The NFC’s path to Super Bowl XLVIII still goes through CenturyLink Field. Seattle’s 12th Man did its part on Saturday, roaring so loud that the earth shook during the Seahawks’ 23-15 victory over the Saints, just as it had during their playoff win over these same opponents two years earlier. It will doubtless do so again when San Francisco come to visit in six days’ time.  But hostile fans are hardly the greatest of the 49ers’ concerns. Crowd noise will be a factor in the NFC Championship Game, but Jim Harbaugh will likely spend rather more time this week worrying about how to slow down Marshawn Lynch. It was the Seahawks running back who prompted that ‘Beast Quake’ back in 2011 with a bruising 67-yard run, and it was he who smashed the Saints again on Saturday, rushing for 140 yards on 28 carries – as well as two of his team’s three touchdowns.  His efforts were all the more crucial in light of the Seahawks’ struggles in the passing game. Quarterback Russell Wilson – shorn of his best weapon after Percy Harvin left the game with a concussion – completed just nine of 18 passes for 103 yards.  Lynch, in other words, had generated more than 50% of the team’s total offense. Is it any wonder that so many Seahawks fans were willing to chip in and try to cover his $50,000 fine for refusing to talk to the media this season? (Well, OK, yes, given that his base salary is $7m in 2013, it probably still should be. But the affection, at least, is understandable. Lynch does not need to speak to make his city happy.)  The 49ers did a better job than most of slowing him down during the regular season, limiting him to 3.5 yards per carry in their first regular season meeting with Seattle and 3.6 in the second – some way down on his season average of 4.2. But Lynch still found the end zone three times across those two games.  And this Seahawks team does not need many points to beat you, capable as they are of keeping opposing offenses in check. On Saturday the normally prolific Saints did not reach double digits until there were 26 seconds left in the game. Quarterback Drew Brees, who threw for more than 5,000 yards during the regular season, had just 34 at the half.  He improved after the interval, as did the rest of his team-mates, and the Saints deserve credit for hanging around. Three times in the fourth quarter they got the ball with an opportunity to tie the game. Only after Marques Colston pitched a bizarre and illegal forward pass across the field, killing his team’s opportunity for one last Hail Mary, were their hopes finally dashed.  But perhaps the greatest testament to Pete Carroll's Seattle team is the fact they won despite themselves failing to seize a number of golden opportunities. Twice in the second half, Seahawks defenders had easy interceptions slip through their grasp. And Colston only had the chance to make his bad decision after Seattle’s Golden Tate had allowed an onside kick recovery to bounce off his pads and into the path of a Saints player.  On such moments do playoff games often turn, but the Seahawks’ capacity for keeping opponents out of the end zone gives them margin for error. As Jerry Brewer put it in the Seattle Times:  The Seahawks are tougher than $9.99 steak.  San Francisco will need to be razor-sharp next Sunday to have any hope of cutting them down to size.  The narrative of this year’s AFC Championship Game has already been written. New England vs Denver shall be read as Tom Brady vs Peyton Manning; the two greatest quarterbacks of a generation going head-to-head for the fourth time in a postseason game. Whoever wins, and however they win, Sunday's game will leave an indelible mark on both players’ legacies.  And yet it was not Brady who played the starring role in New England’s win over Indianapolis this past weekend. In fact, his performance was positively understated. Going up against Manning’s successor with the Colts, Andrew Luck, in what was widely predicted to be a shoot-out, Brady did not throw for a single touchdown. Remarkably, the Patriots still put up 43 points.  LeGarrette Blount provided more than half of those, rushing for 166 yards and four touchdowns to tie one franchise playoff record and break another. Not bad for a player obtained for next to nothing in an offseason trade. The Patriots gave up a seventh-round pick plus the rights to Jeff Demps, the Olympic sprinter who claimed a silver medal in the 4x100m relay at London 2012, in order to obtain Blount from the Buccaneers in April of last year.  The running back has not been dominant all season. Despite averaging five yards per carry, Blount’s touches were restricted by the Patriots’ committee approach. But perhaps Bill Belichick was simply keeping him fresh for when it mattered most. Blount carried the ball 24 times for 189 yards and two touchdowns in New England’s week 17 win over Buffalo – the game that sealed the Patriots’ place as the AFC's second seed – as well as ripping off two long kickoff returns.  There is much to like about Blount, whose 235lb frame and physical style belie his explosive acceleration. He is capable of eluding defenders when he wants to, as well as grinding them down. But to give him all the credit might also be missing the point. This was a victory for the collective.  “I've got to say hats off to the offensive line,” noted Blount afterwards. “On a couple of those runs, I didn't get touched."  That same line, after all, also paved the way for two Stevan Ridley touchdowns on Saturday, while the defense intercepted Luck four times. Together they proved a point that the Patriots have quietly been making all year: that this team is so much more than just its passing game.  When the season began, many of us (myself included) fretted about how Brady would cope without his favourite targets, be it the departed Wes Welker, injured Rob Gronkowski or incarcerated Aaron Hernandez. And the truth is that the quarterback has struggled at times, a passer rating of just 87.3 representing his lowest mark in a complete season since 2003.  But the Patriots have kept on winning, leaning at different times on their running game, their defense or even their special teams units to pave the way. When players have gone down, others have stepped up. There could be no better metaphor for the collective strength of this team than the sight of kicker Stephen Gostkowski filling in for the injured punter Ryan Allen on Saturday, and doing so excellently.  Manning, for one, can recognise such qualities, deflecting a question about himself and Brady on Sunday and praising the strength of New England’s team as a whole. He has been around long enough to know how easy it is to win a quarterbacking duel, but still wind up on the losing team.  