He wound up a four-time Pro Bowler and three-time Super Bowl champion with the Niners.
But on a wet day in San Francisco, the Niners would prove to be sturdier opposition.
The Niners are going to get hit, hard, in the face, in this game.
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The Niners are a rough house team that physically manhandled soft Green Bay and Atlanta teams.
FORBES: What Are The 49ers' Weaknesses Heading Into The Superbowl?
The Niners steadily chipped away at the Baltimore lead: 28-6 became 28-13. 28-20. 28-23.
Disrespect is the most overused motivational tool in sports, but the Niners have a legitimate claim.
On ESPN's and CBS Sports' websites, 18 of 22 prognosticators are going with the Niners.
The teams are coached by brothers, John Harbaugh for the Ravens and Jim Harbaugh for the Niners.
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Most of the time, the Niners only sent the standard four men chasing after Manning on passing plays.
Green Bay, Atlanta, and New England showed you can throw on the Niners if you spread them out.
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Baltimore added a field goal, but the Niners roared back with another touchdown on a 15-yard sprint by Kaepernick.
The Niners really shined in ball security, as they only gave it away 10 times during the regular season.
San Francisco rallied to tie the game at 17 and send it into overtime, but misfortune struck the Niners once more.
The Niners got the ball back with four seconds left but could only muster a Ted Ginn Jr. kick return to midfield.
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Like the Giants, the Niners practice that quaint, old-fashioned NFL technique of stopping the ball in addition to hurling it as fast as possible down the field.
The 2.20 score indicates more than two standard deviations above the mean, meaning the Niners were more than twice as good as a typical NFL team that year.
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John Harbaugh said the Niners reflected his brother's personality.
Rotating quarterbacks and a November injury to star running back Frank Gore derailed that possibility in a big way, and the Niners front office seems to be all right with that.
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The Ravens, because they can attack in base two TE personnel, or play Pitta and leave in FB hammer Leach, are uniquely positioned to deal with the Niners pass rushers off the edges.
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As for the game itself it turned out to be an exciting affair, the Niners coming back from a huge deficit only to botch a set of downs at the goal line and lose.
San Francisco Super Bowls were a ritual in the 1980s, like leg warmers and overwrought Don Henley albums, and though the Niners have not been in this game since 1994, they have never lost one, either.
FORBES: What Are The 49ers' Weaknesses Heading Into The Superbowl?
San Francisco has one of the league's top-rated defenses, though in the final minutes against the Saints, the Niners resembled one of those high-powered, ultra-caffeinated offenses that had captivated the 2011 NFL. The back-and-forth flurry ended with nine seconds left, when former Niner pariah Vernon Davis caught a winning touchdown and ran into Harbaugh's arms, overcome.
The Giants and Niners play the second game Sunday, in a Candlestick that's burned out but brimming with ghosts.
Second-year Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick began to resemble the fledgling superstar he'd been presented as for weeks.
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