NFL Playoff Picks: Saints Will Outlast 49ers to Advance to NFC Championship

If you only have time to watch one divisional round game this weekend, I recommend watching Saturday afternoon's showdown between the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers.

At first glance, this matchup strikes me as a kind of football version of a good boxing match. The two opponents have completely different styles, and the question will be which style is going to win.

For what it's worth, the betting line suggests that the Saints' style will be the better one on Saturday. Per Bovada, New Orleans is favored by four points.

That should tell you just how hot the Saints are right now. The idea of anybody beating the 49ers at Candlestick during the regular season bordered on lunacy. Besides, if there is one team that can beat these Saints, it's the 49ers.

Then again, if there's one team that can beat the 49ers at Candlestick, it's the Saints.

And they will.

It goes without saying that Drew Brees and the rest of the Saints offense are going to be tested in this game, but it's a test that they can pass. To do so, all they have to do is, well, pass.

They sure as heck don't want to try running the ball on this defense. The 49ers were death on opposing rushing attacks during the regular season, and their dominance against the run was a big reason why they were able to win so many games.

Instead of testing that strength, the Saints are better off avoiding it.

This isn't asking too much, of course. All Brees did this season was set a new NFL record for passing yards, and he also chucked 46 touchdown passes. Asking him to throw the ball a lot is a good idea against any opponent—not just the 49ers.

We can rest assured that the 49ers are going to try to level the playing field by pressuring Brees as often as they can. Aldon Smith is going to have a big role to play, and I would expect the 49ers to get a little creative with their blitzes as well.

However, the thing to keep in mind is that the Saints' offensive line is one of the best in the business. Brees had one game in which he was sacked six times, but in all the others he was never sacked more than three times.

It's by no means a lock that the 49ers are going to punish Brees as much as they punished, say, Ben Roethlisberger.

Meanwhile, in the secondary, the 49ers are going to be tasked with keeping tabs on a collection of weapons unlike anything they saw this season.

Brees is lucky to have a wide array of options at his disposal, and he'll know that he has to get each and every one of them involved. He'll have a slight advantage against a 49ers secondary that is good, but not great.

Offensively, the 49ers are not going to be able to blow the Saints away. They'll look to establish Frank Gore before they do anything else, and that plan should work okay.

The Saints finished with good numbers against the run, but they faced a league-low 351 rushing attempts during the regular season. If the 49ers stick to the run, they will succeed with it.

But running the football over and over again is not going to cut it against the Saints. Alex Smith is going to be asked to play, and he's going to be asked to play well. 

That's where you start to worry about the 49ers. Alex Smith is very good at not losing games, but he's not very good at winning games. He is what he is, and he's not a great quarterback.

Plus, Smith can expect to feel the heat when the going gets tough late in the game. The Saints blitzed him mercilessly way back in the preseason, and they will do so again in this game. They have enough evidence (see the Ravens of Baltimore) to know that Smith doesn't handle the rush well.

Despite these advantages, it's not like the Saints are going to blow the 49ers away like they've blown away so many of their recent opponents.

The 49ers' defense deserves more credit than that, and the running of Gore should help the 49ers keep the Saints from running away with the time of possession battle.

The 49ers will get minor victories like these, but they won't get the big one. At the end of the day, the Saints are going to prove that they're the better team.

Saints 24, 49ers 19