How three Colin Kaepernick runs beat the Packers

When Colin Kaepernick is playing at his best and most effective, he's like that bouncing kid at a family gathering who wants to toss a ball of some sort, or just generally be amused. The grown ups all smile and nod, but they really just want to drink wine.

His energy is endless, and so are his long strides, all things the Packers learned a year ago when he set the single-game record for quarterback rushing yards with 181 and two touchdowns during a divisional round win. Much of this season, though, he had been contained on the ground, or perhaps content to sit and fire away in the pocket more often. He finished the 2012 regular season with 415 rushing yards in only seven starts, and this year he had 524 in a full year.

That's an average of only 32.8 yards per game, a number he easily passed today. On one carry.

The Kaepernick of old -- the running quarterback, and the creating quarterback who continually finds open receivers while far removed from the pocket -- returned to a frosty, arctic Lambeau Field, where three frigid jogs were key in a 23-20 San Francisco 49ers win that ended the Green Bay Packers' season.

In total Kaepernick ran for 96 yards on his seven carries, and 42 of them came near the end of the second quarter. He saw an opening up the middle, and then broke to the sideline, long stepping from his own 45 yard-line all the way to the Packers' 13 to set up Frank Gore's 10-yard run two plays later.

That 42-yarder was more than just Kaepernick's longest run of the year. It was longer than his total rushing yards in 11 games this year. And despite their general woe against any sort of running especially with Clay Matthews out, it was only the second run of 40 yards or more the Packers allowed this year over now 17 games.

So that's seven points as a result of one long bounce, and then Kaepernick added seven more with a 24-yard run that put him in position to spin around a few times before throwing a strike to Vernon Davis, who had scorched A.J. Hawk. Aaron Rodgers followed that with some whirling wizardry of his own, and a sailing ball to Randall Cobb that set up a game-tying field goal. But shhhhh, we've made a pact to never speak of Evan Dietrich-Smith's blatant stranglehold on Ray McDonald again.

Finishing his afternoon of galloping, on the Packers' 38-yard line late in the fourth quarter Kaepernick needed at least eight yards to do three simple but sort of important things: advance closer to field-goal range that didn't require a penguin, keep the clock moving, and force the Packers into using their final two timeouts.

An 11-yard run later and a first down was his, along with two of those three joyful outcomes. The third followed shortly with the Packers using those timeouts, and they were then unable to stop the clock. Finally, a swing of Phil Dawson's leg split two uprights...

...and it was over, with San Fran beating Green Bay for the third time in the past calendar year. In those games, Kaepernick has 301 rushing yards, and his two highest career single-game rushing totals have both come in the playoffs against the Packers.

San Francisco now moves on to face Carolina, and the result when those two teams last was a 10-9 slugfest. I say yes please to that after the average margin of victory in three of the first four playoff games was two. Just two points.