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The San Francisco 49ers host the Carolina Panthers in a Week 10 matchup of two teams playing as well as anybody in the NFL. The 49ers opened as six point favorites, and the line is climbing as high as a touchdown at some sites.
The 49ers have won five straight games, while the Panthers have won four straight. They join the Kansas City Chiefs (9-game win streak), Green Bay Packers (4-game win streak) and the Seattle Seahawks (4-game win streak) with the longest win streaks in the NFL.
Of course, not all win streaks are the same. The Seahawks have won four straight, but their biggest margin of victory was 12 points against the Arizona Cardinals (winning games by 6.75 points per game). The Packers win streak is solid enough, winning games by 11.5 points per game. The Chiefs win streak has seen them win their games by 11.5 points per game.
All those teams are winning games, but the Panthers and 49ers have been playing as well as anybody in the league over the last month. Bill Barnwell opened his weekly recap breaking down the Panthers huge turnaround. He posted a table of teams that had outscored opponents by 80 points over a four-game stretch in which the margin of victory was at least 14 in each game.
The Panthers have won their last four games by a combined 82 total points. The 49ers have outscored their last four opponents by 89 points, but did not appear in the table because their win over the Cardinals was by 12 points. Other than that, their five game win streak has featured wins by 24, 31, 14 and 32 points. They have beaten some bad teams, but they are handling them with authority.
The 49ers enter this game with an extra week to prepare coming off their Week 9 bye. It has allowed the team to heal up a bit, and get back some potential key contributors. More importantly for the purposes of getting the win this week, the 49ers coaching staff gets extra time to get the game plan ready for Cam Newton, and more importantly this stout Panthers defense.