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.