Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
I was Jim Harbaugh‘s biggest critic when he decided to pull veteran quarterback Alex Smith in favor off the inexperienced Colin Kaepernick. Well, I will be eating crow as long as number seven is slinging it for the San Francisco 49ers.
To be honest, I could’ve never imagined him doing what he did versus the Green Bay Packers in just his first NFL postseason game. 444 total yards later Kaepernick has the 49ers playing in their second straight NFC championship game.
Almost doubling the Packers in time of possession, the 49ers beat Green Bay in every phase of the game on Saturday Night. The San Francisco defense was exceptional in the second half after Aaron Rodgers came out hot in the first quarter. They managed to spoil Rodgers homecoming back to the bay as he was pedestrian with 257 passing yards and two touchdowns–one of those touchdowns was irrelevant as Rodgers faltered when it matter most.
In the year of the Rookie and mobile quarterback, the story from this game will forever be surrounded around the play of Kaepernick. This is a player that accounted for more yards than the entire Packers offense and embarrassed a defense that carried the hora of Dom Capers for as long as they could. Capers may be out of his Defensive Coordinator job come training camp 2013 as his defense set a Packers postseason record of the most yards allowed in a single playoff game–the 49ers gashed Clay Matthews and the Packer defense for 579 total yards.
The focus now turn to the Seattle Seahawks and the Atlanta Falcons matchup early Sunday afternoon. Both of these teams have offensive firepower but the Seahawks are one of the NFL’s best defensive teams.
