49ers and Saints are the top two contenders in the NFC right now
By John Buhler
Through Week 12, the two best teams in the NFC are the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints. The 49ers’ schedule is brutal, but they’re good now.
The San Francisco 49ers put an absolute beatdown on the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football in Week 12. San Francisco improved to 10-1 on the year and will almost certainly be a playoff team in the NFC this year. Though their next two games are beyond brutal, the 49ers are one of the two best teams in the NFC, along with the New Orleans Saints.
Sure, San Francisco could drop back a bit in the NFC standings after its next two games. The 49ers have to do the unthinkable by playing three teams with a .800 winning percentage or better in succession. That has never happened in the Super Bowl era before. They had to host Green Bay, play the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore and at the New Orleans Saints.
The 49ers still have to play the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink at the end of the season, so it’s not going to get any easier for them the rest of the way. But this is a 10-win team for a reason. San Francisco just played its best game of the season. The defense was sensational and the passing game from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was outstanding.
Should the 49ers beat their former NFC West rival in New Orleans in two weeks, the NFC playoffs will run through Levi’s Stadium, in theory. Sunday night was one of those games where potential Super Bowl champions present themselves. If San Francisco were to hoist a sixth Lombardi Trophy down in South Beach in early February, this will be a game that we as fans will often go back to.
Have the 49ers navigated an easy schedule for the first two-thirds of the season? You could say that to some degree. But this team has built momentum and great confidence in that Kyle Shanahan’s squad can not only hang with anybody, but they can beat anybody anywhere. That is what it will take to be Super Bowl champions at the end of the season.
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Frankly, how the 49ers matchup with the Saints in New Orleans will give us a better understanding of how the NFC playoff picture will shake out. Beating Green Bay at home was huge for this team. A win next week in Baltimore is probably not expected and neither is a victory in New Orleans.
But if San Francisco continues to prove us wrong, this may be the 49ers’ year.