With a dominating win on “Monday Night Football,” the 49ers reminded the league that they are still a force to be reckoned with, despite the popular notion that they are falling short of expectations.
The team still finds itself in with a lot of good news-bad news situations, however.
Some bad news: Hope of winning the NFC West may be a pipe dream, with the Seattle Seahawks sitting on a three-game lead with five games left to play.
The good news: The win Monday put them in a tie with the Arizona Cardinals for the NFC's final wild-card spot. San Francisco currently owns the tiebreaker with its victory over Arizona in Week 6.
More bad news: Arizona is the only team the 49ers have beaten in their seven victories that currently has a record over .500. The other four games against winning teams have been losses for the Niners, including two competitors for that wild-card spot, the Carolina Panthers and New Orleans Saints.
The good news that balances that is that only two of the team's five remaining foes — the Seahawks and Cardinals — are currently over .500, and two — the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Atlanta Falcons — already have no hope of finishing the season with a winning record.
One last bit of good news for the 49ers: Three of the final five games are at Candlestick, with the only road games against Tampa Bay, which has a 3-8 record, and in Arizona in the final week of the regular season, when things may have already been decided.
But first, the St. Louis Rams will bring their 5-6 record to The City today, hoping to keep their own playoff hopes alive. The 49ers won 35-11 in St. Louis on Sept. 26.
