HOW THE NINERS ACCUMULATED THE SMALL ADVANTAGES.

Packer pundit Zach Kruse counts fifteen ways.

The Green Bay Packers had the rusty and — on this night — mostly unremarkable San Francisco 49ers on the ropes in Saturday’s NFC Divisional Round, but another deluge of missed opportunities and blown chances, from the team’s opening drive to the last, opened the door for a heartbreaking defeat — and the top-seeded 49ers gleefully took up the Packers’ on their offer, escaping what could have been a historic win for Matt LaFleur’s team.

The taste of defeat was a familiar one. This recipe for a devastating playoff loss was one that the Packers — under three different quarterbacks over three decades — have cooked up on multiple occasions. On Saturday, the Packers let a chance to go to the NFC Championship Game melt away on a rainy Santa Clara evening, the bedrock of victory eroded slowly but steadily with the falling force of every missed opportunity.

“We fully believed and fully expected to win this game,” LaFleur said. “We had plenty of opportunities to put the game out of reach and unfortunately just didn’t do enough. It’s never just one play.”

A loss like Saturday’s in Santa Clara never comes down to just one play. But when one team — especially a team pegged as a 10-point underdog on the road — blows so many repeated chances to win a football game, each individual missed opportunity becomes magnified in significance.

“There was a lot of plays out there if one play goes different, we probably have a different result right now,” LaFleur said.

As a chess author years ago asked, "How often does the inexperienced player establish a strong position against a Grandmaster, and how often does the Grandmaster go on to win?" In chess, yes, it's possible for the Grandmaster to sucker the inexperienced player into overextending himself, and then comes the end game. For the Packers, though, the Niners didn't sucker them into the red zone three times in the first half, with a total of six points to show for it.

That article notes a number of defensive breakdowns as well.  As the season began, we noted, "The onus might be on the defensive coordinator this season."  Packer Nation had been carping about the team's defense all season (thus my "much maligned" when the prospect of playing an eighteenth game first arose) and today the Packers fired defensive coordinator Joe Barry.  The conversation about how to put together and coach a defensive platoon comprising lots of high draft choices promises to be more edifying than the ongoing presidential election.