Too much negative around the Hawks at the moment, so lets focus on the positive.  We have a winner for this weeks prediction game.  Its:

Alyssa

 She guessed Hawks: 17 GB: 20.  It was good for 18 out of 20 possible points.  Congrats.

The Outsider and I duked out the upcoming game on Madden.  Him as NY and me as Seattle.  I sure hope this is not indicitive of this weeks game:

NY:28  Seattle:14

 The game was full of NY big passing plays, which unfortunately could be true.  But with Plaxico out, maybe maybe Ellie won't be able to get away with the old jump ball passes he likes to put up.

The loss sucked, but there was a very nice bright spot.  So bright in fact that it gets the first gold egg of the year.

John Carlson

Our new rookie tight end can hang onto the rock, and didn't get hurt.  Both of which are feats the likes of which have not been seen this year.  He was the top reciever with 6 catches for 78 yards, the longest of which was 17 yards.

Honorable mention for this week is Leroy Hill.  He was all over the place an making critical tackles.

If last week's prediction is any indicator on my ability to make good fantasy picks, you should instantly drop whoever I pick from your fantasy lineup.  My awesome DST pick against the Bills got a whopping 1 point.  Yet despite the blow to my ego that my pick gave me last week, I'm hopeful for this week's pick.

I think the fantasy man of the hour this week vs San Fran will be:

Julius Jones

He has got everything going for him this week.  There is none of that pesky splitting time with Mo, there is none of that fancy passing stuff (thanks to lack of people to pass to) ... nope ... there is just going to be a full day of Jones down their gullet while our defense keeps them from scoring.  With any luck we'll go up early and turn into a one dimensional team.

Run to the left.... Run to the left.... Run to the left.... 

Apparently Shaun Alexander's god does exist, and he is mad as hell at the Hawks for letting his Holy Runner go.

There is bad luck, and then there is divine intervention, and the later is about the only thing that can explain the current injury situation. Think about it, its like we are being guided to run.  Just look at our WR injuries:

• Bobby Engram 
• Nate Burleson
• Deion Branch
• Ben Obamanu

And now it looks like our best receiver this Sunday is going to be our backup QB?

Then just to make sure we get the hint, he goes and takes out our starting RB.  Then a couple days later, when we still don't listen to what the gods are telling us, one of our starting offensive linemen goes on IR and Pork Chop (apparently Alexander's god isn't Jewish) becomes our man at right guard.

Seems to me like it's about time we resign Shaun and get back into good graces before the almighty starts picking on our defense.

First off, no golden egg.  Infact there is a rotten egg.  It gets awarded to our entire:

Special Teams

That was some serious suck ass performance.  And to stand out as a suck performance next to extremely weak offensive performance, you really had to stink.

Now for the happy shiny bright spot in all of this.  The way I figure it our special people cost us 21 point

• 7 for the punt return
• 7 for the fake field goal
• 7 for the quick td after the kickoff return fumble

Drum roll  please ... ... ....

The winning prediction is:
The Outsider (Seahawks: 14 Opponent: 10 for 3pts) 

Congrats, you and your 3 pts should be very proud 

Actually it was brought to my attention that I managed to break something on the site when I put up the new design that caused predection entries to not work.  That has now been fixed.  So watch out Outsider, you might have some real competition next week. 

This may seem like an unusual pick (especially to those of you that don't have this position in your leagues), but I think the high fantasy scorer for the Hawks this week will be:

DST

Huh?  DST?  For those unfamiliar with the acronym it stands for Defense and Special Teams.  The Chicken Royale's fantasy football league (South Alaskan Fantasy) uses the standard free-bee nfl.com/fantasy league system which has this as a player, and it seems that most fantasy leagues have support for this option now.

 It may seem odd that on a team that has historically been known for its offensive prowess that I would not choose any of them, but our defense rocked last year and all the starters have all returned.  We will be without Rocky Bernard the first game, true, but they will be without their stud Pro Bowl offensive tackle Jason Peters.  The Bill's have some weapons on their offense, but they are young, and I expect them to not be polished for Sunday's game, and I expect the Hawks D to chew them up.  Ye Haw, I can already smell them Buffalo Burgers grillen!

 And lets face it, I don't expect any of our offensive player's fantasy stats to exactly sizzle Sunday. Hasselbeck has not been playing or practicing for weeks, plus we are probably going to be trying to establish our new running game, so he probably won't score high.  And if he ain't doing his thing you can bet our receivers won't be doing theirs.  I also don't expect any of our running backs to have break out games because they will probably all be splitting time while they get evaluated.

Who knows, maybe Forsett can one run back and give the DST a little boost.

Gonna try starting up a new segment here at the Chicken Coop.  Fantasy Friday!  We'll focus on the how we think the Hawks will do in a fantasy sense.

We mean fantasy football you sickos!

I heard that they were gonna be having special online coverage for tonight's opening game, so I just had to sneak a peak.  My verdict: great concept, kinda sucky execution.

It's super cool to have 5 different angles on the game, and to be able to see them all at once.  Its also super cool to have the game stats at hand without having to leave the game.  Unfortunately the streams were extremely choppy which made it aggrivating to watch.  If they can straighten out the kinks, this thing could really rock.

One other thing that made me unable to watch it, though is kudos for the service, was the fact that the streams were a few seconds ahead of my cable HD of the show.  How is streaming 5 different angles of the game faster than one single feed through cable?  But I would catch what happened a few seconds earlier from the choppy low def stream, and it kind of diminish my viewing enjoyment of the HD version, so I turned it off. 

 If I was not in front of a TV, this would have been a life saver.  And once they work out the kinks, this will be an awesome thing.  I hope it's a sign of where football coverage is going.