That's a good point about the Niners. Everyone keeps saying the Niners are going to be so great, and they are. But, they aren't as good as they were last year, really. They haven't replaced Sopoaga with a proven talent, so their run defense could suffer. Their secondary is suspect and they added Wright and Asomugha, both CBs that weren't deemed good enough by poor teams and let go.
They have no talent on the outside at all, and no depth at WR either. They have to move Vernon Davis to WR, which makes him an easier matchup for us than against our LBers. Now you have Vance McDonald starting at TE, who is a rookie. It's hard to expect a rookie to come in and replace Davis's production and impact. After all that, I still expect 11 wins out of them, as they do have an easier schedule.
Harvin, if healthy, will probably make the biggest impact against SF, NY, and STL. These are all teams with either poor(er) defensive backfields, or in STL and SF's case, rookies that will be starting. Harvin should exploit those guys.
I also don't understand why everyone keeps saying that the NYG are going to be so tough at home. The Giants aren't typically a great home team the last few years, as a matter of fact, they play us tougher out here than they have at their house the last few times.
I agree that we're going to need 12 wins to take the division this year. This is why our divisional games are so important; if we can hang 2 losses on the Niners, and the Rams can hang one loss, that's 3 losses right there....they only have to lose 2 more games to get to 11-5. Even so, there aren't any games we can just give away, like Detroit and Miami last year.
