My boss at work is a huge sports guy and a great friend, so we routinely talk about, well, pretty much everything in life. But, we do talk about sports a lot. He's a big San Diego guy (which makes him a Padres fan. I know, right? Lololololololololololol) so I have sort of adopted the Chargers as my "second team" to follow, and he has adopted the 49ers.

Anyway, earlier this week, we naturally started by talking about the AFC West. I don't know if you guys heard, but the Broncos actually signed Peyton Manning to play there. It didn't really make too big of a splash on the news front; or, at least, it didn't until Tim Tebow was traded. Now THAT'S newsworthy.

Easy potshots at the media aside, we had a conversation about the upcoming state of the AFC West which turned into a conversation about potential Super Bowl contenders. He was arguing that Manning does not necessarily make the Broncos a top three-to-five AFC team. I sort of pussyfooted my way around that and didn't make a definitive claim (/hangs head in cowardly shame).

When the topic turned to the NFC favorites, though, I just had to get all sorts of aggressive. I know a lot can change between now and even the start of the season, so let's not pretend like this isn't anything more than a thought exercise, but I really do think that the top contenders going into the NFC season have got to be Green Bay and our beloved 49ers. We had a pretty stellar off season, me thinks, and that's part of the fun of this whole idea.

Okay, so I thought I was being aggressive, that is, until my boss decided to one up me and declare that the 49ers are the top dog this season. He thinks that they are the best team in the NFC.

Follow me after the jump into predictive madness.

So, that was pretty cool, but I have some reservations. First off, I really don't know if Alex Smith can throw only five interceptions again this year. I also don't know if the defense can generate the 1.75 million turnovers that it did last year. Besides that, I think this team should be better than it was last year.

That being said, let's play the prediction game. Or, maybe "prediction" is the wrong word. In the comments rank your top five favorites in the NFC for this coming season. They can be goofy. Or maybe you can do the dark horse candidates edition. Perhaps you want to take this super seriously. That's fine too.

I'll try to take a serious stab at it, and by that, I mean that I will start copping out from the very get-go:

1) Tie: Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers

3) Detroit Lions

4) Atlanta Falcons

5) New York Giants

Sleeper Candidate / Runner Up: Philadelphia Eagles

Team that would have made it if they weren't such stoopid little cheaters (nee-ner nee-ner!): New Orleans Saints