Packers get second shot:
Blown out in their regular-season meeting with San Francisco, Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay have built back their momentum for an NFC title showdown with San Francisco.
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Now comes the hard part.
After holding off the resilient Russell Wilson and his Seahawks in the final five minutes in the divisional round, the Packers, with their 14-3 record and find-a-way mentality, are now only a game away from their sixth Super Bowl appearance. But standing in their way are the big, bad 49ers, who have been the NFC’s best team this season.
The top-seeded 49ers blew the Packers off the field at Levi Stadium (37-8) less than two months ago and are coming off an even-more-dominant-than-the-score-suggests 27-10 win over the Vikings in the divisional round.
The Packers have improved since that Nov. 24 debacle in San Francisco, a game in which they weren’t even competitive and which was the clear low point of a season that hasn’t seen many. Their defense has picked up in the last month or so, and Aaron Rodgers showed on Jan. 12 how lethal in the clutch he can be.
But they’ll have to have improved a lot, and they’ll need Rodgers at his best, because the last time these two teams met the 49ers’ defensive front seven absolutely dominated them.
“We’ll really see where we’re at and how far we’ve come, because that’s a really good football team, and they’re playing at a really high level,” head coach Matt LaFleur said of the 49ers. “Obviously, they took care of the Vikings pretty handily (on Jan. 11), and they’re a really good football team.”
The Packers advanced to the first conference championship game since the 2016 season by winning the way they have most of the year: Starting fast, then hanging on in the end.
After a sharp first half that ended with them leading 21-3, they failed to get the confidence boost that putting the game away would have allowed. They could have used every bit of good feeling heading into San Francisco. But Russell Wilson was just too good for them to do that as he willed, scrambled and threw the Seahawks into position to possibly pull out another comeback win in the game’s final five minutes.
Then, as the Packers have done often this season, they got the plays they needed with the game on the line, this time from both sides of the ball.
First, there was Preston Smith’s huge sack of Wilson on a third down with about three minutes left in the game. Getting one of the most elusive quarterbacks in the game on the ground on that big a play was no small thing and was just the latest game-turning contribution from one general manager Brian Gutekunst’s outstanding free agent signings last offeason. Za’Darius Smith, by the way, had two sacks and four hits on Wilson in another of his excellent performances.
Then there were Rodgers’ two clutch third-down throws that ran out the clock – one a dime to Davante Adams on an improvised fade route on 3rd-and-8, the other when he stood in the pocket and took a shot just after he’d zipped a pass to Jimmy Graham over the middle on 3rd-and-9.
With that, the Seahawks were out of timeouts and the Packers were championshipgame bound.
“That’s kind of what we talked about in the huddle before the last drive,” Rodgers said. “These are the moments that you work for and you think about in the offseason, the chance to put a game away. And like I’ve said most of the year – you guys have talked about the aesthetics of our wins. It doesn’t have to be pretty, but what we’ve done is closed out games the right way, and our defense, although they gave up a few scoring drives in the second half, big stop and then we put together the drive that closed the game out. It was very special.”
Rodgers’ stats weren’t eyepopping – a 113.7 rating, 16for-27 passing for 243 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. But he had a sharp game that was enough to beat Wilson (106.5 rating) even at the Seahawks quarterback’s scrambling, improvising best in the second half.
But beating the banged-up Seahawks and matching up with the 49ers are entirely different matters. San Francisco is the most complete team still playing after Baltimore was knocked off and ranks second in scoring offense and eighth in fewest points allowed.
The lasting image from that November matchup is the 49ers’ front seven – mostly linemen Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner, and linebackers Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw – dominating the line of scrimmage. They sacked Rodgers five times, held him to 104 yards passing and reduced Aaron Jones (13 carries for 38 yards) into a non-factor.
It’s also worth noting that Bryan Bulaga, the Packers’ right tackle, was knocked out of that game in the first quarter, and the 49ers exploited his backup at the time, Alex Light.
“We’ve got to play a lot better obviously,” Rodgers said. “They’re a great football team, have a great front, obviously get after the passer and don’t need to rush a lot of guys to do that.”
Yes, the Packers’ challenge to get to the Super Bowl is huge. The 49ers are good, they’re coming off an impressive performance, and they’re at home.
Still, this is a week-to-week league. You don’t get to carry over points to the next game, and you never know what might happen early that can change an entire game.
Just ask the Ravens, who started poorly and were bumped out of the playoffs by Tennessee last weekend.
“This is where it gets really fun,” Rodgers said. “There’s only four teams left and we’re one of them. We’ve got a legitimate chance.”