“Yeah, I suck,” McCaffrey joked after the game. “Everybody on offense scored but me.”

It was a day to laugh and exhale for the 49ers, who had lost three games in a row to drop to 5-3 ahead of their Week 9 bye. They needed a win — and a big, decisive road win against one of the hottest teams in the league was the perfect medicine. “Those three games, that wasn’t us,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “We needed to get back to playing 49er football and being proud of what we put on tape, and today we did that.”

It was an impressive enough victory to earn the 49ers the coveted top spot in the overreactions column, in which we judge some of the biggest potential takeaways off the

Without a doubt, this looked a lot more like the 49ers team that won its first five games than the one that lost the following three. They didn’t turn it over once, and they took the ball away from the Jaguars four times. The defense had five sacks and held the Jaguars to 59 rushing yards. Quarterback Brock Purdy threw three touchdown passes, and the offense scored 30-plus points for the sixth time

It was a three-hour party for the team that flew across the country hoping to feel more like itself after a month that had people outside the organization questioning it. “I always said if we don’t turn it over and don’t have a bunch of penalties on first and second downs, we’ll score a lot of points,” tight end George Kittle said. And the Niners did just that Sunday

Nobody looks scarier than the 49ers do when they’re right. With receiver Deebo Samuel and offensive tackle Trent Williams back from injury, the offense looked completely different. And if edge rusher Chase Young can be a contributor up front on defense, they have as formidable a defensive line rotation as anyone in the league. They are absolutely one of the favorites to win the NFC and reach the Super Bowl.

But the Eagles were off this week, and the Cowboys looked pretty dominant (albeit against the Giants). The 7-2 Lions are going to be tough, and the Vikings have some kind of magic working right now. Heck, the Niners aren’t even clear of the Seahawks yet in their own division. They will have a fight on their hands in the NFC. All Sunday did was remind us what they can be when they’re at their best

The big game of the day in the league’s best division was the Browns’ comeback victory over the first-place Ravens. It pulled Baltimore back closer to the rest of the AFC North field. The Ravens are still in first place at 7-3, but the Browns are a half-game behind at 6-3. So are the Steelers, who won again Sunday despite giving up more yards than they gained — something they’ve now done in all nine of their games. The Bengals lost a tough one to C.J. Stroud and the red-hot Texans, so they’re in last place and on the outside looking in at the moment — even at 5-4.

If the season ended right now, the Ravens, Browns and Steelers would all be playoff teams, while the 5-4 Bengals would lose the head-to-head tiebreaker for the final spot to the 5-4 Texans. (The Bills, who are 5-4, play on Monday night and could jump both Cincinnati and Houston with a win over Denver

I do not know how the Steelers are doing this, and I expect it to catch up with them at some point. But right now, all they have to do is go 4-4 the rest of the way for a good chance to get in. Cleveland’s defense is going to keep it in most games, and it just won a shootout on the road against a Baltimore team that had been looking unbeatable. And the Bengals were looking fantastic for more than a month, and they even had a late lead Sunday despite being banged-up and shorthanded on offense before Stroud led another winning drive against them.

ESPN’s Football Power Index currently projects all four teams with between 30% and 88% chances to make the playoffs. If Cincinnati can beat Baltimore on Thursday (big if, but far from impossible) and tighten things up even further in this division, the likelihood of the AFC North landing all four teams in the postseason will only go up

Prescott accounted for five touchdowns — one rushing and four passing — on Sunday in the Cowboys’ 49-17 thrashing of the Giants. He was 26-for-35 for 404 yards and didn’t play in the fourth quarter because he didn’t have to. And while the Giants aren’t putting up a lot of resistance at the moment, the fact is this didn’t come out of nowhere. Since the Cowboys’ Week 5 debacle in San Francisco, they’ve played four games. In those four games, Prescott has completed 72.1% of his passes, averaged 338.5 passing yards per game, thrown 12 touchdown passes to two interceptions and rushed for two scores. Dallas is also 3-1 in those games.

On Sunday, Prescott was 8-for-10 for 233 yards and a touchdown pass on throws that traveled at least 15 yards down the field, tied for his most such completions in a game in his career. So he’s also not dinking-and-dunking his way to these performances by any means.