3-28 Day celebrates Falcons’ epic Super Bowl failure

This Super Bowl XLI meme now has become sort of a social media holiday. TWITTER
This Super Bowl XLI meme now has become sort of a social media holiday. TWITTER

By BILLY JOE JESSUP

Wednesday was a social media celebration of the Atlanta Falcons’ historic collapse against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLI in Houston in 2017.

It was 3-28 Day.

The 3-28 memes were everywhere I looked because Wednesday was 3-28 as in March 28, and 3-28 reversed is 28-3, the Falcons’ lead in the Super Bowl before quarterback Tom Brady rallied the Patriots to a 34-28 overtime victory.

I’ve never noticed a 3-28 social media celebration before, but it made my day.

The tweets were sweet, coming from New Orleans Saints fans who I believe invented the 3-28 meme last year because they relished seeing the hated Falcons blow it.

No Saints fans in their right mind want to see the Falcons have the same number of Super Bowl titles as Who Dat Nation. No Saints fans in their right mind want to see Atlanta win any game unless it helps the Black and Gold.

I’m a Saints fan who thinks of 3-28 as the 4-20 in Super Bowl history. You know, the 28-3 lead Matt Ryan and his Dirty Birds built went up in smoke.

Here are 16 of my favorite 3-28 Day tweets. My guess is 12 came from New Orleans and two were from Saints fans in the United Kingdom.

 

Humans shouldn’t be allowed to have this much fun, as David Letterman used to say.

I have no love for the folks who used this meme to try to ruin the fun.

Written by Billy Joe Jessup

Billy Joe Jessup, 66, is a Mississippi good old boy who saw himself as the Southern Richard Meltzer back in 1974 and 1975. Jessup wrote two satiric sports articles for the rock music magazine Zoo World when he was in his early 20s, but ZW rejected his third article, killing his confidence so much that he battled writer's block for more than four decades until his Guy Hut breakthrough in March 2018.