Through scheduling quirks or playoff serendipity, the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers have played 11 times in the last nine seasons.
Nearly all of the first 10 games were entertaining, combining meaning with suspense as the Packers sought to supplant the 49ers as one of the NFL’s glamor teams.
Not so Sunday’s 11th meeting.
Staged before 70,250 at Lambeau Field, it offered little to engage the imagination beyond a misty, swirling fog that evoked a London graveyard. In a slogfest befitting two damaged teams that wheezed in at 5-5, the Packers went to 10-for-11 against the 49ers by beating them 20-10, riding a brutally efficient running game that overcame three Brett Favre interceptions.
“That was the type of game we wanted to play,” Favre said after the Packers ground out 243 rushing yards and controlled the ball for nearly 35 minutes. “We knew it and they knew it, and they couldn’t stop us.”
Favre is more the symbol of the Packers than anyone since the sainted Vince Lombardi, and accordingly, his damaged right thumb is quite the concern in these parts. He threw only 15 passes, completing 10, and his modest 138-yard output, nearly half of which came on one completion, was his largest in three weeks.
Favre’s first throw of the day went for a 66-yard touchdown to Javon Walker, the Packers’ longest play from scrimmage this season. In the second quarter he delivered the ball to a spot where only Robert Ferguson could get it, and that throw went for a 16-yard touchdown.
But for the most part his day consisted of handing the ball to Ahman Green or Najeh Davenport and watching them plow forward behind a massive offensive line operating with road-grader efficiency.
Green amassed 154 yards on 27 carries, surpassing 100 yards for the fourth game in a row and the eighth time this season. With 5,128 career yards, he’s second only to Jim Taylor’s 8,207 in Packers history.
Davenport crunched his way to 62 yards on 11 tries.
“Just another outstanding day for our offensive line,” said Packers coach Mike Sherman, who clearly knows how to take advantage of a good thing, having called 44 running plays to 15 passes.
No wonder. Tackles Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher, guards Marco Rivera and Mike Wahle, center Mike Flanagan and “sixth man” Kevin Barry not only average 315 pounds per man, they can move, and they hit people.
“With the offensive line and the running backs we have, we would be dumb not to utilize them,” said Favre, sounding almost amused by the idea of the Packers winning without requiring him to do more.
“I don’t mind a bit,” he insisted. “I’m not second fiddle, not taking a back seat. I still have a job to do. We were successful the way we used to play, and now we’re 6-5 and battling back playing this way.
“I’m getting old. I need a break.”
Favre handed the 49ers three breaks with his interceptions, but they failed to capitalize and saw their playoff hopes jolted as they fell to 5-6.
Todd Peterson, the third kicker San Francisco has used this season, clanked a 28-yard field-goal try off the left upright after Zack Bronson’s first-quarter interception set the 49ers up at the Packers’ 20-yard line.
Tony Parrish’s interception on the Packers’ first possession of the second quarter gave the 49ers the ball at the Green Bay 22, but they squandered the field position with two penalties and nearly got young quarterback Tim Rattay killed with ineffective protection.
“When you create turnovers like that and don’t get anything out of it, you’ve got problems,” coach Dennis Erickson fumed. “We had no sync, no rhythm offensively. It was just very poorly executed, in my opinion.”
Rattay, in his third start replacing injured Jeff Garcia, completed 14-of-30 for 142 yards with an interception and a touchdown. His ground game didn’t help him much, generating just 73 yards, and Rattay was sacked four times and banged around dangerously often.
“You’re going to have pressure,” he said. “I have to do a better job getting rid of the ball and finding our guys a little quicker.”
The NFL’s most successful road warriors in their fast-fading glory days, the 49ers have lost five straight this year and seven in a row away from San Francisco over the last two seasons.
“Weather, crowd–it’s all excuses,” Erickson said. “We weren’t focused enough, disciplined enough. If you want to win on the road, you’d better be able to handle that stuff, and we didn’t handle it.”
