The defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers play host to the Green Bay Packers and their cheese head fans in one of two NFL week one Sunday afternoon football games on the full opening day schedule. For the 49ers, this season marks a chance to return to the Super Bowl and avenge a loss to the Ravens this past February. For the Packers, it’s a chance to put an injury-riddled season last year behind them and return to the promised land that they have tasted several times before. Live online streaming for this football game can be found at the end of this post.
The 49ers will be calling upon sophomore quarterback Colin Kaepernick to repeat his amazing performance from last season that saw the agile quarterback scramble, run and throw his team into the Super Bowl. As if Kaepernick wasn’t already good enough, this year he’ll get to throw to Anquan Boldin, the same player that destroyed the 49ers secondary in the Super Bowl. The combination of Kaepernick, Boldin and Vernon Davis will be dangerous for any defense to manage, even with receiver Michael Crabtree out for at lease a couple months due to injury.
Green Bay’s run defense was appaling last season, especially in the second half, and that’s something Kaepernick and running back Frank Gore will be looking to exploit today. I would be surprised if Gore had less than 100 yards on the ground, and Kaepernick could very well rack up 50 or more yards himself. Should the Packers key on the run, Boldin will be running free in the secondary.
The Packers enter this season with Clay Matthews freshly signed to a new deal on defense, but with major concerns on offense. Aaron Rodgers was sacked a league worst 51 times last season, and his starting left tackle Bryan Bulaga is out due to injury. That means Rodgers will be relying on rookie David Bakhtiari to protect his blind side.
With Rodgers’ favorite wide receiver Greg Jennings off to Minnesota in the offseason and starting running back DuJuan Harris sidelined for the entire season, the Packers first string offense failed to score a touchdown during the preseason. Either they are as rusty as the preseason showed, or they will come out gunning today to silence a growing stable of critics.
The 49ers are the easy pick here; they’re the NFC champs, are playing at home, and arguably improved even more over the offseason. Picking against them in this game would not be advised.
The Green Bay Packers and NFC champ San Francisco 49ers begin their 2013 NFL Football season with an afternoon scheduled game that officially gets underway at 4:25pm EST / 1:25pm PST. Fox does not offer a free live online streaming option for this game as it is available free on TV over the air. You can however choose to opt into the ever popular NFL Sunday Ticket package here and watch every NFL game on TV or via live online streaming with the Max package on any Internet enabled hardware device.
