The San Francisco 49ers finally have a playoff win in Dallas as they defeated the postseason rival Cowboys in a 23-17 win on wild-card weekend. The 49ers move to the divisional round where they play at top-seeded Green Bay at 8:15 p.m. ET Saturday, Jan.
The Athletic NFL Staff
Adam Coleman·Staff Editor, NFL
Summary
The San Francisco 49ers finally have a playoff win in Dallas as they defeated the postseason rival Cowboys in a 23-17 win on wild-card weekend.
The 49ers move to the divisional round where they play at top-seeded Green Bay at 8:15 p.m. ET Saturday, Jan. 22 on FOX. Monday's Cardinals-Rams winner will travel to Tampa Bay for a game Sunday at 3 p.m. on NBC.
This live blog follows all the news and coverage from The Athletic's writers and staff from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Check out the complete wild-card weekend schedule. The Athletic also has live blogs for Raiders-Bengals, Patriots-Bills, Eagles-Buccaneers, Steelers-Chiefs and Cardinals-Rams during wild-card weekend.
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San Francisco 23, Dallas 17 | Box score
(Photo: Tom Pennington / Getty Images)
Thompson: Witness the best and worst of Jimmy Garoppolo
If football is art, then Sunday was an expressionist painting of Jimmy Garoppolo’s career. Beautiful and haunting. Inspiring and maddening. Resilient and fragile.
It was a masterpiece of a performance. Not for its perfection. Hardly for its brilliance. But for its spectacular accuracy in conveying the range of intense reactions he provokes. It was an authentic rendering of the emotional journey that is the Jimmy G experience.
Facing the Cowboys in the playoffs, Garoppolo found himself walking in the footsteps of 49ers legends. The matchup of vintage powers was the perfect canvas to refashion his image. Instead, he remained true to himself. Like most of his games in the gold helmet, it ended in a 49ers’ win, 23-17. But not before Garoppolo inspired both faith and dread. Not before he made winning feel inevitable and then made defeat feel imminent.
Read the full column below:
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Cowboys' undisciplined play vs. 49ers falls on Mike McCarthy
Jerry Jones looked sick. As the Cowboys owner and general manager walked out of the locker room and toward a group of reporters Sunday afternoon, he appeared stunned.
Dallas’ season wasn’t supposed to end this way. There was too much talent, ideal health and an experienced coaching staff. There had been talk inside and outside The Star about Super Bowl aspirations. It was talked about as a special group with the ability to get the Cowboys back to the conference championship game for the first time since 1995. Instead, the Cowboys’ season ended in the wild-card round, 23-17, to the San Francisco 49ers in front of 93,470 inside AT&T Stadium.
“Very disappointed,” Jones said. “I’m disappointed for our fans. They deserved to win this game tonight, and they deserved for us to go farther. So it was quite a letdown.”
When was the last time Jones was this disappointed after a loss?
“I can’t remember,” he said.
Kawakami: 49ers flawed? Sure. Gutsy. No doubt.
This was a very weird way to win a playoff game. This was a very weird way to win just about any game, but I guess the 49ers have put everybody, and themselves, through this wringer enough times to make it seem almost normal.
And there’s a narrow, kooky, melodramatic and emotionally taxing path being drawn up here for the 49ers to get deep into the playoffs if they can possibly maintain this level of perseverance in the face of their own constant errors and weaknesses.
Point blank: They’re just gutsier than most teams they’re going to face, even in the playoffs. They’re brawlers. They’re used to getting slugged and staggered and even more used to getting back up and throwing a few more wild shots themselves. They don’t play pretty football, at least not for four quarters. They play frantically, they hang on tight, they wait for the other team to crumble and sometimes they crumble a little themselves.
Read the full column below:
49ers defense delivers to set up another showdown with the Packers
ARLINGTON, Texas — Think back to where the 49ers defense was 112 days ago.
One might say that they’d managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Sure, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams — perhaps the league’s best quarterback-receiver combination — were on the other side, but there’s never a good excuse for a defense to blow a lead to an offense working with only 37 seconds and no timeouts.
And that’s exactly what the 49ers defense did on that Sunday night in late September.
It took Rodgers only two completions to rip off 42 yards and set up the winning field goal. The 49ers lost, 30-28. That defeat sent them into a slide and also set a prevailing early-season tone: This 49ers defense wasn’t very good and it certainly couldn’t hold a candle to the monstrous 2019 unit that led the way to a Super Bowl.
That last sentence is written in the past tense because it’s no longer true. The 49ers’ 23-17 wild-card win over the Cowboys on Sunday, just the sixth road playoff win in franchise history, was evidence of that.
Read the full story below.
The 49ers' 2021 season prepared them for a game like this
ARLINGTON, Texas — The final quarter was like a horror film in which the 49ers were visited by every ghoul that’s haunted them during the 2021 season.
There was a gut-punch special teams gaffe, the return — with gusto — of the bad version of Jimmy Garoppolo and injuries to critical players, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa.
Still, there was one other season-long theme that came into play against the Cowboys: little-known players stepping into major roles.
Read the full story below.
The Athletic NFL Staff
Next week is set
The Niners and Packers have the Saturday night game.
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The Athletic NFL Staff
The 49ers open as 5.5-point underdogs at Green Bay
The 48.5-point total is looking like a tempting under to The Athletic's betting staff.
GO FURTHERPackers vs. 49ers spread, odds, picks: Expert predictions for NFL Divisional Round playoff gameThe Cowboys caused their own problems
The unnecessary substitution tactic following the successful fake punt in the fourth quarter wound up costing the Cowboys 29 seconds. That time would have come in handy if they chose to, I don't know, run a QB draw without any timeouts to end regulation.
As a general rule in the NFL, if you're trying to run a play then spike it, you need 16 seconds on the clock. The Cowboys had 14. Dak then left the ball on the turf rather than handing to the official, which led to an imperfect spot. Pre-play, can't assume a perfect operation w/minimal time.
The Athletic NFL Staff
Dak Prescott makes questionable decision in postgame comments
The Cowboys quarterback changed his tune on fans throwing debris from the stands once he found out their intentions. Here's what he said.
The Athletic NFL Staff
Pool report
The pool reports explains the last few moments of tonight’s game.
Old school motivation
Kyle Shanahan used the 1994 49ers NFC Championship win as motivation for this contest.
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Kyle Juszczyk gets slimed
The 49ers star fullback celebrated the big win by going into Nickelodeon's Slime Tank.
Don't try this at home
Dallas fans were so unhappy with their team that they were throwing items at the players while they were leaving the field.
Not as designed
Kyle Shanahan noted that Deebo Samuel's tremendous run was not designed to cut back the way it did, but Samuel saw the Cowboys overrun the play and took advantage.
Many ways to win
Kyle Shanahan thinks his team has more than enough ways to win to get victories during this year's playoffs.
Super Bowl or bust for Deebo
Deebo Samuel thinks it's Super Bowl or bust for the 49ers this year.
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Levi's Stadium East
It's like Levi's Stadium East right now for the 49ers, as there are plenty of the Faithful here to help Jimmy Garoppolo celebrate.
You need to have success
Jerry Jones knows the kind of ceiling this team had in 2021.
Potential good news for the 49ers on the injury front
The Fred Warner injury initially looked to be very bad, but it looks like Warner has a chance to be available for next week's NFC divisional matchup at Green Bay.
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