NFC Is the 49ers and Everyone Chasing Them : Preview: The West is best, but Central has four teams that could win a championship if San Francisco falters.

The thing that makes 1990 different in the National Football League is that for the first time in years, the dominant team of the era is positioned to win a third consecutive Super Bowl.

And that’s not all. With another season like last year’s, the San Francisco 49ers could win their fifth Super Bowl in 10 years.

With the regular season starting this weekend, San Francisco’s quarterback, Joe Montana, shares a remarkable NFL record with Terry Bradshaw, who led the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers to four championships.

As Montana reached the heights in the playoffs, the 49ers routed three of the best teams in football last winter in winning their fourth championship of the ‘80s.

They eliminated the Minnesota Vikings, 41-13; then the Rams, 30-3; and, in a Super Bowl anticlimax, the Denver Broncos, 55-10. And in so doing, they made believers of nearly everyone who plays or coaches football.

And Montana is still on the team.

So is Jerry Rice. So is Roger Craig. So is Ronnie Lott, the defensive star of all four of San Francisco’s Super Bowl championships.

So is George Seifert, who succeeded Bill Walsh as the 49ers’ coach last season. And so is Eddie DeBartolo, the inventor of checkbook football, the club owner whose costly commitment to winning keeps paying off.

Counting regular-season and postseason games, the 49ers since late 1988 are 24-3 (.889). That’s one of the hottest streaks in NFL history--considering the quality of the teams they’re beating in a league widely known for parity. It’s reminiscent of 1984, when the Detroit Tigers started 20-4 in the American League.

And it’s keeping the 49ers on course to join the 1929-31 Green Bay Packers and the 1965-67 Packers as teams winning three consecutive NFL championships.

Can anyone stop these people?

In the league’s dominant conference, five or six of their 1990 rivals have some kind of chance. Three of them are Eastern teams: the Washington Redskins, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants.

The others are the Rams and possibly two from the NFC Central: the Vikings and Detroit Lions.

Compared to the 49ers, all are severely flawed, although the Redskins may come closer to the 49er ideal--all-around balance and depth, with an accent on productive passing--than any other club.

It could well have been a Redskin year if the NFL hadn’t just made a major procedural change.

The league has decided to admit six wild-card teams to the playoffs this winter--three from each conference--along with the six division winners.

And that gives the 49ers a bonus chance at the championship--a chance that no other title defender in 70 years ever had.

It’s hard to believe that six NFC teams could be better than the 49ers. Even if they lose the division title to the Rams, they will almost surely advance as a wild card.

And if they finish fast in December--if they have the momentum going into the January schedule, regardless of any earlier injuries or other kinds of early trouble--the 49ers will be the team to beat in the playoffs. Again.

In one-through-10 order, here are their principal challengers, the principal NFC teams that are most likely to succeed if the 49ers misfire:

1) WASHINGTON REDSKINS

Quarterback: Mark Rypien

Coach: Joe Gibbs (102-48-0)

In turf language, the Redskins, under Gibbs, are usually either there or thereabouts, finishing close when they don’t finish first. And such a team is always a threat, even when it isn’t among the favorites. This isn’t a very flashy team, even in its three-receiver formations when Rypien is dealing to Art Monk, Ricky Sanders and Gary Clark, but it is a tough, solid competitor. And Gibbs employs highly respected assistants.

2) RAMS

Quarterback: Jim Everett

Coach: John Robinson (71-50-0)

This team’s early-season schedule, with a September off-week, isn’t as alarming as its injuries, and down the road, other teams will be hurt, too. If Robinson can hold on until defensive back Jerry Gray returns, the Rams will still contend. Much depends on the quality of Ram depth. For a while last year, depth carried the 49ers and Redskins--and the Rams appear to have it at least at wide receiver. Their strength is Everett and one of the NFL’s great pass offenses.

3) DETROIT LIONS

Quarterback: Rodney Peete

Coach: Wayne Fontes (9-12)

Few if any Detroit starters would make the first team at Minnesota. The Lions aren’t an NFL power. But late last season, they learned how to win with their new run-and-shoot offense, and there could be a carry-over this season because their opponents haven’t learned how to stop it. And eventually, they expect Andre Ware to be their quarterback. The Lions have come up with a secret weapon under Fontes, a defense that ranks behind only Minnesota’s in their division.

4) MINNESOTA VIKINGS

Quarterback: Wade Wilson

Coach: Jerry Burns (41-28-0)

This team should have won at least one of the recent Super Bowls. And again this year, it should run over Detroit and all other division rivals. It has the players and--on defense--the coaching. But it hasn’t been able to win enough with its old-time offense, whose passer, Wade Wilson, is the NFL’s most underrated and even now is still fighting for his job. The coaches often misuse receiver Anthony Carter, too. Some 1990 coaching changes provide some hope.

5) PHILADELPHIA EAGLES

QB: Randall Cunningham

Coach: Buddy Ryan (33-31-1)

Football people call the NFL’s many journeymen about equal in all cities and say a winner is simply a team with a few distinguished players. The example is Philadelphia, where few are distinguished except Cunningham and three defensive linemen: Reggie White, Jerome Brown and Clyde Simmons. The only other blue chips: Mike Quick, 31, a great receiver often hurt, and young tight end Keith Jackson, whose holdout will hurt.

