Are the 49ers favorites in the NFC West after just one week?

They were the has beens. The too olds. Cursed by a substation and lapped twice over in their own division. Too many question marks to compete with two real Super Bowl contenders.

To that, Kyle Shanahan says, “Phooey.”

Just one week into the season, his San Francisco 49ers are arguably better positioned than anyone to come out on top of the division that includes the team that hoisted the last Lombardi Trophy and another that entered the season as overwhelming favorites to become the next.

Suddenly, it’s the Rams and Seahawks that have some answering to do.

The Niners didn’t escape their Week 1 excursion down under unscathed — rookie receiver De’Zhaun Stribling (ankle/deltoid) is reportedly out for at least the next month, defensive tackle Alfred Collins (knee/patellar tendon) is done for the year, and it sounds like tight end Jake Tonges (knee/MCL) may be, as well — but at least Brock Purdy did. 

That’s more than Seattle can say for its starting quarterback, Sam Darnold.

The loss of a projected starter and former second-round pick in Collins stings, no doubt, and deals a serious blow to what may be the softest spot of San Francisco’s roster. 

But he’s no Myles Garrett, who will have his own knee surgery before he plays another snap. Trent Williams was apparently so overpowering that he not only neutralized the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in their matchup but for at least the Rams’ next month of games.

Look up when September ends and the 49ers could have a stranglehold on the NFC West.

By then, San Francisco should be 3-0. It would require a case of jet lag for the ages to get in the way of the team we saw in Australia cruising to home wins over the Dolphins and Cardinals.

Heck, they could be the only undefeated team left after three weeks.

Early indications seem to be that Darnold averted the worst-case scenario after leaving the Seahawks’ season-opener on their first drive and could be back in time for the 49ers’ pivotal Week 5 showdown in Seattle. But Drew Lock will be under center for at least next week’s game in Arizona, which isn’t necessarily a gimme after the Cardinals’ Week 1 win over the Chargers.

Who knows what the Rams look like when they didn’t step off a 16-hour flight a little over 24 hours ahead of time, but if it’s anything like their dud down under, so much for all that super team talk — can they beat the Broncos, Eagles and Bills, up next on their schedule? 

Maybe Aaron Donald — and a good night’s sleep — is the solution to their problems. Or maybe he looks more like a guy who’s been retired for three years than an eight-time All-Pro and there’s a reason why he didn’t make the trip to Melbourne when even an IR-bound Garrett did.

Even if the Rams rebound and Sean McVay looks like genius in retrospect for punting on the season opener, they still put themselves in a one-game hole in what was supposed to be one of their nine home games, albeit almost 8,000 miles away from SoFi Stadium.

The Niners, on the other hand, have already crossed one of their biggest hurdles.

Possibly the scariest, certainly the most complicated, game on their schedule is already behind them, with a division road win in hand — and, knock on wood, most of their roster still intact.

As injuries took their toll last season, it was easy to forget all of the tools Shanahan has at his disposal. We all wondered how they managed to win 12 games; well, for all the attention the Rams’ offseason moves attracted, the 49ers added Fred Warner, Nick Bosa, George Kittle, Mike Evans and, in a sense, Purdy, who needed the offseason to fully heal from his turf toe.

The Rams can make all the splashy moves they want, and the Seahawks can say they’ve built two different Super Bowl winners, but the Niners still have the best linebacker (Warner), pass rusher (Bosa), tight end (Kittle) and overall player (Christian McCaffrey) of any of them.

They did more than just give everybody a reminder with their Week 1 thumping.

They put the NFC West on notice.

It’s more than just a two-team race.

The third wheel just might be the front-runners.

The Rams opened the season as some of the heaviest Super Bowl favorites in recent NFL history. They’ve fallen to the third-best odds just to win their division.

The new betting favorite? Your San Francisco 49ers, at +160, according to DraftKings, up from +280 when the season began and ahead of the Seahawks (+175) and Rams (+205).

Stats Perform’s Opta Supercomputer runs thousands of simulations to predict the NFL season. Heading into the weekend, about 2.88% of those queries ended in the 49ers winning the Super Bowl, 14th in the NFL. After Week 1, it now crowns the Niners 4.3% of the time, a 49% increase, up to the ninth-best Super Bowl odds in the NFL.

Maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

After all, one of the last times the Niners were close to full strength, they marched into Seattle and punched the eventual Super Bowl champs in the mouth with a 17-13 win to begin last season. Only one team held them to fewer yards and just two put up more against them.

The performance only validated their own belief in their roster.

They didn’t get much of a chance to see how far it could go before the cracks began to show.

If the injury gods direct their ire away from the 49ers and toward their divisional foes instead, as has been the case so far, who knows what they could be capable of.

Maybe we should be thinking bigger than just an NFC West crown.