49ers Upset Packers In Lambeau: Live Updates – The New York Times

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So much for the bye weeks that teams worked so hard to secure. Both top-seeded teams, the Tennessee Titans and Green Bay Packers, were upset at home on Saturday in tight and messy games that propelled the Cincinnati Bengals and San Francisco 49ers into the conference championship round next weekend.

Cincinnati will face the winner of Sunday’s game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City next week in the A.F.C. championship, while the 49ers will play in the N.F.C. championship against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Los Angeles Rams, pending the outcome of that game tomorrow.

49ers 13, Packers 10

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Robbie Gould’s kick sailed through the uprights, and as his San Francisco teammates, bundled in red parkas, scampered onto the grass Saturday night, the Green Bay Packers just stood on their sideline. They had not lost all season at Lambeau Field, not in warm weather or temperate conditions or the winter chill, but a certain finality had now descended amid the snowfall.

The 49ers ousted the top-seeded Packers from the playoffs, 13-10, on Gould’s 45-yard field goal as time expired. San Francisco, the sixth seed, advances to play at either the Los Angeles Rams or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in next Sunday’s N.F.C. championship game.

The top seeds both fell today. So much for the bye week.

49ers upset the Packers, 13-10. The second upset of the day.

The 49ers have had trouble moving the ball all game.

Niners tie it. Blocked punt and Hufanga returns it. Willis of the Niners blew through the line to get the block.

The Packers stuffed Eli Mitchell on a fourth-and-1 play, and Green Bay takes over on downs after what may have been San Francisco’s best chance to get back in the game.

Deebo has been on the sideline in key spots, but the Niners are only one score behind. He came back in for a key 5-yard gain on a first down.

The Niners sack Rodgers for the fourth time, and the drive stalls. Mason Crosby boots a field goal. 10-3 Packers.

The Packers are knocking on the door of the end zone after Rodgers finds Lazard on a third-and-4 play for Lazard’s first catch of the night.

One thing to watch the rest of the game, especially as the score continues to stay close: Green Bay’s special teams. They’re really not good. In fact, according to the respected longtime N.F.L. writer Rick Gosselin, they were the worst in the entire league this season.

They rated toward the bottom of the league in several categories, such as kick return average (30th) and field-goal percentage (31st) and touchback percentage (25th). But it is how — and when — the Packers’ special teams failed them that has been most concerning. In Cincinnati in Week 5, kicker Mason Crosby missed three field goals before making the game-winner in overtime. At Kansas City in Week 9, he missed two; Green Bay lost by six. They also gave up the first punt returned for a touchdown, by Jakeem Grant of Chicago, in Week 14.

Snow is falling. The Packers lead by 7. One play can mean the difference between reaching the N.F.C. championship game and ruing a missed opportunity. The Packers hope it won’t come on special teams.

Heading into the fourth quarter, it’s Packers 7, Niners 3, and a temperature around zero.

Garoppolo looking like Joe Burrow, getting sacked to end another drive. The fourth third-down sack for Green Bay.

We have our first points since the Packers’ opening drive. A 29-yard field goal by Robbie Gould cuts the 49ers’ deficit to 7-3 with 8:13 left in the third quarter.

The 49ers might be in trouble. Their do-everything receiver Deebo Samuel is verrrrrrry slow to get up after gaining 12 yards on that screen pass.

Your weekly reminder that the Packers’ special teams are atrocious. First, the blocked field goal allowed before halftime. Now, Deebo Samuel takes the second-half kickoff 45 yards to midfield.

The Packers head into halftime up by 7-0, and the 49ers — if they can feel their feet — should be kicking themselves.

A prime scoring opportunity stalled when Jimmy Garoppolo, after driving the 49ers 68 yards to the Green Bay 9, made a bad decision, and then a bad pass: Adrian Amos picked off the ball along the far sideline. Aaron Rodgers then capitalized on a busted coverage to find Aaron Jones for 75 yards, to the San Francisco 14. But after a sack pushed the Packers back 8 yards, Mason Crosby’s 39-yard field goal attempt was blocked by Jimmie Ward.

