The San Francisco 49ers wrapped up their 2025 regular season with a strong 12-5 record-a mark that would’ve secured a division crown in just about any other NFC division. But in the NFC West?
That was only good enough for third place. Yeah, third.
That right there tells you everything you need to know about how cutthroat the NFC West was this past season. The Seattle Seahawks took the division at 14-3, while the Los Angeles Rams matched San Francisco’s 12-5 record but edged them out in the standings.
Three teams, all legitimate contenders, all in one division. That’s not just competitive-that’s a gauntlet.
Fred Warner, the 49ers’ All-Pro linebacker and one of the league’s most respected voices on defense, recently weighed in on the NFC West’s status during an appearance on the St. Brown Brothers Podcast. When asked whether the NFC West is the best division in football, Warner didn’t hesitate.
“Oh yeah, easily. That’s not even a question,” Warner said. “This year we had three teams who were playing for the one seed in our division.”
He’s not wrong. Down the stretch, the Niners, Rams, and Seahawks were all jockeying for that coveted No. 1 seed in the NFC.
Seattle eventually came out on top and rode that momentum all the way to the Super Bowl. But the fact that three of the final NFC teams standing came from the same division?
That’s a testament to just how stacked the NFC West truly was in 2025.
Of course, there’s one glaring outlier in that group-the Arizona Cardinals. While the rest of the division was slugging it out at the top of the standings, the Cardinals were, well, not. They finished among the league’s worst, and Warner didn’t shy away from poking a little fun at the disparity.
“You ever see that meme with the dragons where it’s the three dragons and then you got the dragon over there with his tongue out and the googly eyes?” Warner said, laughing. “Unfortunately, that’s the Cardinals right now.”
It was a lighthearted jab, but it underscored a real point. Amon-Ra St.
Brown, one of the podcast’s co-hosts and a standout receiver for the Detroit Lions, had argued that the NFC North was the league’s strongest division. His reasoning?
Every team in his division was at least competitive-no googly-eyed dragons dragging things down.
Warner acknowledged the Cardinals were a weak link, but made it clear that the top-heavy strength of the NFC West more than made up for it. And given how the playoff race unfolded, it’s hard to argue otherwise. When three teams from one division are all in the hunt for the conference’s top seed deep into December, that’s not just a strong division-that’s a battlefield.
So while the NFC North may have had more balance, the NFC West brought the firepower. And in Warner’s eyes, that’s what counts.