6) NEW YORK GIANTS

Quarterback: Phil Simms

Coach: Bill Parcells (69-49-1)

There isn’t much chance that the Giants will finish this far back, and in the East it will come as no surprise if they win it all. One question is whether their summer-long holdout pass rusher, Lawrence Taylor, worked hard enough on his own to get into NFL shape. The Giants field the best defense in their division, along with a plucky quarterback and a potentially big-time running back, rookie Rodney Hampton. Little David Meggett will win a game or two on his own.

7) NEW ORLEANS SAINTS

Quarterback: John Fourcade

Coach: Jim Mora (38-26).

The race for division titles and wild-card status in the NFC doesn’t run this deep unless one of the above six clubs throws a shoe. No NFL team is better coached than the Saints, but no team has as much to beat in its own division. The Saints won’t rise unless, or until, rookie quarterback Mike Buck matures. Fourcade and predecessor Bobby Hebert are journeymen. Linebackers Pat Swilling, Rickey Jackson and Sam Mills are the team’s only class.

8) ATLANTA FALCONS

Quarterback: Chris Miller.

Coach: Jerry Glanville (1st year)

The NFL’s most improved team is led by a competent quarterback, one of the league’s ablest. Other quality is calling Atlanta home now, too: Bill Fralic and Chris Hinton in the offensive line, Andre Rison at wide receiver, Tony Casillas and Deion Sanders on defense and possibly rookie runner Steve Broussard, among others. But as individuals, the Falcons are harder to handle than most. Only if Glanville can motivate this bunch will Atlanta have something at last.

9) GREEN BAY PACKERS

Quarterback: Anthony Dilweg

Coach: Lindy Infante (14-18)

As a 1989 rookie, Dilweg nearly beat out the Packers’ famous 1990 holdout, Don Majkowski, who led them to a record four one-point decisions in a miracle season. The pass-oriented Infante offense is a little different from the others in the NFL--the 49er-Ram types and the run-and-shoot types--and a bit harder to execute. But the test is degree of improvement, and the Packers improve all the time. Their stars are receiver Sterling Sharpe and linebacker Tim Harris.

10) CHICAGO BEARS

QB: Jim Harbaugh, Mike Tomczak

Coach: Mike Ditka (84-45)

The Bears made their biggest mistake years ago when they went to Big Ten running teams Michigan and Ohio State for their passers. There are no indications that either Harbaugh or Tomczak will ever win. With Purdue’s Jim Everett, the Bears would have it made offensively. And if defensive tackle Dan Hampton is as crippled as he seems, the defense is shot. The coach is smart and sound but can no longer play.

) THE OTHERS

WEST

This has become the NFL’s best division, with uniformly good coaching and strong teams. Because their 1980s coach, Bill Walsh, was the most accomplished recruiter of his time, the 49ers recently have won the division title most years. They’re still winning with Walsh’s recruits and, to be sure, his system. The challenge for the new Seifert, or somebody in San Francisco, is to keep the talent rolling in.

The late-’80s challenge for San Francisco’s principal competitor, Robinson, was to convert the Rams from a running team to a passing team, which he did. By last year, most critics ranked the 49ers and Rams 1-2 in the league.

The Saints and Falcons, challenged by the California teams, have brought in Mora and Glanville to strengthen the Southern precinct. With slightly better material, Mora would be a regular in the playoffs. Glanville, formerly Houston’s coach, has been in the playoffs the last three years.

EAST

Unlike the West, this is a peaks-and-valleys division, with Washington, Philadelphia and the New York Giants on the peaks and the other two far, far below.

The Phoenix Cardinals are probably farther from the Super Bowl than any other NFL team. Under a new coach, Joe Bugel, the Cardinals will attack this year in the one-back offense that Bugel brought from Washington--and that Dan Henning has carried from Washington to San Diego--and they would settle for the Marion Butts-type that Henning turned up last year when he drafted the original. It could be the Cardinals’ top pick: Anthony Thompson.

But if Timm Rosenbach isn’t an NFL quarterback, the hard-luck Phoenix area will be as completely out of it as the day that Neil Lomax had to quit. The one great Phoenix player is safety Tim McDonald.

At Dallas, the jury is still out on Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman as well as his coach, Jimmy Johnson, and the owner, Jerry Jones. But Johnson, on his record, has an NFL future.

CENTRAL

If the NFC West is the league’s strongest, the NFC Central is the strangest NFL division.

The Vikings, with Mike Lynn as general manager, have rounded up more talent than any NFL team east of San Francisco. The Lions, with Mouse Davis and June Jones advising, are the NFL’s first in the run-and-shoot formation. The Bears have the league’s best-known coach in Ditka, along with most of the recent tradition in this old black-and-blue division but perhaps not enough else.

The Packers also have a distinguished past. But in pitiless-weather country, the new Packer coach, Infante, has elected to play pass-ball along with the Lions--who live in a domed stadium--and thus no one can read Green Bay’s future.

The other bay team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has been picked by many Southerners to land in the playoffs this season. If, in his fourth NFL season, Vinny Testaverde becomes an NFL quarterback, the Buccaneers have a chance. Their hope is that former Charger Gary Anderson, a gifted but small runner, will play 16 games. As coach and general manager, Ray Perkins calls every shot in Tampa, where his three-year record is 14-33.