Packers vs. 49ers Prediction: Is Another Upset in Store for Jordan Love and Green Bay?
The Green Bay Packers, who have previously been a part of some incredible postseason outcomes under head coach Matt LaFleur’s direction, demonstrated last week that anything is possible in the NFL playoffs.
As the top seed in the conference two years prior, Green Bay was guaranteed to win the NFC, but they were eliminated in the NFL divisional round by the San Francisco 49ers, 13-10. In the end, Aaron Rodgers’ final playoff game as a Packer was achieved when the underdog 49ers pulled off the upset with 10 unanswered points in the final five minutes.
When the two illustrious teams meet again on Saturday night (on FOX), the roles will be completely reversed. The 49ers, who are ranked #1, will be the heavy favorites as they attempt to hold off a rising Green Bay team that is riding high as it approaches Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
Both the Packers and 49ers approach the rematch with very different rosters, despite the fact that both clubs will be led by the same players as when Kyle Shanahan defeated longtime confidant LaFleur in that 2021 season playoff encounter.
Both have advanced to this point thanks to the performances of young quarterbacks who have effectively taken the place of two seasoned veterans (Jammy Garoppolo and Aaron Rodgers), who started the most recent game between these teams.
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After assembling a superbly effective first full season as San Francisco’s field general, Brock Purdy seems a lock to win MVP, but Jordan Love might have been the greatest player in the league in the second half, serving as the impetus for a 6-2 finish that sent the Packers into the playoffs.
Furthermore, as you can see below, both teams have seen great success when their rookie quarterbacks are playing at their best.
ALMOST GAMES (INCLUDING PLAYOFFS) WITH A QB RATING OF 100 OR HIGHER WITH TEAM RECORDS
In last week’s surprisingly easy 48-32 victory over the Dallas Cowboys, Love’s incredible second-half performance translated into his first-ever postseason start. He passed for 272 yards and three touchdowns without giving up a pass.
Green Bay became the first seventh-seeded club to progress during Super Wild Card Weekend since the NFL’s 2020 postseason expansion to 14 teams.
Although the Packers ended the 16-game home winning streak of the second-seeded Cowboys in a dominant manner, bookies are still not quite convinced that the Packers can win more games this season.
Along with the Houston Texans, Green Bay is one of the two biggest underdogs in the four divisional round games this weekend, sitting at 9.5 points. Some may argue that last week’s outcome was more of a playoff collapse by Dallas than anything else.
The 49ers are the top team in our EVE ratings and are seen as the strongest bet by our projection model, which also gives them the best probability to win the Super Bowl at 35.2%.
Winner Predicted: 49ers
Success Rate: 76.2%
The Packers shouldn’t be judged only on their body of work, though, as the squad that plays on Saturday is very different from the one that lost six of its first nine games and found it difficult to maintain consistency.
Perhaps for this reason, this surprise divisional-round meeting is one of three games that SmartRatings, an AI-based algorithm that rates athletic events, teams, and players on an enthusiasm scale, has given a 91 rating (firmly in the “excellent game” category of 85–100) for the divisional round.
Green Bay Key: Guard Him, Love Is Priceless!
Love was making general manager Brian Gutekunst’s extremely contentious choice to choose him in the first round of the 2020 draft appear like a catastrophic swing and miss just two months ago.
The 25-year-old quarterback had the lowest completion percentage (58.7%) and pickable pass percentage (7.22) of any quarterback with at least 150 throw attempts in Green Bay’s 3-6 start.
Afterwards, the light emerged, and Love has been illuminating barriers ever since.
Love’s rapid and seismic shift from possible draft flop to franchise savior has been remarkable. Since Week 11, Love has posted a passer rating of 116.6, which is greater only than Purdy. During that nine-game span, Love’s touchdown-to-interception ratio of 21 to 1 has been reminiscent of Aaron Rodgers at his best.
What has altered, therefore, for Love to enter this new quarterback stratosphere? Given the marked decline in interceptions and pickable throws, it’s obvious that he’s starting to make better judgments with the ball.
However, as we noted last week, Love’s well-thrown % has actually decreased somewhat from Week 11 onward when compared to his first nine starts, and his offensive line has consistently provided him with protection throughout the season.
