime, drove home that very point with a thunderous 73-yard metaphor.
Lined up in the left slot with Packers cornerback Ladarius Gunter on him, Jones broke off the line violently, faking inside before swimming outside of Gunter, who gives away 19 pounds in that matchup. Gunter wrapped his right arm around Jones' waist. Jones saw the yellow flag out of the corner of his eye, so he knew the worst-case scenario was defensive holding, but he wanted more.
Jones shed Gunter and caught Matt Ryan's pass in stride, about 12 yards beyond the line of scrimmage at the Falcons' 38. To his credit, Gunter kept after Jones and just about got him. (This fact surprised Jones after the game when it was relayed to him that "the first guy" and "the second guy" in the play he was describing were the same.) Gunter grabbed Jones' left arm with his left hand and NEARLY got his right arm around Jones' waist, but he did not, and Jones was off down the sideline.
There was one man left to beat, but to hear Jones tell it he was already beaten.
"The last guy, he didn't have a chance," Jones said, "because there was too much room between me and the line, so he couldn't really guess what I was going to do."
The correct guess for poor Damarious Randall was "knock me to the ground with a stiff arm that looked as if it could break my neck." Jones did this around the Green Bay 30, and Randall flopped forward onto the ground, whence he could only watch as Jones raced into the end zone for the touchdown that made it 31-0.
"I mean -- we ain't trying to play with you and let you hang around," Jones said. "Our mentality was that it was 0-0 and we had to get points. Kyle Shanahan did a great job staying aggressive there."
Shanahan is the Falcons' offensive coordinator and the league leader in Lifelong Dreams Come True over the past week and a half. In widely reported agreement to become the next coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Shanahan will first get to draw up one more Falcons game plan and try to win Super Bowl LI with it.
Of course, to watch the Falcons play offense right now is to wonder why Shanahan would ever want to go anywhere. He has Ryan, the presumptive league MVP. He has Jones, a true game-changing superstar worthy of the five draft picks the Falcons surrendered nearly six years ago so they could draft him. Jones had nine catches for 180 yards and two touchdowns Sunday, and it was basically a typical NFC Championship Game performance for him. He caught 11 passes for 182 yards and two touchdowns in the game four years ago, when the Falcons lost to the 49ers.
But Shanahan's options run deeper than his marquee stars. Slot receiver Mohamed Sanu, speedster Taylor Gabriel, running backs Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman. Heck, Shanahan got fullback Patrick DiMarco open for a 31-yard gain to set up the first touchdown of Sunday's game. Shanahan and the Falcons right now are a perfect marriage -- a brilliant, creative offensive mind equipped with all the right pieces to bring his vision to scoreboard-rattling life.
"He's got a great feel for our personnel, the defense we're going against and what combination our guys can get into to go against it," Ryan said. "He's got a great feel during games, too. He's very detailed during the week and reacts well during games."
Ryan is likely to be the MVP, but as is often the case with Super Bowl teams, the Falcons are much more than just him. Atlanta scored 540 points in the regular season -- the same total as the 2000 "Greatest Show on Turf" St. Louis Rams. Only six teams in league history have ever scored more. They've added 80 so far in two playoff games, and a couple of weeks from now in Houston they will look to do the same thing to the Patriots that they just did to the formerly red-hot Packers.
"We ran into a buzzsaw," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said.
Nothing illustrated that more clearly than Julio Jones, blasting his way off the line, slithering out of a hold, shedding another tackle and then stiff-arming the last defender on the field into oblivion. The buzzsaw on that play -- the play that made it clear the Falcons weren't to be stopped on this day -- wore No. 11. And watching him wreck the Packers' secondary by himself on one breathtaking play reminded his teammates of their core belief.
"I just feel like nobody can stop us," Freeman said. "When we're clicking the way we're clicking, nobody can stop us. And, whew, we are clicking right now."