SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The lead acts in Saturday’s NFC divisional playoff game between the 49ers and Vikings feature the two starting quarterbacks.

The common bond that San Francisco’s Jimmy Garoppolo and Minnesota’s Kirk Cousins share can best be summed up in one word: Belief.

As in, the belief they have in themselves and the lack of belief they’ve faced from the outside world for much of their respective careers.

Yet here the two of them are: Playing against each other for a berth in the NFC Championship game in what has potential to be a classic showdown at 4:35 p.m. at Levi’s Stadium.

In the No. 6-seeded Vikings’ 26-20, wild-card overtime win over the Saints on Sunday in New Orleans, Cousins took a significant step toward dispelling his label as a bad big-game quarterback (he had been 6-29 against teams with winning records entering the game).

Cousins completed 19-of-31 passes for 242 yards and a touchdown in the game. Respectable numbers. But the signature play was a majestic 43-yard pass to Adam Thielen to move the Vikings to the Saints’ 2-yard line in overtime. Three plays later, he connected with tight end Kyle Rudolph for the game-winning touchdown.

As impressive as that win was, Cousins can virtually disintegrate that label of not winning the big games with a victory over the 49ers.

Garoppolo’s journey has been vastly different. He went from buried on the Patriots depth chart behind Tom Brady, to being traded to San Francisco in a stunning deal, to leading the 49ers to wins in his first five starts (the Niners’ final five games of the 2017 season), to losing most of the 2018 season with a torn ACL.

That all led to this season, when he led the 49ers to a 13-3 record and NFC’s No. 1 playoff seed.

Garoppolo threw for 3,978 yards and 27 TDs this season, the first time in his career he completed a full season. Garoppolo owns an impressive 21-5 career record as a starter. Saturday, though, is his first playoff start. It, too, is the 49ers’ first playoff game since 2013.

Since his arrival, Garoppolo has been labeled a number of things, some of them not complimentary.

He was first believed to be a savior for a team that had been starved for a franchise quarterback dating back to Steve Young. Then Garoppolo was labeled mistake-prone and injury prone.

Then he was down-talked as the dreaded “game manager.” He answered that by leading four fourth-quarter comebacks, tying him for the most in the NFL this season. He, too, had three games with four TD passes and ranked third in the league with 8.4 yards per attempt.

Throughout the rollercoaster ride, though, Garoppolo has remained as even-keeled as his looks are magazine-cover material.

“He’s been the same guy since he’s been here since Day 1,” 49ers tackle Joe Staley told reporters this week. “He’ll practice the same way every day. He’s not going to try to reinvent anything. He’s not going to try to do anything different. He’s going to be the same person for this franchise that he’s been.”

Even in his first career playoff game.

San Francisco receiver Emmanuel Sanders, who has played in Super Bowls for Pittsburgh and Denver, scoffed at any thoughts that Garoppolo will be affected adversely by playoff pressure.

“How many Super Bowl rings does that guy got?’’ Sanders said, referring to the ones New England won when he was a backup. “He knows what it takes to go all the way and win it all. He’s seen the preparation of one of the great quarterbacks of all time [Brady]. At the end of the day he understands the process.”

With that, let the process begin.