You knew a Garoppolo interception was coming.

It’s amazing, given how this game has unfolded, that the Packers lead by only 7. If the 49ers can tie the score — or stay within 7 — at halftime, that is a win.

Jimmy G has his first pass completion half way through the second quarter.

The 49ers have had the ball four times. Three drives have ended in sacks — two by Rashan Gary, one by Za’Darius Smith, who is playing for the first time since Week 1.

After one quarter, it’s Green Bay 7, San Francisco 0, and the score doesn’t even reflect the disparity so far. The 49ers look C-O-L-D and discombobulated. Maybe because they are?

The Packers look rested and sharp. Maybe because they are? The 49ers, outgained 109 to -7, have yet to record a first down or cross midfield. They should try to remedy that soon.

As Gisele once said about another former Patriots quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo can’t catch AND throw the ball.

Yardage update: Green Bay 106, San Francisco -6.

I wonder if we’re going to see Trey Lance. Aside from the two times he started, in Weeks 5 and 17, Lance has run in only one other game, in Week 11 at Jacksonville. If there’s ever a time the 49ers should empty their playbook …

Whoa! The 49ers get a major break there. A video review reverses the on-field call of a Green Bay fumble recovery, and the 49ers maintain possession. Rashan Gary sacked Jimmy Garoppolo on the next play, so Green Bay gets the ball back anyway. But they have far worse field position, back inside their 15.

The Packers’ reconfigured offensive line — LT Billy Turner (in place of David Bakhtiari), LG Jon Runyan, C Josh Myers, RG Lucas Patrick, RT Dennis Kelly — was mauling the 49ers up front, too.

And we have our first turnover! Marcedes Lewis, stripped by Fred Warner, fumbles in San Francisco territory. The 49ers take over at their own 42.

I drove by a local watering hole this morning that had a sign out front that read: “Call em the 49ers cuz they won’t get past the 50-yard line.” So far, so good. One drive in, and San Francisco’s punting it back.

That, friends, was a brutally efficient opening drive by the Packers — and an important one, too. A.J. Dillon’s 6-yard touchdown rush capped a 10-play, 69-yard drive in which Green Bay recorded five first downs without having a third down.

Aaron Rodgers went 4 of 5 for 54 yards — his lone incompletion was dropped — and completed all three passes to Davante Adams, who, inexplicably, was defended in man coverage. That is not — I repeat, not — a good matchup for San Francisco.

The most electrifying player left in these playoffs will play at Lambeau Field on Saturday night, and he isn’t Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams or Nick Bosa. He is Deebo Samuel, whom San Francisco lists as a receiver though he lines up anywhere and everywhere in its offensive formations.

His case for the title: 77 regular-season receptions for 1,405 yards; league-leading averages in yards after the catch (10) and yards per reception (18.3); oh, and Samuel threw a touchdown pass in Week 18.

Aaron Rodgers has played the 49ers three times in the postseason and he has lost all three matchups. In their most recent playoff game, in the 2019 N.F.C. championship, Rodgers’s impressive stat line — 31 of 39 for 326 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions — obscured a dreadful performance overall. At halftime, when Green Bay trailed, 27-0, Rodgers had thrown for 65 yards and an interception.

His playoff ledger since winning the Super Bowl in the 2010 season has been speckled with dominant performances but also some uneven ones. The Packers are 7-8 in the postseason since that title year and 0-4 in N.F.C. championship games. Rodgers certainly doesn’t merit sole blame for all those defeats — remember how Coach Matt LaFleur attempted a close field goal in last postseason’s loss to Tampa Bay instead of trusting his quarterback to overcome an 8-point deficit? — but he admitted that playoff failures can affect his legacy.

“I think success is often based, for quarterbacks, on championships won,” Rodgers said last week. “I think success, individually, is much more than that, and failure, on the flip side of that, should not, in my opinion, be based solely on your losses and your failures, your mistakes, your low points. It’s so much more than that. It’s mindset. It’s an approach. It’s the total package. But I understand that in our business, so much of it is focused on the wins and losses, especially in the playoffs, Super Bowl rings and all that stuff.”

