NFL Week 9 Picks: Momentum Watch for League's Top Teams

While momentum is certainly not a measurable statistic, and while it may get a bit more credit than it is due, it's still a factor worth considering when discussing NFL teams' chances to win in any given week.

Considering that the season is so short, momentum (or lack thereof), can often serve as a tipping point between a crucial win and a crushing loss.

And for the NFL's best teams, momentum plays various roles, from non-factor to a major force for continued success.

Take the Green Bay Packers, the league's top team and its only undefeated squad. It's easy to argue that they're still riding the wave of momentum that took them from one of the most dominant playoff showings in recent years to a Super Bowl victory.

They've handily defeated every team thrown their way so far this season, and it doesn't look likely to end this week, though they travel west to take on the formidable San Diego Chargers. But is this run of good fortune worth attributing to momentum?

I'm prone to say no. While it certainly played a huge part for the team at the beginning of the season, the fact that the Packers have been able to maintain such a high-quality level of play speaks more to the individual players truly coming together as a team and staying that way, holding themselves and each other to the kind of high standards that fans and their coaches have come to expect.

It certainly takes more than just feeling good about one's good fortunes to put up seven consecutive wins; it takes hard work, more than anything.

But for another of the league's top teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers, momentum plays a much bigger role. Coming off of a Super Bowl loss—the first time the team has lost the big game with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger at the helm of the offense—is difficult.

The team, as a whole, needed to divest itself of the cloud that formed with the loss, and quickly. Unfortunately, it didn't help that they dropped their first game of the regular season to divisional rival Baltimore Ravens in such a massive way, losing 35-7 and leaving the team looking exposed for the first time in years.

While improvements on the field were clearly necessary should the Steelers want to be contenders for yet another season, the mental aspect of overcoming those setbacks factored in in a major way.

And clearly, the mental aspect of the game helped shore up a team hamstrung by injuries and a slowed running game, pulling out wins first over poor teams and then increasingly more difficult squads, culminating in last week's dominant and impressive win over the New England Patriots, who they hadn't beaten in several years.

With the Ravens coming to town this week, the memories of both that Week 1 blowout loss and last week's convincing win will provide motivation to the Steelers in their search for revenge.

Momentum is clearly on the Steelers' side; though Baltimore managed a come-from-behind win last Sunday over the Arizona Cardinals, that win had more of a deflating effect, displaying more of what the Ravens have done wrong and what needs improving than what they succeeded at.

But the Steelers were dominant in all phases of play (aside from red zone production, which suffered from a series of confusions on offense), and they've got a lot of good to take with them into this Sunday's game.

For the 6-1 San Francisco 49ers, momentum is huge. A team with a new head coach, coming off of a losing season in the league's worst division, doesn't seem to have much of a chance to be one of the NFL's most promising squads.

But the Niners have defied all of the so-called strikes against them to reach the very heights of the league with a practically identical squad to the one they fielded in 2010.

While the coaching change clearly had a lot to do with the team's improvement, the mental aspect of the game also affected the 49ers, who entered the season with a chip on their shoulders and have parlayed that into the league's second-best record through eight weeks.

That chip clearly morphed into confidence, as the team bested opponent after opponent, and that confidence came squarely from the momentum that those wins build.

That's not to say that a second loss (which isn't likely this week against the faltering Washington Redskins) would serve to dramatically derail San Francisco's significant progress.

A shift in momentum comes from more than just a single loss, for one, and a single loss—while a setback, to be sure—shouldn't turn a team from one of the NFL's best to yet another mediocre also-ran, by itself.

But while that momentum is present, it certainly gives the Niners an advantage as they head into the playoffs, likely earning a berth this month on the merits of their own impressive streak of wins and the dismal performances of their division-mates.