San Francisco 49ers: Who to Root for in Week 8

Are you a San Francisco 49ers fan bummed that your team is on bye this week?  

Do you want to know who to root for, but haven’t yet wrapped your head around the various playoff scenarios still in play eight weeks into the season? 

Haven’t been paying attention to other teams and have no idea how good the Detroit Lions or Atlanta Falcons really are? 

We’re here for you—this is your unofficial official rooting guide for Week 8.  It’s too early to really do serious scoreboard watching, but as the 49ers aren’t playing this week, you might as well find some other team to root for.

Sometimes, it’s very easy to figure out who to back—teams the 49ers are in direct competition with should lose, and teams from the AFC or far in the lead in the other conference should win.  But what about situations where a divisional rival—like the Arizona Cardinals—takes on a wild-card rival—like the Philadelphia Eagles?  Let’s go game by game through the Week 8 schedule and look at each game’s impact on the 49ers’ playoff hopes.  We’ll also give predictions for each and every game, so you know how likely any given outcome actually is.

All times Eastern; all odds provided by Oddsshark

Detroit Lions (5-2) Versus Atlanta Falcons (2-5)

Rick Osentoski/Associated Press

9:30 a.m. from London, England on Fox
Detroit -4
Root for: Atlanta

The NFL continues their London experiments with a game set in London’s afternoon.  Up to this point, all games in Wembley Stadium have taken place at night local time, meaning they’ve been in the normal early broadcast window for Sunday’s games.  This game, however, will take place in the daytime in London, meaning it gets a window all to itself.

So, if you’re a local 49ers fan wanting to watch what could well be the most significant game of the week for the 49ers, you’re going to have to crawl out of bed at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday morning.  Chalk this up to “reasons why the NFL shouldn’t expand to the UK.”

At 5-2, the Lions are one of the top wild-card contenders in the NFC.  They feature the stingiest defense in the league in terms of yards per game at only 290.3—one slot ahead of the 49ers.  Despite injuries to Calvin Johnson, the Lions have managed to roll along quite well behind their defense, a unit that features the likes of DeAndre Levy, Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley.

Detroit has the potential to be a 10-win team, which is problematic for the 49ers’ wild-card chances.  There’s also the chance that the Lions will win the NFC North outright, meaning the 49ers would be competing against the Green Bay Packers, currently 5-2 for a wild-card slot.  Neither of these are good things.

The Falcons, on the other hand, have pretty much thrown in the towel for anything other than the NFC South title and a potential fourth seed.  That division is going to struggle to get anyone to eight wins, much less challenge the 49ers for a playoff berth.

In short, the 49ers could really use Detroit to drop a game they’re favored to win, like this one.  This game should be held in Detroit, so the neutral site could do the 49ers a favor here.  It’s more of a situation of a Falcons win helping rather than a Lions win hurting, however.

The Lions are still the superior team, however, and should come out on top in this one.

Prediction: Detroit 23, Atlanta 20

Seattle Seahawks (3-3) at Carolina Panthers (3-3-1)

MIKE MCCARN/Associated Press

1:00 p.m. on CBS
Seattle -5
Root for: Carolina

How big a threat are the Seattle Seahawks?  That depends on how you view them.

Are they the defending Super Bowl champions with the vicious defense and efficient offense?  Because then they’re as difficult an opponent in the NFL, and the 49ers should be seriously worried about them in their division race.  If you believe that, this is the most important game for the 49ers this week.

On the other hand, are they an average 3-3 team?  A team that struggles mightily on the road, losing to both the San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams, as well as being beaten at home by the Dallas Cowboys?  A 3-3 team like Seattle only makes the playoffs about 38 percent of the time, and the 49ers have the current tiebreaker edge on them thanks to their win over St. Louis.  If you believe that, then this game is much less meaningful.

The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle.  This Seahawks team is not as good as they were last season, but very few teams could repeat that level of performance in consecutive years.  I feel that this is still a top-five team and one destined for double-digit wins.

This, however, is one of their Achilles' heels.  An early road game on a road trip across the country...that’s tough for most West Coast teams.  Going back to 2012, the Seahawks are only 5-6 in early start times, and they had to go to overtime to get two of those wins.  Jet lag and biological clocks play into that, as does the lack of the intense home-field advantage Seattle normally enjoys.  If they’re going to get upset, this is the setup for it.

The Panthers are a bit of a bigger threat to the 49ers than the Falcons are.  They’re currently atop the NFC South and, with a bit of luck, could challenge for a second or third seed.  However, that’s a far less likely scenario than the 49ers battling the Seahawks to the end in the NFC West.

The Seahawks have to drop a game or two they’re favored to win for the 49ers to finish the season on top of the division.  While I’m picking them in this game, any road trip is one worth watching carefully.