Love’s completion rate on intermediate throws has soared during his outstanding run, in part because Green Bay’s youthful receiving group has been getting open much more frequently than it did in the first half of the season.
From Weeks 1 through 10, the Packers finished 29th overall in open percentage (74.0), but since Week 11, they have led the league in that category with a rate of 83.8%, thanks to the in-season development of many first- or second-year players and some shrewd system adjustments by LaFleur.
The two rookies who have advanced the most during the second half of the season are Jayden Reed and Dontayvion Wicks. Wicks’ rise to prominence may have been an unintended consequence of being forced into more action due to Christian Watson’s hamstring injury, which kept Watson out of the final five regular-season games (Watson has the fourth-lowest open rate among wide receivers with at least 50 targets in 2023).
Down the road, the two have also been used in slightly different ways. Although Reed is still the main slot receiver for Green Bay, he has recently seen an increase in playing time outside, where his open and catch percentages of 88% and 68%, respectively, are higher than when he is positioned inside (73.8% open, 61.5% catch).
Since Week 11, he has also been running significantly shorter routes on average, which has given Love the consistent underneath target the Packers were lacking in the early going of the season.
Late in the season, Wicks saw a spike in usage in the slot. Since then, he has developed into a true weapon from that position, ranking among the top five wideouts with 20 or more slot targets because to his amazing burn (81.8%) and big-play (50.2%) rates.
Romeo Doubs has had one of the greatest burn rates of any receiver since Week 11 because to the two rookies’ progress. The second-year player utilized this skill well last week, as he scorched the Cowboys for 151 yards and a touchdown while receiving all six of his targets.
HIGHEST BURN% (MIN. 30 TARGETS) SINCE WEEK 11
It will be difficult to sustain that high caliber of performance for an additional week, though. With an excellent open-allowed percentage of 61%, 49ers cornerback Charvarius Ward can shut down one side of the field. The 49ers have yielded the fourth-lowest rate of burns (43%).
With 22 interceptions, San Francisco is also tied for the league lead. When its incredibly skilled front line is creating chaos in the pocket, the team can force a lot of turnovers.
Even while San Francisco’s defense is formidable when it’s clicking, it can be vulnerable when it’s not. That pass rush has been inconsistent at times.
This season, the 49ers have nine times registered pressure rates of 38% or higher. They have only given up 5.8 yards per pass attempt, six touchdown passes, a pitiful quarterback rating of 67.9, and 13 interceptions in those nine games.
Moreover, San Francisco has allowed a passer rating of 99.8 or higher in five games this season—four of which have been losses—and in four of those contests, its pressure percentage was lower than 29%. The only exception was the 49ers’ Christmas Eve loss to the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens in the AFC, where they had a 45.2% pressure rate yet were still unable to stop probable MVP Lamar Jackson.
But under pressure, Jackson has perhaps been the finest quarterback this season. When under pressure, Love’s throw percentage is a respectable 6.21 (ranked 29th out of 34 quarterbacks with 50 or more adjusted attempts); however, during his impressive nine-game run, he has lowered that figure to 2.38%.
With a 23.8% pressure percentage that is second only to Dallas’ Micah Parsons among players with 150 or more pass-rush attempts, the 49ers have one of the best disruptors in the game in Nick Bosa, the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year. However, the health and productivity of San Francisco’s tackle combo of Arik Armstead and Javon Hargrave is crucial to realizing the team’s defensive potential.
After missing the last five regular-season games due to a foot injury, Armstead, who ranks seventh in pressure rate among interior lineman with 200 or more pass-rush snaps, is expected to make a comeback. When he wasn’t playing, the 49ers’ pressure rate was a dismal 32.8%, but when he was, it was an outstanding 40.7%.
Though Hargrave’s performance is inconsistent, the 49ers have proven formidable when he is in the game. Six of his 7.0 sacks this season have occurred in those previously mentioned games where the defense has applied pressure at a rate of 38% or above. Over six games, he has an outstanding 17.6% pressure rate overall.
