Menu

49ers-Packers

San Francisco-Green Bay: 9 Takeaways From The 49er Survival

, , , , ,

The San Francisco 49ers continued their mastery of the Green Bay Packers in the finale of the NFL first round on late Sunday afternoon. The 49ers beat the Packers for the fourth straight time, this time 23-20 on a last-play field goal from Phil Dawson. The Niners join the New Orleans Saints as first-round road winners who kicked a field goal at the gun. Let’s get into the Notebook Nine, our key takeaways from San Francisco-Green Bay…


    • *San Francisco is very lucky. Not because they were outplayed, but because they’re the team that did the outplaying, missed all kinds of opportunities and still escaped. They blew two chances inside the 10-yard line to start the game and settled for field goals. An interception killed another drive. A march to about the Green Bay 30 in the third quarter came up empty. You’re fortunate when you can blow those chances and win any game, much less a postseason game on the road.
    • *On a directly related point, I have to question the play-calling by San Francisco on their opening drive after they had first-and-goal from the 5. Jim Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Romans then called a couple bland pass plays, backed themselves into a tough third down and the drive died. It was reminiscent of the way the same situation was handled on the last drive of last season’s Super Bowl. San Francisco has a great running game and an electric quarterback. Why do they call plays that Chad Henne can execute as easily as Colin Kaepernick?


    • *Green Bay’s tackling and containment has been awful throughout the second half of the season and today was no different. Two examples from the final drive will suffice. The first example is the play of the game when Kaepernick scrambled for a first down on 3rd-and-8, when no one held the edge. A more obscure play is the one that started the drive. A simple dump pass to Michael Crabtree resulted in a blown tackle and a first down. San Francisco had its drive starter and began draining away the clock.
    • *In the preview of this game we noted that the 49er passing game isn’t efficient, but they get their big plays. Sunday played out to that script. Kaepernick was only 16/30, but he made those count for 227 yards. His best throw was a 28-yard touchdown pass to Vernon Davis that split two defenders, on a drive where San Francisco answered after falling behind 17-13.
    • *This was a remarkably clean football game, given the animosity that exists between the two teams. There were only five penalties combined and they only added up to thirty yards. There was only one turnover. While the teams might dislike each other, it speaks well to their professionalism that composure was kept in a game this big and this tense.
    • *On the surface this game isn’t going into the books as one of Aaron Rodgers’ big moments. It was a home playoff loss, and in today’s simplistic media world that ends the conversation about quarterbacks. Even the stats were pedestrian, 17/26 for 177 yards. What that doesn’t tell you is how many plays Rodgers made while under constant duress, most notably a Houdini-like escape on a fourth down play that helped the Packers briefly get the lead. I thought he was outstanding, and I’m confident that no one in the Bay Area wanted any part of seeing him get the football back at the end.
    • *Green Bay goes into the offseason really needing to do some soul-searching. The injury to Rodgers exposed them as a team that was far more like the Manning Colts (who collapsed once the quarterback went down) than the Brady Patriots (which sustained an 11-5 record in 2008 when Brady was out). I thought the Packers were a deeper, better-balanced team, one that could at least go 9-7 if they had to play a year without their quarterback. There was nothing in this season that suggested as much, and it’s frankly an indictment of the organization and the coaching staff.


  • *One of the Fox graphics on Green Bay’s recent home playoff record noted the team was 13-0 prior to 2001 and is now 3-5 since. These are always misleading stats, because they don’t account for changes in the playoff format since the realignment of 2002. It’s only since ’02 that we have four division winners per conference, all guaranteed a home game. The teams that had homefield in the period prior to 2001 were, by definition, elite teams. The current alignment means you get more mediocre division winners. The lesson to all this is that homefield is a great insurance policy when you’re really good, but it’s not a panacea for mediocrity.
  • *We’ll conclude by circling back to the 49ers. The key series for them was not the game-winning drive, but the drive prior, when Green Bay had 1st-and-goal at the nine, and trailed 20-17. Given San Fran’s problems in the red zone, if the Packers go up four, I’m not all confident the 49ers could have finished a drive. The defense needed to make up for the offense’s missed chances and did so. Once the Packers settled for a tie, they had to rely on their own defense, something that made no one in the state of Wisconsin feel good.

 

NFL Playoff Preview: San Francisco-Green Bay

, , , , ,

The first round of the NFL playoffs concludes late Sunday afternoon, with the San Francisco-Green Bay matchup at Lambeau Field (4:40 PM ET, Fox) expected to be played in temperatures that will be well below zero. Let’s take a look at the Notebook Nine, our key focal points to take into the game, drawn from personnel matchups to history to the Vegas line.


