If you believe in trends, the winner of Sunday night’s 49ers-Packers game at Levi’s Stadium will win the Super Bowl in February. The 49ers own the NFC’s best record at 9-1 and the Packers are 8-2. The winner will gain the inside edge on home-field advantage in the playoffs.
According to the NFL, this will be just the fifth time since 2007 that teams with two or fewer losses have played each other this late in a season. The winners of the last two such games went on to win Super Bowls in those seasons — the 8-2 Broncos beat the 10-0 Patriots in 2015, and the 10-1 Seahawks beat the 9-2 Saints in 2013.
In the case of this game, there’s a rub for the 49ers, who start a brutal stretch with this game — the Ravens (8-2) and Saints (8-2) on the road follow. According to ESPN, no team in the Super Bowl era has faced three consecutive opponents with a winning percentage of .800 or better this late in a season.
Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur is close friends with 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh from their days as roommates at Central Michigan, where they were graduate assistants.
LaFleur, in his first season in Green Bay, worked under 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan in Houston, Washington and Cleveland, and he has a brother, Mike, who’s on Shanahan’s San Francisco staff.
LaFleur got his first NFL job as a quality control assistant in Houston when Shanahan was offensive coordinator after a recommendation from Saleh. He then worked as quarterbacks coach under Shanahan in Washington and Atlanta.
A tangled web of connections.
What will matter more in the game than the coaching connections, though, is which quarterback performs best.
Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers has thrown 17 touchdowns and just two interceptions. San Francisco’s Jimmy Garoppolo has been inconsistent, most recently throwing two INTs (he has 10 this season) and a career-high 424 yards and four TDs last week against the Cardinals.
The 49ers figure to rely more on their rushing attack. They averaged 181.1 rushing yards per game in their first seven. In their past three, though, they have been held to an average of 74 yards per game and 2.88 yards per carry.
But they believe the expected return of tight end George Kittle, who was out with knee and ankle injuries during that poor rushing stretch, will help boost those numbers based on his strong blocking ability.
Defensively, the 49ers are led by rookie pass rusher Nick Bosa, who has seven sacks. Rodgers got more familiar than he’d like with Bosa’s brother, Joey, who was in on two sacks against him when the Packers played the Chargers last month.
“That’s a really good football family right there,’’ Rodgers told reporters during the week. “They’re both super talented guys. Obviously, Nick is just getting going. But he’s a force off the edge.’’
