Largent80":3069iilm said:
Yes SF's defense is better than NE's, and they are at home, but I believe that confidence was gleaned over the last 2 weeks and we can't use a developing offense as an excuse if we do not win this game.
How about using "playing the toughest D we will play all season" as an excuse?
Or "playing our strongest divisional rival in their own house just after they were embarrassed by the Giants" as an excuse?
Look, I think we definitely have a chance to win this game - especially after the confidence the team gained this past Sunday. But I just don't get these platitudes people trot out about "Oh, this is a game championship teams MUST win" or understand why people try to tie such huge importance to one out of 16 games.
The only reason this game is more important than the Arizona and St. Louis games is because we lost those two games, which makes this game necessary if we want a winning divisional record. But had the SF game been in Week 1 and the Arizona game now, the Arizona game would be more important.
There's nothing mystical about this game, and losing it won't mean the season is done or that we can't be a championship caliber team. It just means a smaller margin for error for making the postseason.
But teams take advantage of that margin for error ALL THE TIME. Last year's Giants got swept by the Redskins and lost 5 out of 6 games in the middle of their season, yet still made it in. Yes, they needed the chips to fall the right way, but that's how it played out. And yet, according to many statements tossed around at .NET, the Giants simply weren't a championship caliber team. But they have the Lombardi to prove they were.
Parity is so strong in this league that regular season games simply don't have any real extra importance. Divisional games are most important, followed by conference games, followed by non-conference, and that's ONLY because of the tiebreaker rules. The only games that are truly important in any way are those that start after Week 17 is done. And we've seen time and time again how teams that get hot at the end of the year and play their best football then are the ones no one wants to face in the postseason.
If you guaranteed me that the Hawks would make the postseason with a 10-6 record, then I would want all 6 of those wins to come after our bye week - even if it meant losing this game to the 49ers by 50.