Thanks in large part to their commanding early lead and ability to contain Aaron Jones, who ran for 118 yards and three touchdowns, the Packers were able to keep Parsons fairly quiet last week. They cannot expect to have that ideal situation this week against a Niners defense that is superior to a Dallas team that finished 31st in the league in terms of opponent run play efficiency.
Key to San Francisco: Run CMC
The 49ers have emerged as the clear NFC favorites thanks in large part to Purdy’s accurate passing and wise decision-making, but all-around running back Christian McCaffrey has been the real force behind an offense that has scored a league-high 60 touchdowns and is ranked first in EVE.
With an average margin of victory of almost 20 points, San Francisco is 10-0 when rushing for 140 yards or more, demonstrating how virtually unbeatable they can be when their deft ground attack is clicking.
And the vast bulk of those totals have come from the legs of McCaffrey, who leads the NFL in touches (339) and yards from scrimmage (2,023) this season, who seems to never tire.
THE AMOUNT OF TEAM YARDS FROM SCRIMMAGE THAT IS HIGHEST
With the exception of a three-game streak in October, when he averaged a pitiful 3.7 yards per carry and 1.19 yards after contact (nearly half his season average of 2.34) and didn’t have more than 54 rushing yards in any of those games, the first team All-Pro hasn’t been slowed down much in this most recent prolific campaign.
The rushing game halted during Purdy’s worst stretch of the season, and San Francisco lost all three of those games. This is most likely not a coincidence. During that losing streak in 2023, he threw five of his eleven interceptions, and his 7.32 pickable pass percentage during that period was more than twice as high as his respectable 3.29% average for the season.
Thus, it seems sense that the 49ers would become extremely beatable if McCaffrey were to be stopped. Is it possible for the Packers to pull it off?
In most cases, the answer would be no chance if this game had been played before mid-December. In its first 13 games, Green Bay gave up over 200 rushing yards a league-high four times. Then, from Weeks 10 to 14, the defense gave up an appalling 170.4 rushing yards per game, 5.7 yards per attempt, and a run play of 10 yards or more on a dangerous 17.3% of opponent carries.
Since then, though, the Packers have greatly improved; during the last four regular-season games, they allowed only 84.3 yards per game on the ground and had the fifth-lowest percentage of successful run plays (29.3%).
Furthermore, during the last quarter of the regular season, the huge plays that were usually devastating to the defense were all but nonexistent. The Packers were 28th in that category with a big play-allowed percentage of 13.3% before Weeks 15–18, when they let up a rush of 10 yards or more on a pitiful 4.3% of their opponents’ tries.
LOWEST PERCENTAGE OF TEN OR MORE YARDS ALLOWED DURING WEEKS 15–18
This is quite noteworthy because McCaffrey leads all NFL running backs with 44 runs of 10 yards or more this season. At 16.2%, he also has the best rate of big-play rushes among all running backs with 100 attempts or more.
Although it’s difficult to pinpoint the specific causes of the Packers’ recent success against the run, Jonathan Owens’ midseason promotion to a starting position has undoubtedly had some impact. With the exception of the wild-card game, Owens has been a reliable tackler, recording a takedown on 91.8% of his opportunities. In the last five games combined, he has only missed one tackle.
Cover 3 looks with a safety closer to the line of scrimmage are a major part of coordinator Joe Barry’s system, thus Owens will be crucial in trying to keep the 49ers from gaining significant yards on their frequently and effectively used outside zone runs. These plays have yielded over 40% of McCaffrey’s league-leading 1,459 rushing yards, with him averaging 6.5 yards per carry.
This season, the Packers haven’t played particularly well defensively, although part of it can be attributed to their frequent injuries. In just five of the secondary’s eighteen games have its two finest players—safety Darnell Savage and two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Jaire Alexander—shared the field. And since Savage, who had one of the game’s most memorable plays with a 64-yard Pick-6 from Dak Prescott, has been able to patrol the back end, their statistics against the pass have significantly improved.
Both are back for the NFC Divisional Round, but it will still be difficult for Green Bay to slow down a strong San Francisco attack that almost never loses to mistakes.
But it’s not out of the question if Love and the offense can continue to play at their best and the defense can contain McCaffrey, who has been a major contributor for the most of a season that is deserving of MVP consideration.
