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January 20, 2013

Falcons flirting with history

By Paul Newberry Associated Press

ATLANTA — The Falcons are well aware of just how desperate this city is for its first Super Bowl championship.

Mike Peterson sees and hears it everywhere he goes.

“The city is hungry,” the Atlanta linebacker said. “You can feel it when you’re in the grocery store. Everybody is saying, ‘Go Falcons.’ Everyone is wearing red and black. The city is painted red and black.”

The Falcons will be playing in the NFC championship game for only the third time when they host the San Francisco 49ers today.

For the 49ers, this is a chance to rekindle the franchise’s glorious legacy, to follow in the footsteps of those magnificent teams that captured five Super Bowls titles in the 1980s and ‘90s, led by giants of the game such as Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Steve Young.

The Falcons? They’ve never won even a single Super Bowl. Heck, they’ve only gotten that far one time, during the 1998 season when a charismatic bunch known as the “Dirty Birds” shockingly made a run to the big game — and was promptly blown out by the Denver Broncos in John Elway’s finale.

“They’re trying to recapture greatness,” Falcons safety Thomas DeCoud said. “We’re trying to break the ceiling on it.”

While the Falcons (14-3) are the NFC’s top seed and playing at home, they opened as a three-point underdog against the 49ers (12-4-1), who looked unstoppable in last week’s rout of the Green Bay Packers.

The most dynamic player on that field was a quarterback who began the season as a backup. Colin Kaepernick took over the starting job when Alex Smith was injured, and coach Jim Harbaugh made the bold decision to keep it that way even when Smith healed.

Harbaugh looked like a genius when Kaepernick ran all over the Packers in a 45-31 victory, turning in one of the great performances in playoff history with 263 yards and two touchdowns passing and 181 yards rushing.

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