Giants vs. 49ers: Candlestick Park Won't Scare Giants

The NFC championship game was supposed to be an epic rematch between the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers.

Instead, it's a rematch between the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers. 

It's a matchup that doesn't inspire notions of fireworks and exploding scoreboards, but don't mistake it for a matchup any less epic than Saints vs. Packers. On the contrary, Giants vs. 49ers has the potential to be an even better game.

This is, of course, assuming the Giants aren't too scared by Candlestick Park to put up a fight. The 49ers are a tough team, but they are that much tougher when they are playing in their home digs. Conceivably, the Giants could be overmatched.

But they won't be. In fact, now is as good a time as ever to give the Giants credit for being one of the gutsiest teams in the league. They lead the league in backbone. 

The Giants displayed as much in their win over the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on Sunday in the divisional round. Lambeau Field has a well-deserved reputation as a death trap for visiting teams, especially in the playoffs. Yet the Giants waltzed right in and beat the Packers with relative ease.

Maybe "beat" isn't the right word to use. For the better part of the game, the Giants dominated. Green Bay's defense simply couldn't keep Eli Manning and the Giants offense in check in the first half. When Green Bay's defense clamped down in the second half, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers defense simply had no answer for the Giants defense.

In the end, it was 37-20 in favor of the Giants, and it must be noted that the Packers got one of their touchdowns thanks to a horrible reversed fumble call by the referees.

So, yes, "dominated" is the more appropriate word.

That's one reason why we know the Giants aren't going to be intimidated by Candlestick. The other reason we know they won't be intimidated is because they weren't intimidated when they visited the 49ers during the regular season.

That was back in Week 10, and the Giants actually came pretty close to beating the 49ers. They took a lead into the fourth quarter only to give it up. However, they took a would-be game-tying drive down to the 49ers' 10-yard line before they finally relented.

Nobody came close to beating the 49ers at Candlestick after that.

If we learned anything from the 49ers' thrilling victory over the Saints, it's that the key to beating them at Candlestick is avoiding turnovers. Or, at the very least, avoiding committing too many of them. The Saints gifted the 49ers a few too many points, and still only lost by four.

So far in the playoffs, the Giants have committed one turnover. As a matter of fact, they've committed exactly two turnovers during their current four-game winning streak. Two of those wins came at home, and the other two were won on the road.

Long story short, the Giants are playing some pretty good football right now.

To be sure, the Saints were also playing good football when they rolled into Candlestick. But the key question we had about them was whether or not they could be as effective on the road as they were in their dome. They weren't, and they lost.

We have enough evidence to suggest that the same concern does not apply to the G-Men.