Chuck Cook/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
NEW ORLEANS — Across the last month, the best team in the N.F.C. has been more of an abstract concept than an unassailable certainty. The contenders relish cannibalizing one another. The distinction shifts week to week.
At the Superdome on Sunday, it changed from quarter to quarter, drive to drive, snap to snap. The final play of the San Francisco 49ers’ 48-46 win against the New Orleans Saints offered closure to an exhausting, exhilarating game but an altogether temporary rejoinder to a debate that will rage until the conference champion is crowned in six weeks.