Prediction: Seattle 24, Carolina 21

Minnesota Vikings (2-5) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-5)

Jim Mone/Associated Press

1:00 p.m. on Fox
Tampa Bay -2
Root for: Tampa Bay

While no teams are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs yet, any realistic chances the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had of contending for anything ended several weeks ago.  They have been on the losing end of two of the three biggest blowouts of the season, a 56-14 humiliation at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons and a 48-17 rout by the Baltimore Ravens.  There are no plausible scenarios in which Tampa Bay challenges for any sort of playoff spot this year.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Vikings are sitting on life support in the NFC North.  A loss does not mathematically eliminate them, but it essentially has the same purpose.  Looking up at the 5-2 Green Bay Packers, 5-2 Detroit Lions and 3-4 Chicago Bears, the Vikings need a win to pretend to still be relevant in the playoff chase.

From the 49ers perspective, another dead team in the NFC does nothing but help them.  You can picture scenarios where Teddy Bridgewater, in his rookie season, begins to put everything together and leads the Vikings on a small run.  Maybe they beat Tampa Bay and Washington to go into their bye at a respectable 4-5.  Maybe, later in the year, they take down the Carolina Panthers and New York Jets at home, and steal a win from a very up-and-down Chicago team.  That puts them right on the cusp of playoff contention.

Best for them to get knocked out of the picture before they can start to build a bit of momentum.  I don’t trust a rookie quarterback like Bridgewater on the road, even against a bad team like Tampa Bay.

Prediction: Tampa Bay 22, Minnesota 21

St. Louis Rams (2-4) at Kansas City Chiefs (3-3)

Seth Perlman/Associated Press

1:00 p.m. on Fox
Kansas City -6
Root for: Kansas City

The St. Louis Rams realistic shots of contending were done when they lost to the 49ers in Week 6.  They couldn’t afford to drop to 1-4 and watch the rest of the NFC West vault past them.

Or so I thought leading into the Seattle Seahawks game.  With a little bit of trickery and a lot of guts, the Rams pulled out a victory over the defending Super Bowl champions.  This may be a team that is all but mathematically eliminated from contention, but they’re not going to go down without a fight.

It’s very, very difficult to imagine a scenario that would see St. Louis turning their season around and ending up in the playoffs.  They would need to continue to pull of upsets the rest of the way.  Not only would they need to beat the Kansas City Chiefs this week, but they’d probably need to beat the 49ers and Cardinals in back-to-back road games the weeks after. 

You’re talking about what would be four humongous upsets in a row…and that would just get them above .500. The Rams are more or less done.

But if they were to beat the Chiefs, all of a sudden, this is a team that might start believing in themselves again.  They would have in successive weeks beaten two playoff teams from a year ago in a row and were on the cusp of a third before Brandon Lloyd’s 80-yard touchdown flipped the script in the Week 6 loss to the 49ers.  Maybe, just maybe, they could start clawing their way back into contention.

Best to nip that in the bud before it can become a “nobody believed in us!” style playoff run.  Alex Smith can do his old team another favor by quashing St. Louis’ dream of a miracle comeback before it can really get started. 

Let the Seahawks game be an amazing outlier, rather than a harbinger of things to come.

Prediction: Kansas City 27, St. Louis 13

Chicago Bears (3-4) at New England Patriots (5-2)

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

1:00 p.m. on Fox
New England -7
Root for: New England

How frustrating is San Francisco’s Week 2 loss to the Bears in hindsight?  That game was in hand well into the third quarter, with the 49ers leading, 20-7.  Then, the Bears scored two touchdowns in less than a minute and things were thrown into chaos once again.

It’s more frustrating because the Bears aren’t a great team this year.  They’ve been very up-and-down, losing games to Buffalo, Carolina and Miami—not exactly the toughest lineup imaginable.  Their 3-4 start has former players questioning the quality of their quarterback and former coaches questioning the leadership of the entire team.

And yet, the season is still open for them to make a playoff run.  Their remaining schedule includes home games against Tampa Bay and Minnesota, and they get two cracks at knocking off the Detroit Lions.  With a little bit of luck, the Bears could find themselves at the 9-7 range or so—and if they do, the 49ers would lose the tiebreaker, thanks to that Week 2 loss.  That would be very frustrating, to say the least.

It’s clear that the 49ers would be helped significantly if the Bears continued to implode.  Fortunately, they are playing the New England Patriots now, rather than a few weeks ago.  There was a lot of panic when the Patriots struggled to beat Oakland and then lost to Kansas City to go 2-2.  Was their reign of success coming to an end?

Since then, the Patriots have outscored their opponents 107-64, winning each game by an average of two touchdowns.  They may not be the dynastic team of the 2000s anymore, but the team of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick isn’t going to crash and burn.  After all, just like the 49ers, the Patriots have made their conference championship game three straight years—this is a good team.

The Bears should pick up a loss here.

Prediction: New England 31, Chicago 24

Philadelphia Eagles (5-1) at Arizona Cardinals (5-1)

Michael Perez/Associated Press

4:05 p.m., Fox
Arizona -2.5
Root For: It’s Complicated…

This is the hardest game to decide for whom to root, if you’re a 49ers fan.

