Kevin - You just made me chuckle too. I'm only trying to hold up my end as the resident second-guesser here!

Actually I remember well the kind of criticism - some of it utterly damning by what he didn't come right out and say - that Young has made of Smith over the years.

I think after last season, the reaction of most people to Smith's excellent year was 1) it was all Harbaugh's doing, 2) it was a fluke, and 3) there was no way he was going to repeat that kind of year in 2012.

Over the course of this season, up until Smith sustained the concussion, a lot of people - "experts" paid to pontificate in media - came round, some of them decisively, to an acknowledgment of how well Smith was playing.

The "game manager" label was not only rehabilitated as something desirable in a QB, but commentators also started pointing out the things Smith could now do in addition to being a game manager. Young was one of those people.

Young is not infallible, by any means, but he's not alone among knowledgable veterans and other observers in expressing anxiety at the wisdom of the change in QBs.

And again, for most of them it's not so much because Smith was benched per se, as when it was done - Week 11 of a playoff season - and the apparent illogicity of making changes in an offense that was rolling along just fine.

That's why Young and others, including yours truly, feel that the 49ers' prospects are more uncertain right now, in these playoffs, than they would otherwise have been. It's why they're talking about how much pressure is on Kaepernick in this game. Smith outplayed Rodgers in September. He went further in the playoffs than Rodgers last year. Can Kaepernick do likewise? That's the pudding waiting to be eaten.

I actually think Ronnie Lott has it right. I have a feeling the 49ers will roll over the Packers tomorrow.

But I don't see the 49ers' QB as being the difference. And that is the whole point of my epic whinging these last couple of months.