The San Francisco 49ers enter Week 18 as the NFC's No. 2 seed after defeating the Las Vegas Raiders in a 37-34 overtime bout last weekend, allowing them to overtake the Minnesota Vikings in the playoff picture after their blowout loss to the Green Bay Packers.
However, the seeding in both conferences is anything but locked heading into the final week of the regular season, and the 49ers can either move up or down a spot, based on several different outcomes.
Speaking to the media ahead of San Francisco's matchup with the Arizona Cardinals this weekend, head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked a series of questions on his mindset about the seeding and the first round of the playoffs.
One of the bigger storylines this week was the reveal of the Week 18 schedule, which Shanahan acknowledged he was interested in to understand the different playoff implications of the games.
"I was pretty interested [in seeing the time slots of the games]. Yeah, just to kind of have an idea of what you know going into games. If we had nothing to play for, I'd definitely take care of guys a lot more with one week to go, but we have a lot to play for."
As stated above, the 49ers have an opportunity to earn the No. 1 seed in the NFC if they defeat the Cardinals and the Philadelphia Eagles lose to the New York Giants this weekend. Consequently, they could drop to No. 3 if they lose and the Vikings defeat the Chicago Bears.
The Vikings have the earliest time slot of the three games, playing at 10 A.M. Pacific Time, while the 49ers and Eagles both play in the afternoon slot.
Shanahan understands the magnitude of the scheduling in the final week, but his desire for the one seed likely means that the 49ers will be fully committed to playing and winning against the Arizona Cardinals.
"I think a lot [about] the [the timings of the Minnesota/Philadelphia games]. I don't talk about it all. We'll see how it plays out and we'll see what the situation is and I know one thing we would love to be the one seed, but right now we got the two seed and we want to make sure we at least stay the two seed, in order to do that, we need to win. Maybe if Minnesota lost before us, that wouldn't be the case, but I'm counting on us having to win to get that and we're not going to know until the game's over whether we have a chance for the one seed, so the way it plays out. To me, there's only thing one thing that guys should be worried about and our team should be talking about and that is beating Arizona."
But, Shanahan's focus will be solely on the Cardinals on Sunday, as he told reporters that he doesn't plan to get score updates about the Eagles game.
"No, I don't really like people doing that. I might look at the scoreboard here and there for replay and fall into the score, but we'll see."
Additionally, Shanahan doesn't want to look ahead, instead focusing on possible playoff matchups only after the week, although he did look at other teams during the 49ers' off-day on Monday.
"No. No we don't. Everyone's working on this stuff and we always look at things and look at what teams do and have a good idea of it. I might have peaked at a couple other teams yesterday, but you do that for a little bit. It was nice to give us the players Monday off because it gave us a little bit more time and we used that for looking at a couple other things, but we'll get to that Sunday night."
With much on the line for the 49ers this weekend, all eyes will be on the NFC playoff teams, not only for where San Francisco could end up in seeding, but also who they could play in the Wild Card or Divisional rounds of the playoffs.