The argument to root against the Arizona Cardinals is a simple one—the 49ers haven’t exactly thrown in the towel on taking home the division yet.  They sit a game-and-a-half out of first place, and Arizona has the tiebreaker at the moment, but the Cardinals schedule is about to turn nasty:

• Week 8 versus Philadelphia
• Week 9 at Dallas
• Week 12 at Seattle
• Week 13 at Atlanta
• Week 14 versus Kansas City
• Week 15 at St. Louis
• Week 16 versus Seattle
• Week 17 at San Francisco

That’s a little different than the schedule they’ve had to play up to this point.  Arizona has the fifth-hardest remaining schedule, according to Football Outsiders.  They’re going to be put to the fire quickly here, and we’ll see how much of their 5-1 record is smoke and mirrors and how much is because they’re a genuinely good team.

The Cardinals losing means the 49ers would be just a game back, and would get to watch as Arizona has to face some of the challenges that they’ve already handled, most notably Dallas next week.  The 49ers would likely draw even that week and have the chance to take back control of the division.

On the other hand…

The argument against the Philadelphia Eagles goes the other way—if the 49ers don’t win the division, either because the Cardinals are as good as they’ve shown so far or because the Seahawks wake up and play like the defending Super Bowl champs, the 49ers will have to battle with teams like the Eagles for a wild-card spot.

The 49ers have the tiebreaker over the Eagles and Cowboys in the NFC East, it’s true, but so far, neither team shows signs of slowing down.  Both have easier schedules remaining than the Cardinals, according to Football Outsiders, which makes sense: the Cardinals still have to deal with the AFC West, while the Cowboys and Eagles feast on the AFC South.

It’s hard to argue that the Cowboys and Eagles have looked worse than the Cardinals, either.  I would guess both of them are more likely to get to double-digit wins than Arizona is.

In the end, I think you have to root for the Eagles, despite the 49ers wild-card chances taking a possible hit.  If the 49ers can catch the Cardinals, it doesn’t matter if the Eagles and Cowboys go undefeated from here on out.  It’s more important to focus on the division first, especially when the Cardinals are still catchable.

Prediction: Arizona 24, Philadelphia 22

Green Bay Packers (5-2) at New Orleans Saints (2-4)

Matt Ludtke/Associated Press

8:30 p.m. on NBC
New Orleans -1.5
Root for: New Orleans

How confident are you in the 49ers’ ability to really around turn their season?

I’m not talking about a 9-7 or 10-6 finish to make the playoffs, I’m talking about the odds of them running the table, or coming close to it, and finishing 12-4 or 13-3?  Because that’s what it would likely take to catch the Packers or Cowboys for the top two seeds in the NFC.

That’s a tall order, but it would be helpful if Aaron Rodgers’ crew started to come back to the pack a bit.  Ever since Rodgers told Green Bay fans to “relax” after a loss to the Detroit Lions dropped them to 1-2, they’ve been arguably the best team in football.  They’ve won their last four games by an average of more than 19 points, and their demolition of the Panthers last week was one of the most impressive performances by any team so far this season.

The New Orleans Saints loss to Detroit last week hasn’t crippled them—they play in the NFC South, after all—but it probably has taken them out of any serious competition with San Francisco for seeding purposes.  They do need to start winning some games in the next couple weeks, however, and a prime-time showdown against the Packers is as good a place as any to start.  If they can’t win either this week or next week against Carolina, they’re going to find their season going down the tubes.

Their backs are against the wall, and Drew Brees is too good to let his team go down without a fight.  Sadly, the Packers are led by a similarly great quarterback, and are perfectly capable of going toe-to-toe with the Saints in a shootout.

Root for the Saints, in other words, but I don’t think there’s any realistic hope of the 49ers catching the Packers in the regular season.  They might well have to repeat their feat from last season, going into Lambeau Field in January and pulling out a win there.

Prediction: Green Bay 27, New Orleans 24

Washington (2-5) at Dallas (6-1)

Evan Vucci/Associated Press

Monday, 8:30 p.m. on ESPN
Dallas -9
Root for: Washington

Washington’s season is already essentially over.  At 2-5, already on their third quarterback of the season in ex-49ers backup Colt McCoy, and seeing both division rivals Dallas and Philadelphia rocketing into the stratosphere, they’ve already started looking ahead to 2015.

The 49ers do have the tiebreaker over Dallas thanks to their Week 1 destruction of the Cowboys—a result that looks stranger and stranger as Dallas has since kept chugging along.  The 49ers are the only team to have gotten the better of Dallas, and they didn’t just squeak out a victory—it was essentially over before halftime.  It’s an odd outlier in Dallas’ season so far.

I’m trying to come up with a scenario where Washington wins this one.  Could old narrative Tony Romo show up again, throwing key interceptions on a national stage?  After all, the narrative states, Romo fails under the lights in crucial games.

That doesn’t holdup statistically, however.  Romo hasn’t been any worse in prime time or nationally televised games than he has at any other point.  If anything, you’d have to say Romo was better in crucial moments, as his 13 fourth-quarter comebacks since 2011 comfortably leads the league.

If the 49ers are going to catch the Cowboys, they’ll need them to lose a game or two.  Look at the two-game road trip to Chicago and Philadelphia in December, however, and don’t put too much hope on this one.

Prediction: Dallas 34, Washington 14

Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers.  Follow him @BryKno on twitter.