Since then, the Packers have won six straight games, including a 28-23 victory last week at home against the Seattle Seahawks, even though Rodgers’s statistical performance remained worse than it had been earlier in the season. At 36 years old, he may never again get this close to reaching his second Super Bowl, but the 49ers look like a team very much on the rise and present a formidable challenge.
How to watch the NFC championship game
When: Sunday at 6:40 p.m. Eastern
Where: Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Streaming: Yahoo Sports (mobile devices only), NFL mobile app, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, Sling TV, AT&T TV Now, YouTube TV
Line: 49ers -6
Rodgers may not even be the most talented “Aaron” on his own offense anymore — that distinction might better go to running back Aaron Jones, who piled up 1,558 yards from scrimmage and an NFL-leading 19 touchdowns this season — but Green Bay won’t stand a chance Sunday if the two-time NFL MVP doesn’t play better than he did in Week 12.
Rodgers threw for just 104 yards against San Francisco, averaging a career-low 3.15 yards on 33 attempts, and his lost fumble on the opening possession led to a 49ers touchdown and set the tone for a 37-8 walloping. “There wasn’t a whole lot positive tonight,” he said afterward.
If Rodgers would rather forget that game ever happened, Niners Coach Kyle Shanahan apparently would prefer his team do the same.
On his message to San Francisco players who might look at that result and take Green Bay lightly this time around, Shanahan said Monday, “Don’t be that stupid."
“We know it’ll be different,” said the 40-year-old coach, in his third season with the 49ers. “That game got away from them early, and that’s definitely not the team we’re going to see this week. Everyone knows how good Green Bay is, how good their coaching staff is, how good their players are, how good their quarterback is.
“I think that game really holds zero relevance to what’s going to happen this Sunday.”
Even before it begins, Sunday’s game will have at least one major difference with the Week 12 contest: this one is in the postseason. Whereas San Francisco’s quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, enjoyed his first career playoff start last week, Rodgers now has 17 under his belt, and he’s working on a streak of six straight with two-plus touchdown passes, two short of a postseason record set by former Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.
Green Bay can also draw some hope from history, starting with the fact that in the Super Bowl era, teams that lost a regular season game to a given opponent by at least 28 points went on to win a respectable nine of 23 rematches in the playoffs. When hosting a conference championship game, San Francisco is just 4-5 all-time, tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers (6-5) for the most such losses. The only other team with a losing record in multiple home conference title games is the Cleveland Browns (0-2).
As far as their head-to-head playoff history goes over the past quarter-century, the Packers have a 4-3 edge but the 49ers have won the past two, following the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
“We’ve had a lot of games and had some big games in the playoffs,” said 49ers left tackle Joe Staley, who has spent all 13 of his NFL seasons with San Francisco. “Seem to find each other all the time during the regular season, as well. A team that we are familiar with and we’ve had a lot of great battles with throughout the years.”
Garoppolo enjoyed a highly efficient outing in the Week 12 matchup, completing 14 of 20 passes for 253 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions and a 145.8 rating. That was one of just five games this season, though, in which he did not commit a turnover. The 28-year-old former New England Patriot is coming off his first full season as a starter, and his 18 turnovers were the most for any player who made the postseason, plus he tossed an interception in last week’s playoff win over the Minnesota Vikings.
If San Francisco can establish a dominant ground game against Green Bay’s bottom-half run defense, it may not have to ask Garoppolo to do all that much. The 49ers were second in the NFL this season in rushing yards per game (144.1), and they boast three backs, Tevin Coleman, Raheem Mostert and Matt Breida, who can each excel in a featured role.
The 49ers’ best offensive player, though, is indisputably tight end George Kittle, who led his position this season with 1,377 receiving yards — including 129 yards, plus a touchdown, against the Packers in Week 12 — and is a terrific blocker to boot. He popped up on the injury report this week with a sore ankle, but Shanahan expects him to play.
On defense, San Francisco’s strength is up front, where the team is littered with first-round draft picks, including Nick Bosa, a pass-rushing force well on his way to justifying his second-overall selection last year. Veteran cornerback Richard Sherman has enjoyed a career renaissance this season, so much so that opponents are frequently avoiding him and targeting whoever lines up at the other corner spot, where Ahkello Witherspoon was benched last week in favor of Emmanuel Moseley.
Green Bay boasts the “Smith Brothers,” a pair of offseason acquisitions who have more than paid off, as linebackers Za’Darius Smith (13.5 sacks, 37 quarterback hits) and Preston Smith (12 sacks and 23 QB hits) have over half of their team’s 41 sacks.
Matt LaFleur replaced longtime Packers coach Mike McCarthy this season, and the 40-year-old former offensive coordinator has a chance to become the sixth first-year head coach to reach the Super Bowl and the first since the Indianapolis Colts’ Jim Caldwell after the 2009 season. LaFleur is already the first coach to reach a conference title game in his first year since Jim Harbaugh did it with the 2011 49ers.
Another connection between the teams comes from LaFleur’s family, as Matt’s younger brother Mike is San Francisco’s passing-game coordinator. When the Packers traveled to the Bay Area in Week 12, the Green Bay coach’s family came along and spent the weekend with Mike LaFleur’s family, but with a Super Bowl at stake, they have made other arrangements.
“I think there’s a little different vibe, so I’ll just leave it at that,” Matt LaFleur said. “I haven’t really talked to [Mike] much at all, and it will probably be that way for the remainder of the week.”
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