After plenty of excitement from Sunday’s games, Week 8 will end on Monday night with a key NFC West matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals that will play a big factor in the division standings heading into Week 9. While the 49ers sit at 5-2, the Cardinals look to avoid falling to .500 after starting the season 4-0 as they’ve lost three-straight games.

Despite both teams having two of the top defenses in the league, there’s no reason why San Francisco shouldn’t come out on top in this matchup. Not only do the 49ers have the league’s top overall defense, but they will be going against a Cardinals’ offense that ranks 31st overall and will be forced to use John Skelton once again.

While San Francisco’s offense may not be much to brag about, they have shown potential at times during the 2012 season–especially a few weeks ago against the Buffalo Bills when they managed to put up 45 points. The 49ers realize their best chance of winning this game will fall on the shoulders of Frank Gore–who is coming off a strong performance against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 7 in which he recorded 182 yards from the line of scrimmage.

The Cardinals are allowing 120.9 yards per game on the ground to opponents–so it should be interesting to see if Gore can take advantage of Arizona’s defense on Monday while leading San Francisco to their sixth win of the 2012 season to stay on top of the NFC West.

“Like” Dan Parzych on Facebook