Got to love what NFL Network analysts are saying!

[Lady Talon]

A blonde woman certainly can have football knowledge. Was raised on the hawks and could be found on the couch every sunday cursing with dad. Football isn't rocket science.

A blonde that gathers football knowledge just has to discard an equal amount of knowledge that normally would be reserved for another useful skill in her mind. In my case, any hope of choosing a man worth anyone's time was deleted when I decided I love football.

This can be proven with empirical evidence since I decided to marry (and divorce) a Jets fan.

 

[Canhawks]

Last years team for the most part was very healthy,the one factor that really scares me is injuries,it scares the hell out of me!Other than that we will be battling it out for the long haul. :th2thumbs:

 

[BigMeach]

The Hawks have Fisher's number. No worries.

Except for the first game against the Rams last season, right?

We blew that game ourselves. We do have fisher's number, but if we beat ourselves it's our own fault.

 

[RichNhansom]

Last years team for the most part was very healthy,the one factor that really scares me is injuries,it scares the hell out of me!Other than that we will be battling it out for the long haul. :th2thumbs:

Aggressive style of play promotes health. Seems weird but goes to the thinking of when you are trying to not get hurt is usually when it happens. Look at the Holmgren era for a good example. Does this mean we won't have injuries? Of course not but I do feel there is a tie between the style of play and the health factor.

The other side of this is depth of which we are pretty stacked. Example being the Niners when Justin Smith went down and they had no one ready to step in and in large part because they don't give their backups many reps. We play so many different position groups and players throughout that we can absorb injury better than most teams. Hopefully we don't have to.

 

[Hawks46]

Here's the thing that worries me: the Hawks have typically had a road game stigma. The Niners haven't, at least under Harbaugh.

I know we addressed this to a certain extent last year, but we also lost to teams like Detroit and Miami on the road when we had comfortable leads.

STL's DL has owned our OL that last 2 times we met, and we've really done nothing as of yet to upgrade our OL. Carpenter is still a question mark, Sweezy and Moffit both need to improve (which I think will happen), and popular theory suggests we need more coninuity on the line, although injuries didn't hurt us too badly last year. I think the Rams lost a big part of their running game, and they are going to have to rely on mostly rookie WRs to improve their passing game, which isn't always feasible the 1st year out. The biggest addition they had was Long in FA....they've needed to address their OL for a while. Moving Saffold over to RT is also an upgrade at that spot. These games will be a dog fight.

The Niners still have a better front 7 than we do I think, although that gap is closing as our youth gets more experience. Our back end is miles ahead of theirs right now, and they're looking to the draft (see above comment on rookies) and aging veterans to shore up that back end. It looks like our offense will start to have some mismatches to their defense, as we didn't have any trouble running on them last year. Our weapons should gash their secondary, and Wilson will be better in both games, not just the home game. I think Kaepernick will get better; I watched a lot of Wolfpack football and I liked that pick. For as good as our defenses are, I think these games might end up being higher scoring than most would think.

I honestly see us winning the division, but here's the rub: as good as the division is getting, EVERY game will count if we want homefield advantage. We have the best team I've ever seen in Hawks uniforms going into a season, but expectations and results will need to be sky high.....it will take at least 12 games to win the division this year. That doesn't lend to us throwing games away on the road, which historically we've done.

 

[BlueTalon]

Let's look at the last 8 Super Bowl winners

Pittsburgh*
Indianapolis
NYG
Pittsburgh
New Orleans
Saints
Packers
Giants
Ravens

Um, two of those need an asterisk, not just one. Coincidentally, the other one that needs it is also Pittsburgh.

 

[SeAhAwKeR4life]

Let's look at the last 8 Super Bowl winners

Pittsburgh*
Indianapolis
NYG
Pittsburgh
New Orleans
Saints
Packers
Giants
Ravens

Um, two of those need an asterisk, not just one. Coincidentally, the other one that needs it is also Pittsburgh.

Yes, I agree. It wasn't as blatant, but the refs were pretty clearly giving more leeway to the Stealers in their officiating in that game. Had the zebras done a better job, I suspect the Stealers would have at least one, likely two less rings. We should have won and so should the Cardinals have.