  • *The NFL might as just well put a San Francisco-Green Bay postseason matchup on the schedule when they release it every  year. The Niners and Packers played each other every year from 1995-98, again in 2001 and now meet for the second straight season. And these have been some consequential matchups. There was the Packers’ arrival as an NFC power (1995), the only 1st-round game in history to feature two 12-win teams (2001), a controversial finish (1998), and Colin Kaepernick’s coming out party (2012).
  • *Las Vegas has set the 49ers as a 2 ½ point favorite, a byproduct of three consecutive wins by San Francisco over Green Bay starting with the first regular season game of last year at Lambeau, and the 49ers’ 12-4 record compared to the Packers’ 8-7-1. The Over/Under is 46.5, which projects out to San Francisco win of 25-22. Let’s just say 24-21 to make it sound like a normal score.
  • *The running backs would be key to this game in any case, but even more so with the weather conditions. Frank Gore is a veteran, Eddie Lacy is young, but they’re both physical runners who went over 1100 yards. Both have been a little banged up down the stretch, and neither played well in their regular season finale, but the foundation for any offensive success starts here.
  • *Kapernick’s numbers are substantially inferior to counterpart Aaron Rodgers, but the 49er quarterback has been playing his most consistent football down the stretch. That coincides with the return of Michael Crabtree, giving him a real deep threat to go with Anquan Boldin and Vernon Davis.
  • *Rodgers should have his own opportunities to find open receivers. Not only does he have Randall Cobb back healthy, to pair alongside Jordy Nelson, but both 49er corners, Carlos Rodgers and Eric Wright are going to be dealing with bad hamstrings.
  • *Green Bay does everything well offensively, except protect the quarterback, making it unsurprising that the law of averages caught up with Rodgers when he broke his collarbone. If San Francisco’s outside linebackers, Aldon Smith and Ahmad Brooks, catch up with Rodgers on Sunday, all those good things the Packer offense can do will be negated.
  • *San Francisco’s offense has a rare combination—the ability make big plays, while minimizing turnovers. Kaepernick ranks seventh in the NFL in yards-per-pass, and the offense as a whole leads the league in not giving away the football. The Niners aren’t always efficient—they rank 25th in completion percentage, but they can take their shots and still protect the ball.
  • *The contrast between the defenses couldn’t be starker. We can drop all kinds of numbers, but they boil down to this—San Francisco’s does everything well, Green Bay’s does nothing well.
  • *Our final point is simple, and it’s Aaron Rodgers. Number 12 has a 66.6% completion rate, he gets 8.74 yards-per-pass, he has a 17/6 TD-INT ratio. He converted three consecutive fourth downs with the season on the line last week in Chicago. If Green Bay wins, he gets the bulk of the credit. If they lose, he deserves almost none of the blame.


I’ve been back and forth on this game. When I did a playoff preview podcast at Prime Sports Network, I picked the 49ers, based on the simple rationale that they’re the more complete team—by a lot—and I don’t believe a quarterback is enough to make the difference, particularly when Kaepernick is playing well himself.

As game time gets closer I’m having second thoughts. Not about my original rationale, but about the weather. I live in Wisconsin, and we’re battening down the hatches for nasty cold, the kind you don’t even want to function in. In my podcast, host Greg DePalma opined that in this kind of environment you take analysis and throw it out. That’s what I’m doing, and I think Green Bay copes a bit better than Frisco and gets the win.

Where The San Francisco 49ers Still Need Work

, , , , ,

The San Francisco 49ers were the most impressive team in the NFC in Week 1, and along with the Baltimore Ravens, one of the two most impressive teams in the entire NFL for the season opener. With Frisco’s not-as-close-as-it-sounds 30-22 win in Green Bay, combined with home losses by New Orleans and the New York Giants, the 49ers have been elevated as the team to beat. Is the hype justified?

I suppose we should begin by saying the media’ s need to anoint a “team to beat” after one game is rather silly, and unless you’re a bettor, there’s no real need to do power rankings of teams on a league-wide, or even conference-wide basis. So let’s reframe the question by first assuming that most people already assumed the Niners were the favorite in the NFC West. Do we now—if we didn’t before—assume that means they’ll win 12-13 games again and get at least a first-round bye in the playoffs?

There are still some issues that San Francisco has to work on before we can get carried away. The pass protection was less than ideal in Green Bay, as the 49er offensive line surrendered four sacks. While the Packer defense is aggressive in attacking the passer, San Fran’s offense is still built around the running game and a low-risk passing game. Being low-risk means avoiding sacks, as well as turnovers.

One can argue that when 2 ½ sacks come at the hands of Clay Matthews, that’s not a situation likely to repeat itself. That’s fair enough, but the San Francisco’s next two games are against Detroit and Minnesota, and last I checked, those teams have some players who can rush the passer too. Detroit’s entire front four can get after you, and Minnesota’s Jared Allen is one of the best pass rushers in the business.

In pointing out the issue with pass protection, I don’t mean to cast a negative light on the 49ers. Any football team has work to do after its first game and coming off a performance where the team ran the ball well, threw it with efficiency and kept Aaron Rodgers’ offense reasonably contained, San Francisco has a lot less to worry about than most teams.  But it doesn’t change the fact we’re still at the phase of the season where we should be asking how teams are going to fix whatever problems they do have, rather than trying to decide who’s going to be the 1-seed in the NFC playoffs this January.

These next two games are good test cases for San Francisco. I don’t want to imply that the media should focus on something other than the Jim Harbaugh-Jim Schwartz Handshake from last season as they build up to Sunday night’s Lions-Niners out west. But there are some actual, substantive, football-related questions that will play out for San Francisco in this game and then again at Minnesota. Why don’t we keep an eye on how that pass protection develops?