Kyle Juszczyk, the fullback of the 9-1 San Francisco 49ers, spoke with Andrew Siciliano on NFL Network today and discussed the challenge of facing the 8-2 Green Bay Packers on Sunday night at Levi's Stadium. The game could shift the balance of power within the NFC. In fact, a loss could drop San Francisco from the No. 1 seed to the No. 5 seed, depending on what happens with the Seattle Seahawks.
It could also mean the difference of hosting playoff games in beautiful California as opposed to potentially heading on the road for some nasty-weather matchups — like Lambeau Field.
"There's a lot riding on this game; you know, the top two teams in the NFC right now," Juszczyk told Siciliano. "We're looking forward to it, man. We embrace these opportunities, and we think that, no matter what happens in this game, it's really just going to help us down the line, to get to experience what a big-time game this is, and the kind of energy that you feel in a playoff matchup like this."
Added Juszczyk: "We looked at the Monday-night game against Seattle kind of like a playoff game. We look at these next couple of games coming up as playoff games. It's something that we can use to kind of build off later in the season when we actually are in those playoff games."
Juszczyk also discussed the 49ers offense's inability to replicate the same success running the football as earlier in the season. San Francisco has averaged just 60.5 yards per game over the past two weeks, including 34 against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday.
"We haven't been as successful in the run game as we'd like to be, in the past two weeks," Juszczyk said. "Teams have been coming up with some different things. All of a sudden, they're showing up in a new front that we've never seen them run before. All of a sudden, they're heating us up with all sorts of run blitzes.
"Those are things that we expect, and we do practice for it during the week, but we've just got to do a better job in games of handling those sorts of things. Kyle (Shanahan) talked about it yesterday. We've just got to get back to our fundamentals and our basics.
"When it comes down to it, it's really just little things that were going well for us earlier in the season that maybe, these past two weeks, haven't gone perfectly, and that's really the difference. Just that little detail that could be the difference between a two-yard gain and an explosive 40-yard gain."