Darren Cave believes Ireland can afford to put in a "seven or eight out of 10" performance and still beat Scotland.
The sides meet in the final round of the Guinness Six Nations championship in Dublin on Saturday with Andy Farrell's team, who lost to England at the weekend, four points clear at the top of the table.
A win or draw for the hosts will seal the title, and even a losing bonus point is likely to put Ireland into an unassailable position.
Ireland have an impressive recent record against the Scots, who beat England in round three but lost away to Italy last time out.
It’s 14 years since Scotland beat Ireland in Dublin, and they have only won once in the last ten championship meetings.
In addition, the teams squared off in the last two World Cups with Ireland winning 27-3 in Japan in 2019 and 36-14 last year in France.
"First things first: beat Scotland and win the championship," former Ulster and Ireland centre Cave told RTÉ Sport.
"No disrespect to Scotland but there are better teams in the world. I don’t think Ireland have to be 10 out of 10 to beat Scotland.
"If we play seven or eight out of 10 this week, I do think that should be enough."
On Ireland’s two most recent losses when England and New Zealand managed to stop Farrell’s side getting into their rhythm, Cave said: "Big picture, now that Ireland have a target on their back how do Ireland become better at not being disrupted?
"England had a really good plan, executed it really well and we didn’t deal with it perfectly.
"When we aren’t able to ask questions of teams with [our] intricate, plus plays and wee passes and something that we are so good at, when we struggle there, where to we go then?
"Typically, you would be talking about setpiece: how can we get even stronger there? We’ve seen an improvement from the World Cup.
"The one area where we may just miss [former captain] Johnny Sexton, sorry to bring him up, is in that [area] where you come off a sideline and you lose a load of metres, maybe he’s the kind of guy that has that experience where you come back on that short side and poke the ball in behind and turn England.
"I don’t like the phrase 'game-management' but I just think when the game is disrupted and when we can’t do plan A, how do we react? Big picture, that’s how we get better."
Munster back Simon Zebo was also on the RTÉ Rugby panel for Sunday’s coverage of Wales v France and he believed that Ireland will focus on the breakdown ahead of Saturday’s finale.
"We still have a great opportunity to win the tournament, but the coaches will have a big look at that performance and see where to improve," said the Ireland international.
"They are going to look at setpiece but I think they’ll look at our phase attack a lot and why England were able to disrupt so much at our breakdown.
"In any attacking shape, the ruck is the heartbeat of the attack, without it you can’t function at all.
"If we take care of our job, take care of ourselves, improve those areas, we’ll be too much for Scotland."
Watch Wales v Italy in the Guinness Six Nations (2.15pm) and France v England (8pm) on Saturday on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on France v England on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app
Follow a live blog on Ireland v Scotland in the Guinness Six Nations on Saturday from 4pm and listen to live commentary on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Watch Wales v Italy and France v England in the Under-20 Six Nations on Friday night from 7.20pm and 7.50pm on RTÉ Player
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