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Football Outsiders' Bill Barnwell: Falcons Are NFC's 'Team To Beat'

If you don't follow Bill Barnwell on Twitter, you should. Especially on Sundays. Not that you'd follow somebody for one day of the week. Anyway.

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He provides the perfect contrast to standard fan-think, which could probably more fairly be termed announcer-think. A test for you: was the Saints' win against the 49ers a product of their just-know-how-to-winness, or did they happen upon a pair of fumbles, a muffed punt, a botched snap, and a tipped-in field goal? Barnwell has spent a lot of free time pointing out the latter events are examples of nothing more than balls that could've just as easily bounced the other way.

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Barnwell is one of my favorite NFL writers, rare in his fearlessness when dealing with assumptions that shouldn't be assumptions. A locally relevant sample from today:

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Think you're going to see a lot of people suddenly realize that the Falcons are the team to beat in the NFC after this week.less than a minute ago via web

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OT road loss to Steelers and dominant win over Cards more impressive to me than narrow victories over Vikings and 49ers. Think ATL beats NO.less than a minute ago via web

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Think I might take Ryan over Rodgers RT @ChillBill88 GB stronger on both sides of the ball and most importantly QB.less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone

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Photographs by coka_koehler used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.