This is not what championship football is supposed to look like in 2020.
But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And the San Francisco 49ers didn’t need to fix a thing in a 37-20 rout of the Green Bay Packers in Sunday’s NFC championship.
They did it with a total of eight pass attempts from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo in a throwback performance like the NFL hasn’t seen since the 1970s. And even then, it was old-school football.
Garoppolo’s day in historic context
According to Pro Football Reference, the last time a team won a conference championship game when throwing 10 or fewer passes was the 1973 AFC championship game when the Miami Dolphins beat the Oakland Raiders on a 3-of-6, 34-yard effort from Bob Griese, the fewest pass attempts ever by a conference champion quarterback.