That’s quite a mountain for the San Francisco 49ers to climb: the oddsmakers at BetMGM Sportsbook opened up their Week 10 NFL lines with the New Orleans Saints as 9.5-point home favorites over the visiting 49ers, projecting another Saints blowout with the over/under set at 49.5. That suggests a final tally around Saints 30, 49ers 20.

And it follows a dominant performance from New Orleans on the road against the experts’ favorite Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which the Saints won 38-3. San Francisco is coming off a 34-17 Thursday night loss to the Green Bay Packers on Nov. 5, which doesn’t add much clarity. The Packers beat the Saints by a touchdown early this season 37-30 and later lost to the Buccaneers 38-10, so none of this is really informative.

It doesn’t help that the 49ers have been decimated by injuries, in the truest sense of the word. While they got a couple of wide receivers back from the COVID-19 reserve list, they didn’t field a single player who touched the football in their NFC championship game win over the Packers last season when Green Bay met them for a rematch.

So the Saints are probably rightly favored to bulldoze San Francisco. But anything can happen in the NFL, and this isn’t a game New Orleans can afford to overlook as the NFC playoff picture begins to take shape.

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