4 dream scenarios the 49ers would love to have in 2023
By Peter Panacy
No team is going to have a completely free and easy path to the Super Bowl without its inevitable set of oddities and challenges. Whether it's a quirky schedule that includes three road games in a row in different time zones, playing within the toughest division in all of football or the worst possible combination of bye weeks and Thursday Night Football appearances, each team can view itself as "screwed" in some form or another.
For the San Francisco 49ers, 2023 will have its quirks.
They're no longer in the NFL's toughest division, the NFC West, considering both the Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams are in rebuild mode. But the Niners travel the second most of all 32 teams, and they also face the most teams coming off a bye week or the post-Thursday Night Football "mini" bye.
All that said, though, San Francisco still boasts a Super Bowl-caliber roster within a weak conference, the NFC.
It would be nice, however, if a few things ended up working in the 49ers' favor, though, such as these four dream scenarios.
49ers dream scenario No. 1: Eagles regress big time
There are few challengers to the throne of the NFC, and the Niners are one of them.
One could make the argument that San Francisco, the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadephia Eagles are the lone serious contenders, and the fact the 49ers have ousted Dallas from the playoffs in back-to-back years essentially leaves Philly as the No. 1 threat to the Niners getting back to the Super Bowl.
Having lost last year's Super Bowl themselves, Philadelphia will look to bounce back on a "vengeance tour" of its own, not unlike what San Francisco wanted in the wake of its own Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs not long ago.
That said, teams that lose a Super Bowl the previous season have historically had serious issues not only making it back to the big game but also just making it into the postseason the following year, as this CBS Sports article pointed out. Heck, even the 49ers didn't make the playoffs the year after losing the Super Bowl in February of 2020.
The Niners would love nothing more than to see the Eagles struggle over the course of 2023 en route to not being a serious threat in the playoffs, assuming Philly even makes it in the first place.