CousinOfDeath wrote:What a beautiful week. Bears lose, Giants lose, Falcons lose, and Niners tie.
Yeah, a lot of good homefield did for our pass happy offense last playoffs.
Bears lose - good, because they have a tough schedule the rest of the way, and reasonably could fall back far enough giving us another way to make the playoffs beyond the wild card. Also, whether we play in Green Bay or Chicago in January, it's going to be frigid.
Giants lose - good, because they could fall completely out of the playoffs at 6-4 and w/ a tough-ish schedule, which makes it more likely we qualify and as a bonus don't have to play them. Also, if we play in New York or Green Bay in January, either way it's going to be cold.
Niners tie - meh, I'm torn. There's an outside chance they could lose 4 more looking at their schedule and be on the outside looking in, but I doubt it happens. And I think I'd rather play in San Fran than GB in January.
Falcons lose - that's a bad result for us. Most importantly it allows the streaking Saints, who won 13 games last year, to remain in the playoff race with us. In addition, the Packers' chances of winning in ATL in January are much better than winning in GB. We've won the last 2 games at ATL, 2 comfortably, and it would be 3 straight if Brandon Jackson weren't our running back. Rodgers has played well all 3 games. That's going to be the primary determinant in whether we win or lose a game. We don't want winning or losing to boil down to a running slop fest with an occasional easy, controlled play action pass down field. Atlanta would be better at that.
I look at it as more of a negative week for us result-wise because Seattle, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Minnesota (although their schedule is awfully tough) won. Those are the biggest threats to us getting into the playoffs or not.
I know some people would like to go to a playoff game in person, or want to finish as high in the regular standings as possible for machismo reasons, but from a pragmatic standpoint beating out top teams doesn't really matter, or maybe wouldn't even benefit us in the end. We are a high potential, warm weather team, in a cold weather stadium, and when fans finally accept that they'll know more what to root for ATL.
