I like your chances, Dawg. You don't have to play Philly (which is the hottest team in the NFL when they are on), and one team on the NFC side appears not to be a big threat (Seattle).
Just like it's hard to beat the same team twice, it's also hard for a regular season losing team like Seattle to go and repeatedly beat big winners in the playoffs. For just the sake of betting odds, I put Seattle as a statistical outlier. The Bears are the scariest NFC team besides you, with GB not far behind the Bears.
And the team that has been your equal is the Pats, of course and game for game, they are just as consistent as you.
What you have over the Pats is that Brady may be a little less athletic with age and possible cumulative injuries in this very brutal sport (but smarter and more experienced leading him to throw only passes he knows he can complete) and some key Pats may be inexperienced (yet have their physical peak in strength and durability). They have a couple of young D players who are like human bulldozers and can put the hurt on Atlanta's QB.
But I like where Atlanta stands with the right mixture of experience and relative youth/toughness.
It's still your SB to lose on every level. If this was the 2001-2004 Pats you were facing if the SB was between you and them, they would clean your clock (or anybody's in this postseason) having gone 3 for 4 years into the SB and winning all three they entered. They had the best QB (not the #3 behind Rodgers and Vick this season as posted on the NFL site yesterday of top five quarterbacks) and they had one of the scariest defenses of all time in that 2001-2004 dynasty. They were perhaps the most complete team in football history. Their D alone could have won all three Super Bowls in the early 2000s!
I think this is your best chance being you have no Philly to worry about and the only real threat to you on the AFC side is what amounts to the Pats second dynasty (which while a great squad, is in no way like the Brady led team of 2001-2004).
I thought that too when I saw the heading Top Five QBs of the NFL website on the fantasy tab. Too weird.
I would put Brady first, but the NFL site put Vick first. I think part of it is that comeback thing. Like many things, at least Vick gets comeback story of the year but nothing more. Vick is too inconsistent, imho.
Of the five, I would put Vick at #5 and put Ryan in that top five somewhere and not at #6 or worse. It's not me, it's the NFL site. They put Rivers in the top five leaving Ryan out. Go figure.
I think they just pull certain stats and make these determinations.
Brady is a leader in times of stress, and Vick just doesn't have that maturity.
