True bliss. And an early birthday present (my 40th coming up next weekend).

Early lines have the Steelers favored by 3.5-4 points, which seems overly optimistic to me. I haven't seen the Seahawks much this year (the only time I remember seeing them is when they lost to the Redskins early on), but they sure looked tough yesterday. The Steelers need to come up with some way to run the ball (Willie Parker hasn't done much against good defenses this year, including the playoffs) and have to come up with a scheme to control Shaun Alexander. It strikes me that one edge for the Steelers may be their ability to blitz, which could offset some of the strength of that Seahawks offensive line. The real problem in thinking about the game is that the general softness of the NFC this year, and the particular softness of the NFC West leaves me simply uncertain about how good Seattle is. But they looked pretty darned impressive yesterday. Neither team looks particularly turnover-prone, so it should be a good, tough game.