SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Maybe it was fitting that Jimmy Garoppolo did his best impersonation of former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese in the victory that sent the San Francisco 49ers to Griese's old stomping grounds for the Super Bowl.
Perhaps no one since Griese had ever done less in the game that led his team to the Super Bowl than Garoppolo did last Sunday when he threw only eight passes in a 37-20 victory over Green Bay to win the NFC title.
That's led to some predictable skepticism about whether Garoppolo should get credit for leading the 49ers (15-3) to Super Bowl LIV - they take on the Kansas City Chiefs (14-4) on Feb. 2 in Miami Gardens, Florida - or if he's just along for the ride.
"That's wild that he takes criticism for that," San Francisco left tackle Joe Staley said Thursday. "We won the game. We were doing what we needed to do to win the game, and that's the main point of an NFL football game. I think he would be pretty sad if he threw 450 (yards) and we lost, so it doesn't really matter."
Garoppolo acknowledged he hears the criticism that he didn't do much to get San Francisco this far and uses it as motivation, even if he's much quieter about it than teammate Richard Sherman, the veteran cornerback who seems to seek out doubters as fuel.
"I do the same thing," Garoppolo said. "I hear all the stuff and everything, but you can't put that all out there all the time. You have to do with it what you will and take it for what it is. Just, at the end of the day, you've got to go out there and play football."
Garoppolo completed six passes for 77 yards Sunday. It was the fewest passes by a team in the playoffs since Griese's Dolphins threw six times in the AFC title game against the Oakland Raiders during the 1973 season and then only seven times in a Super Bowl win over the Minnesota Vikings two weeks later.
That Miami squad repeated as champion, following the Dolphins who remain the only team to complete an undefeated season with a Super Bowl victory.
The only other time a team threw eight or fewer passes in a playoff game came in the 1971 AFC championship game, when Griese had eight attempts in a victory over the Baltimore Colts. Griese was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990.
The run-heavy script that seems out of place in the modern pass-happy era has been especially glaring ever since Garoppolo made one of his few mistakes in the postseason.
He threw an interception late in the first half of the divisional round against Minnesota for his 19th turnover of the season, more than any other player who made the playoffs. Since that point, he has gone 9-for-14 passing for 103 yards and one sack in six-plus quarters as the 49ers have run the ball on 73 of 88 offensive plays.
In fact, Garoppolo has been asked to kneel down to run out the clock in that span more times (five) than he has completed a pass that traveled past the line of scrimmage (four).
"That's just how this world works, and you'll get credit if you win a Super Bowl or an NFL MVP or something like that," San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan said. "We ran the ball (the last two weeks), so a lot of people are going to say that Jimmy didn't do enough. There's lots of games this year that we haven't been able to run the ball and we've had to win it by passing. That's what I'm proud of with Jimmy and proud of our team, that you can't really say that we have to win a game a certain way. I think we've shown that we can win a number of ways."
One reason Garoppolo has been asked to do so little is the 49ers have spent the past month playing from ahead. They haven't trailed in a game since a comeback 34-31 win in Week 16 against the Los Angeles Rams.
They have been tied or led for the past 186 minutes, 14 seconds of game action, allowing Shanahan to lean more heavily on his defense and running game rather than counting on Garoppolo to deliver the big plays.
The strategy has worked as San Francisco has 89 carries for 471 yards in playoff wins over Minnesota and Green Bay, although Garoppolo might have to do more to keep up with Patrick Mahomes and the high-powered Chiefs two weeks from Sunday.
Garoppolo has shown the ability to do that this season, leading four fourth-quarter comebacks and ranking tied for second in the league with three games of at least four touchdown passes in the regular season.
The biggest success he had came in a 48-46 road win against the New Orleans Saints in December, rallying the 49ers back from a 13-point first-half deficit and then engineering the winning field-goal drive in the final minute of the game.
Garoppolo said one benefit of the strategy the past two weeks is the 49ers have been able to hold back some pass plays that could work against the Chiefs.
"They'll have to be on their toes," he said, "kind of play the game out as it goes."