On December 14, 1986, in the final home game of an 18-year career, Jeff Van Note stood at midfield as the Atlanta Falcons retired his jersey number, 57, one of only four numbers the franchise has ever retired. Van Note, the center who snapped the ball on every offensive down and started 225 of the 246 games he played for Atlanta, died on October 2, 2026, at 80, the team announced.

Van Note was born Jeffrey Aloysius Van Note on February 7, 1946, in South Orange, New Jersey, and attended St. Joseph Prep in Bardstown, Kentucky. He stayed in the state for college, playing defensive end and running back for the Kentucky Wildcats, where he was a second team All Southeastern Conference selection as a sophomore and the team's most valuable player as a senior. The Atlanta Falcons picked him in the 11th round of the 1969 NFL Draft as a linebacker, a position that did not stick.

Van Note spent most of his rookie season with the Alabama Hawks, a Continental Football League team in Huntsville that functioned as an unofficial Falcons farm club, after making little impression at linebacker. He was one of several players the Falcons routed through that minor league roster before NFL jobs opened up for them. Head coach Norm Van Brocklin brought him back in 1970 and moved him to center, a switch that the Atlanta Falcons said reshaped the rest of his career. Van Note won the starting job that year and did not give it up for sixteen seasons, missing only four games total and building a streak of 155 consecutive games played, a Falcons record that stood until Jake Matthews passed him in his 156th straight game in December 2023, The Falcoholic reported. His 246 career games are the second most in franchise history, and his 18 years with a single team rank among the longest such tenures in NFL history, The Falcoholic noted in a 2019 retrospective. By his final season he had played under five different Falcons head coaches, beginning with Van Brocklin.

Durability alone did not make Van Note's case. He was selected to six Pro Bowls, tied for the most by any Falcons player, and was a two time Associated Press second team All-Pro, in 1979 and 1982. Those honors came for a franchise that spent most of his tenure well short of contending, which made his run of Pro Bowl selections across two separate stretches of his career, 1974 to 1975 and 1979 to 1982, a rare constant for Atlanta fans during lean years.

At halftime of that December 1986 game, the Falcons retired his number, setting it alongside Steve Bartkowski's 10, William Andrews' 31 and Tommy Nobis' 60 as the only numbers the franchise has taken out of circulation. Van Note was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2006 the Falcons brought him into their Ring of Honor at a halftime ceremony at the Georgia Dome. "The well-wishing that has come this last week is unbelievable, and I'm thankful, very thankful, and I'm grateful. It's sinking in," Van Note told the crowd that day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

He did not leave football when his playing days ended. Van Note moved into the broadcast booth as a color commentator for Falcons games through much of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, also calling games for his alma mater's Kentucky Wildcats, for the Tennessee Oilers in 1997, and filling in on Georgia Tech broadcasts in 2004. The work kept his voice in Atlanta living rooms for nearly two decades after his final snap as a player, long after the uniform numbers around his old locker had turned over many times.

"Jeff Van Note dedicated 18 seasons to this franchise and became one of the most respected and beloved players in our history," Falcons owner and chairman Arthur M. Blank said in a statement announcing his death. "He embodied toughness, resilience, humility, and an unwavering commitment to his team, qualities that earned him the admiration of generations of Falcons fans." Blank added that Van Note "helped shape the identity of the Atlanta Falcons." He is survived by three children, Beau, Ben and Blaine.

What Van Note built was durability turned into identity. A linebacker who did not make the roster at his original position became the center a struggling young franchise could not afford to bench, for sixteen years running, under five different coaches and through some of the leanest seasons in franchise history. His number still hangs with three others in Atlanta's rafters, his name is still read at Ring of Honor ceremonies each season, and the consecutive games record he set stood for 37 years, long enough to become the standard every Falcons lineman who followed him was measured against.