Anyone can do a power ranking of the whole league. But if you’re a 49ers fan, who cares about the AFC?
And anyone can do power rankings after one week, but what do we really know about teams after one game?
The 49ers are a team with Super Bowl hopes, even with the loss of starting quarterback Trey Lance in Sunday’s Week 2 game against the Seahawks. To get there, they will need to be the best team in the NFC. One might see that as a daunting task.
I look at a conference and see only a few good teams — the 49ers being one of them.
These are true power rankings, too. No. 1 would beat No. 2, and so on.
Heading into Week 3, here’s how I see the NFC. Simply put, I wouldn’t worry too much about the Niners:
1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-0)
» Tom Brady looks like he took a few weeks off in training camp, but the Bucs defense is impressive. When Brady rounds into form, this team might be the most complete in the NFL. (And yes, I include the Bills in that statement.)
2. Philadelphia Eagles (2-0)
» A whooping of the Vikings on Monday Night Football showed Philly’s bonafides. Wide receiver AJ Brown cost them a first-round pick. Given how impactful he’s been to the Eagles’ offense, they’d likely give up another right now if the Titans asked nicely.
3. Detroit Lions (1-1)
» Respect where it’s due. These Lions have some serious quality to them this season. Defensively, Aidan Hutchinson looks like a transformative player as a rookie — think Nick Bosa, TJ Watt, or Myles Garrett. Offensively, they’re dominating at the line of scrimmage, and Jared Goff is getting the ball to his weapons (and he has quite a few). This is as high as they’ll likely be ranked all season, but I’d take the Lions over any team below them on this list in a Week 3 game.
4. San Francisco 49ers (1-1)
» Well, there’s no quarterback controversy now. The Niners will roll with Jimmy Garoppolo for the next 15 weeks — injury permitting — and while that caps their Super Bowl-contention ability compared to Trey Lance, it does raise their floor in the here and now. The real reason the Niners are this high, despite losing to the Bears in Week 1? Their defense has a chance to be special. That’s good, they’ll be leaning on it.
5. Los Angeles Rams (1-1)
» A hangover after the Super Bowl is to be somewhat expected. The Rams’ hangover seems like it will linger for a while. There’s something off with this offense, and the defense looks like a unit that needs to trade for Von Miller midway through this season, too. The Rams will be fine — they’re a playoff team — but two weeks into the campaign, they look one-and-done regarding titles.
6. Green Bay Packers (1-1)
» The Packers beat the Bears at home, just like they do every year. There’s every reason to believe this Green Bay offense will be markedly worse than it was last year — there’s no replacing Davante Adams, even in the aggregate. On the defensive side of things, I’m just not seeing the playmakers. This might just be a team that needs some time to round into form. They don’t look like title contenders to me, though.
7. Minnesota Vikings (1-1)
» Kirk Cousins made sure to collapse in a prime-time game on Monday, but you can’t take away how impressive the Vikings offense looked in Week 1. Justin Jefferson is incredible, and new head coach and offensive playcaller Kevin O’Connell is helping him get wide open. This team’s issue is going to be defense. Namely, they can’t cover anyone in the pass game, and their pass rush can’t cover up that fact. Kind of a big problem in the NFL in 2022.
8. Washington Commanders (1-1)
» The life cycle of Carson Wentz always begins with him playing well with his new team. Commanders fans will soon learn. The good news, in the meantime, is that Washington has some serious pass-catching weapons for Wentz to hit while the weather is nice. Jack Del Rio only has a few games left before he is shown the door as the Commandors’ defensive coordinator, though.
9. New York Giants (2-0)
» Sure. Why not? The Giants are 2-0, after all. We’ll just ignore the fact that they have beaten two bad teams by small margins and celebrate the fact that they could start the season 4-0. The Cowboys and Bears are next.
10. Arizona Cardinals (1-1)
» They have a win to their name, and they’ll win a few more games this season, to be sure, but this team is a mess. They have been outscored by a combined 46 points in the first three quarters of their two games this season. Not good! Kliff Kingsbury is hellbent on proving he’s not cut out for an NFL job. (How do you take a delay of game after the other team calls a timeout before a 2-point conversion?) But this team has Kyler Murray, and for the first half of the season, there’s no better quarterback in the NFC.
11. New Orleans Saints (1-1)
» If you bought the Saints as a team to watch this season, you were likely doing so because you believed in Jameis Winston. That’s a tough thing to do now that he has four fractured vertebrae in his back. He looked like he had a broken back in the Saints’ loss to the Bucs this Sunday, too. The weapons are there for him, and this defense is solid, but quarterbacks are destiny in the NFL, and it looks like the Saints might be starting their tight end at that position again soon.
12. Dallas Cowboys (1-1)
» Speaking of quarterbacks being destiny, is Cooper Rush the future of the Cowboys? I kid, but that was a nice win Sunday against the Bengals (who have a wicked hangover, too). I don’t buy Dallas’ defense, and I think their offense is worse than last year, and I wasn’t high on the Cowboys last year, either. So, suffice it to say, I don’t think there will be many more wins for the Cowboys moving forward — Rush or not.
13. Atlanta Falcons (0-2)
» Respect to the Falcons for making their games interesting. I doubt they’ll agree with me on that sentiment in a few weeks when games are not as interesting, and they’re handed clear-cut losses. The good news is they face Seattle and the Browns next. One of those teams should provide a win.
14. Carolina Panthers (0-2)
» There are things to like with the Panthers, who have kept it close in both of their losses this year. The problem is that those losses have come to the Giants and Browns. Matt Rhule’s seat is so hot it might as well be made out of cast iron and placed in the North Carolina sun all day. If this team can’t fight back to .500 in the next two weeks, don’t be surprised if Carolina has a new coach in Week 5.
15. Chicago Bears (1-1)
» There’s so little quality on this team, it’s hard to take the Bears seriously on a week-in, week-out basis. Justin Fields doesn’t stand much of a chance with this abysmal group of receivers, and this defense came into the season overrated, despite not being rated highly at all. This could be a long, long year in Chicago.
16. Seattle Seahawks (1-1)
» The Seahawks put four running backs in the backfield in the red zone on Sunday. They passed the ball out of that look. (It went right to a 49ers defender.) To say that the Seahawks are a hot mess is to undersell the calamitous nature of what’s happening in Seattle. This team is conceptually built on running the ball and playing great defense. They can’t do either of those things, and Geno Smith is not here to save the day. Nor is Drew Lock. I wouldn’t be surprised if Seattle’s Week 1 win over Russell Wilson and the equally calamitous Broncos was the Seahawks’ only win of the campaign.
Source: www.mercurynews.com