Temperatures in Green Bay should hit 11 degrees around the 8:15 p.m. Eastern kickoff, with winds of around 10 miles per hour, and they should be down to single digits by game’s end.

The 49ers haven’t played in freezing temperatures since January 2014, the last time San Francisco played at Green Bay in the playoffs (it was 5 degrees then). The coldest weather the team played in this season was 41 degrees, at Seattle in Week 13.

Bengals 19, Titans 16

NASHVILLE — The Cincinnati Bengals last week broke their 31-year playoff drought, and with a young, explosive offense, seemed like this year’s dark horse contender.

And now they officially are. The No. 4-seeded Bengals overcame nine sacks and six penalties to shock the top-seeded Tennessee Titans, 19-16, when rookie kicker Evan McPherson kicked his fourth and final field goal Saturday, a 52-yarder that split the uprights as time expired.

The Bengals need to bring back Anthony Munoz (and, like, every H.O.F. lineman) before facing K.C. or Buffalo next week.

Evan McPherson’s 52-yarder as time expired lifts the Bengals into the A.F.C. conference championship game next week at either Buffalo or Kansas City.

The Bengals are a field goal from advancing to their first A.F.C. championship since the 1988 season. That’s when they beat Buffalo to play San Francisco in the Super Bowl. Could they follow the same path this season?

That was excellent coverage by Eli Apple, who either tipped the ball free or hit Westbrook-Ikhine just as the pass arrived. And now the Bengals are rolling.

That’s now nine (!) sacks for the Titans. Only once before in the playoffs has a team been sacked at least nine times and won, according to Stathead: The Chiefs, in 1967. So, good luck, Bengals.

Huge stuff by Logan Wilson, dropping Henry for -2 on 4th and 1 from the Bengals 35.

According to Stathead, Burrow is the second quarterback to throw for 300+ yards AND be sacked at least seven times in a playoff game. The other instance? Warren Moon, in Houston’s loss to Kansas City, in 1994.

That’s seven sacks for the Titans. Burrow has run more yards backward than forward.

That was a CRITICAL sack. Knocks Cincinnati out of field-goal range, even for someone who can boom it like McPherson.

The Titans gave the Bengals a dose of their own medicine. Up 16-9, the Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was picked off by Titans cornerback Amani Hooker with a little over a minute left in the third quarter.

Two plays later, Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who has been picked off twice so far today, hit receiver A.J. Brown with a touchdown pass to tie the game at 16.

Tannehill loops a pass into A.J. Brown’s left arm, and steps backwards into the end zone. Tied at 16-all.

Another huge defensive play for Hooker, who saved a TD earlier by tackling Chase.

Remember the Titans? Amani Hooker picked off Joe Burrow. But check that — Hooker’s shoestring catch is under review.

The Titans’ drive stalls and Tennessee settles for a field goal. Bengals 16, Titans 9 with less than 2 minutes left in the third quarter.

The Bengals came out firing on the opening drive, scoring a touchdown to push their lead to 16-6.

The Titans looked poised to match them after running back D’onta Foreman ran for a 45-yard gain to push Cincinnati into the red zone.

Tannehill connects with A.J. Brown for 40 yards. Bengals cornerback Chidobe Awuzie slipped on the play, leaving Brown unguarded.

The Bengals finally found the end zone, and now lead the Titans, 16-6, in the third quarter.

To open the second half, quarterback Joe Burrow leaned on running back Joe Mixon, who put together several runs. In between Burrow hit receiver Tee Higgins, who was pushed out of bounds for a gain of 20 yards. Then Mixon again and again.

The Bengals-Titans game got off to a fast start: Cincinnati intercepted Tennessee quarterback Ryan Tannehill on the very first play from scrimmage.

But in a pattern that defined the first half, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was sacked and a once-promising drive ended in a field goal, not a touchdown. Cincinnati kicked three of them, and went into the locker room ahead, 9-6.