At least Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan delivered a world championship answer when asked late Sunday night to explain how he and his teammates let a 28-3 lead turn into a 34-28 loss to New England in Super Bowl LI.
"There's nothing you can really say," said the league's MVP for the regular season. "There are no words."
There are lots of questions, however. Questions that will haunt this most anemic of championship cities for years, if not decades to come.
Questions about play calling. Questions about time management. Questions about how does a franchise that's never previously been known for tremendous mental toughness erase this from its psyche well enough to perform as it should in 2017 inside its new $1.5 billion sandbox known as Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Moreover, how does a city that's won all of one world championship - the 1995 Atlanta Braves - in 169 seasons of professional sports in baseball, basketball, football and hockey reverse its well-earned moniker of Loserville?
Heck, even Cleveland, that world-renowned Mistake by the Lake, now has two world titles since 1964 with that year's NFL Browns and this past season's NBA champion Cavaliers.
In fact, the only comparable U.S. city in terms of sports futility since the mid-1960s is Buffalo, N.Y., which actually has zero world championships despite - at least for a time - having the NFL's Bills, the NHL's Sabres and the NBA's Braves, who eventually became the Los Angeles Clippers.
But when one considers that Buffalo's metropolitan area is home to 1.13 million frustrated, semi-frozen fans while Atlanta's metropolitan area counts nearly 5.8 million somewhat ambivalent sports fans - since it often seems as if at least half those folks root for this melting pot city's professional teams to lose - the Big Peach's sports malaise seems far worse than Buffalo's.
And how could it not be? Because while the Bills were fairly overmatched in the final three of their four straight Super Bowl appearances after the 20-19 heartbreaker against the New York Giants to end the 1990 season, Atlanta has shown a remarkable ability to snap victory from the jaws of defeat time and time again.
The Braves are obvious. Fourteen straight division titles and one World Series crown. They lost the 1991 World Series on a baserunning error by Lonnie Smith. Up 2-0 on the New York Yankees and three home games in front of them inside Atlanta's Fulton-County Stadium, the 1996 Braves lost all three - including blowing a 6-0 lead in the fourth game, which became an 8-6, 10-inning loss thanks in no small measure to an infamous three-run homer off the bat of Jim Leyritz in the eighth inning against closer Mark Wohlers.
Until Sunday night, Leyritz is the guy most often associated with being Atlanta's sports enemy No. 1. Now that honor conceivably will be passed to New England quarterback Tom Brady, who probably owns that distinction in every city he's ever beaten in a big game.
But it isn't just the Braves who've let them slip away. The NBA Hawks have failed time and time again, including losing Game 6 to the visiting Boston Celtics in an Eastern Conference semifinal when a win would have sent them to the Eastern Conference final for the first time ever.
Then, just in case the passage of four years has allowed you to forget, the Falcons blew a 17-0 lead against San Francisco in the NFC title game to close out the 2012 season.
Does anyone notice a pattern of self-destruction here? A gag reflex, perhaps?
Yet it could be argued that none of those, even the Leyritz loss, WERE as inexplicable and humiliating as what transpired in East Texas on Sunday night, which gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, at least for Falcons fans, "Houston, we have a problem."
Or three.
There was the New England onside kick that gave the ball to the Falcons on the Patriots' 41 late in the third quarter. A penalty and a sack guaranteed no points on that drive. There was the Ryan fumble when Devonta Freeman missed a block with less than nine minutes left in the fourth. Finally - and clearly the least defensible of all - there was the first-and-10 at the Pats' 22 after one of the great catches in Super Bowl history by Julio Jones.
But because Atlanta chose not to run the ball, let Matt Bryant kick a 40-yard (at the most) field goal and lead by 11 - deciding instead to throw, get sacked, get a holding penalty and achieve nothing (not to mention failing to run valuable time off the clock) - Atlanta ultimately lost the first overtime game in Super Bowl history.
So now the depression sets in throughout the Big Peach for all those who hold the Falcons dear in their hearts. Now a Super Bowl that was pretty amazing from Luke Bryan's flawless national anthem to George and Barbara Bush's touching appearance at the coin toss to a knockout halftime show by Lady Gaga to a stunning finish on the field is merely another moment of pain and suffering for Atlanta.
"It's not over for this franchise," 36-year-old defensive end Dwight Freeney told Tthe Associated Press. "This is a young team, a very young team."
A young team representing a city that must now add some very young sports scars to too many old ones.
Which brings us to this parting question: In a year when the Super Bowl telecast was overrun with ads concerning the need for inclusion in all aspects of society, why was it left to the Falcons to find yet another way for an Atlanta sports team to leave itself out in the cold?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.