NFL Playoff Picture: It’s the Niners and Nine Nobodies

The San Francisco 49ers seem to be in a league of their own as they enter the NFL playoffs--so much so that perhaps an appropriate title for this spectacular is the 49ers and the Nine Dwarfs.

The 49ers, attempting to become the first team in a decade to repeat as Super Bowl champions, posted a 14-2 regular-season record. They were two games better than any other team in the league and beat four of the other nine playoff teams.

The 49ers, one of six division champions with a bye today when the two wild-card games will be played, are on much more of a roll than they were a year ago, when they started 6-5, won four straight and then lost their regular-season finale to the Rams, 38-16. That loss knocked the New York Giants out of the playoffs, leading Giant quarterback Phil Simms to complain that he watched the 49ers “lay down like dogs” against the Rams.

This year, the 49ers routed the Chicago Bears, 26-0, in their finale, even though they already had clinched home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

“In some respects, that was a very decisive win. But, as coaches, we look at certain things that we can do better,” said 49er Coach George Seifert. “And we’ll have to do them better in the playoffs.”

If the 49ers do as well as they did in the regular season, that would be good enough.

They even seem to have history on their side. The NFL has a record of ending a decade with a team winning back-to-back titles.

The Philadelphia Eagles did it in 1948-49, the Baltimore Colts did it in 1958-59 and the Pittsburgh Steelers did it in 1978-79.

The 49ers, who are considered by many to be the team of the decade, can join Pittsburgh as the only four-time Super Bowl champion.

They also can become known as one of the best post-World War II teams, joining the 1946-55 Cleveland Browns, who won four titles in the old All-America Conference and three NFL titles; the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s, who won five titles and the first two Super Bowls, and the Steelers of the 1970s, who won four Super Bowls in six seasons.

That’s why all the focus is on the 49ers, who will play either the Philadelphia Eagles or the Minnesota Vikings in their first playoff game. If they win, they’d face either the Vikings, Giants or Rams in the NFC title game.

Of those four teams, the Rams seem to have the best shot of upsetting the 49ers. They handed the 49ers one of their two losses this season and could have swept them if they hadn’t blown two 17-point leads in the second game.

The problem for the Rams will be getting to the NFC title game. They will first have to win at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, then at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

The weather is likely to be nasty in both places, and the Rams aren’t noted for playing well in cold weather. They barely beat the New England Patriots, 24-20, in Foxboro, Mass., on Sunday.

The 49ers beat the Giants and Eagles during the regular season, and the Vikings would have to face San Francisco on the road at Candlestick Park.

The 49ers beat the Vikings, 34-9, in the playoffs last season. The Vikings, whose home is the Metrodome in Minneapolis, have become such a dome team that they’re 1-8 in their last nine outdoor games.

The Vikings upset the 49ers two seasons ago in the playoffs, 36-24, at Candlestick when the 49ers were 13-2. But quarterback Joe Montana was rusty and ineffective in that game after being injured at the end of the season.

Although he’s had trouble with his ribs this season, Montana finished the season by hitting 10 of 21 passes against the Bears before coming out early in the third quarter. It wasn’t vintage Montana, but it was good enough to enable him to set the record for quarterback rating, with 112.4. Milt Plum of the Cleveland Browns had the old mark of 110.4 in 1960.

Montana also finished the season by completing 70.2 percent of his passes, the third-best mark in NFL history. Ken Anderson completed 70.55 of his passes in 1982, the nine-game strike season, and Sammy Baugh completed 70.3 in 1945.

If the 49ers hadn’t pulled Montana so soon in the Bear game, he might have broken that record.

“We didn’t find out until there were three minutes left in the game,” Seifert said. “Had we known earlier in the third period, we might have put him back in. But the plan was to do basically what we did.”

In the AFC, a team will qualify for the Super Bowl only because that’s the way the system works. The Denver Broncos were the only team to win more than nine regular-season games. They finished 11-5 and are favored to go to the Super Bowl for the third time in the last four seasons. But they lost at home to the Eagles and Giants.

Quarterback John Elway didn’t have one of his better seasons, but Denver prospered when defensive coordinator Wade Phillips rebuilt the defense into a unit that ranked No. 2 in the AFC, No. 1 against the rush.

The Broncos lost two of their last three games, and it may not be considered stunning if they lose in the playoffs.

The team that might have the best chance of beating them is the Cleveland Browns, who defeated the Vikings and Houston Oilers in the final two weeks of the season.

The addition of running back Kevin Mack, who was in jail on a drug charge earlier in the season, has added a dimension to the Browns’ sputtering offense.

Mack, who scored the winning touchdown against the Oilers with 39 seconds left Saturday night, said, “I guess when all the trouble started, it was hard to see ahead to the good times coming back again. But a lot of people believed in me, and now I’m back.”

At the start of the season, the Buffalo Bills and Oilers were given good shots of making the Super Bowl, but both teams are on the defensive after struggling down the stretch. The Bills lost three of their last four, and the Oilers lost their last two.

Bill Coach Marv Levy said, ‘We’ve been in first place for 32 straight games (two seasons). Sometimes it’s hard to please people.”

That’s mainly because they were only 9-7, and because the players don’t seem to like quarterback Jim Kelly.

The Oilers also finished 9-7, and Houston Coach Jerry Glanville said, “We don’t have to apologize for being one of the three (actually four) teams that have made the playoffs the last three years (along with the Browns, Vikings and 49ers). There are 18 teams that wish they were in, but they’re not.”

One team not apologizing is the Pittsburgh Steelers, the hottest team in the AFC. They won their last three games, although the games were against teams with losing records--the New York Jets, Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.