If Brady vs Manning has been the great quarterbacking rivalry of the past decade, then Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson might just be the ones to fill the void that those two eventually leave behind. Locked together in what is probably the NFL’s toughest division, the pair have alternated NFC West titles over the last two years while taking turns to outdo one another on the field. They even starred opposite one another in a series of Madden video game commercials, which culminated in Kaepernick pretending to shave off his eyebrow in the wake of a week two defeat.  The 49ers quarterback served up one of the worst performances of his young career that day, completing less than half of his passes and throwing three interceptions as his team was beaten 29-3. There was talk of a sophomore slump (although Kaepernick is technically a third-year player, this was his only his second as a starter) after he stumbled through a similarly erratic display in a loss to Indianapolis the following week.  But his detractors would be disappointed. Kaepernick and the 49ers rebounded to win 11 of their remaining 13 games, including a 19-17 victory over Seattle back in San Francisco. It was not quite enough to overtake the Seahawks in their division, but it was enough to make fans wonder whether the pair might meet again to contest the conference title.  To set up such a rematch, however, Kaepernick would first have to get past another team that he had struggled against this season. San Francisco’s opponents in the divisional playoff round, Carolina, had beaten them 10-9 at Candlestick Park in week 10. Kaepernick completed 11 of 22 passes for just 90 yards that day, throwing one interception and getting sacked six times.  It appeared for a moment as though we might witness a similar story on Sunday, as the quarterback struggled to settle into a rhythm early on, harassed as he was by Luke Kuechly and company. The 49ers were making more yards through penalties assessed against their overaggressive opponents than they were through conventional means.  But Kaepernick would soon find his way. He capped a 12-play, 80-yard drive by hitting Vernon Davis in the back of the end zone to put San Francisco in front at the end of a first-half in which they had not played their best football. Then, in the third quarter, he provided the game with its signature moment, swooping around the left-side of the line on a four-yard touchdown run before mimicking the Superman celebration of Carolina’s quarterback Cam Newton.  It was an act of bravado, and one that reminded us of the chip that resides on his shoulder. Kaepernick has confessed more than once in the last couple of weeks that he continues to dwell on the fact that three other quarterbacks were selected before him in the 2011 NFL draft. Newton was the first among them, taken by Carolina with the No1 pick.  Wilson himself might empathise, the Seahawks quarterback having slipped all the way to the third round in 2012. Two years later, he and his division rival have emerged as two of the brightest prospects in the league at their position. Only one, though, can progress to this year’s biggest stage.  The Colorado media were in no mood to ease the pressure on Manning this weekend. On Sunday morning the Denver Post’s sports section ran with a full-page picture of the quarterback on its front cover, stood below the headline: “A legacy under a cloud”. They reminded us once again of his disappointing playoff record, with just nine wins and 11 defeats over the course of his career.  But the treatment inside those pages was a little more nuanced. Mike Klis pointed out that one player does not make a team, noting that Manning’s passing numbers were significantly worse in 2006, when he led the Colts to a Super Bowl win, than they had been in all the many years that he has fallen short.  And as Klis also highlighted, Manning has played on teams with some pretty bad defenses over the course of his career. Worryingly for that legacy, this year’s Broncos unit is amongst them. Only 10 teams gave up more than Denver’s 24.9 points per game during the regular season. Unsurprisingly, none of them had survived this far into the postseason.  Worse yet, the Broncos’ opponents on Sunday, San Diego, were among the teams that had exploited that defense most effectively during the regular season. Rather than seeking to rack up points quickly, the Chargers had instead slowed things down and controlled the clock, averaging 38 minutes of possession across their two head-to-head match-ups. By keeping Manning off the field, they were able to steal a surprise win at Mile High Stadium, after having played Denver close at home.  Any hope of repeating that pattern on Sunday, however, was quickly dashed. Rather than walk into the same trap a third time, the Broncos had resolved to play San Diego at their own game, leaning more heavily than usual on their own running game and dominating the time of possession. They rushed for 77 yards in the first half alone, having managed just 18 on the ground during that defeat to the Chargers in week 15.  It helped that the Broncos’ defense was performing better too, shutting down the visitors’ running game early on and harassing quarterback Philip Rivers. They would endure a late wobble on that side of the ball, giving up 17 fourth-quarter points as the Chargers closed to within seven, but the Broncos were able to close out the game by reverting to ball-control mode, chewing up the last four minutes of the game on offense to prevent San Diego retaking the field after their final score.  This game will not, of course, do anything to change the minds of those who do believe Manning’s legacy to be clouded. Only a win over New England next weekend, and another one at Super Bowl XLVIII, could really shift the assessments of those who think one championship is insufficient for a player of such talent.  But if nothing else it does mean we get at least one more game of Manning, who set alarm bells ringing this week with talk of retirement and light at the end of tunnels. The quarterback has said that he intends to return in 2014, but ESPN’s Chris Mortensen hinted at some uncertainty when he reported that a, “Super Bowl win or playoff loss will not decide [Manning’s] fate. His mandatory physical exam in March will.”  For now, Manning is thinking only of next week. In fact, on Sunday night, he had not even got that far. "The only thing that's weighing on my mind is how soon I can get a Bud Light," he joked to reporters. Everything else could wait until the morning.  • To confirm then, next week’s schedule looks like this:  AFC Championship Game: Patriots @ Broncos (Sunday 3pm ET/8pm GMT)  NFC Championship Game: 49ers @ Seahawks (Sunday 6.30pm ET/11.30pm GMT)  And as you will probably already have guessed, we will be live blogging both of those games right here on The Guardian.  • As if Kaepernick had not done enough to get our attention with his antics on the field, he generated a little extra buzz off it by crashing team-mate Anquan Boldin’s post-game press conference, borrowing a notepad from Mercury News columnist Tim Kawakami so he could jot down a few observations. Namely: “Good shoes. Big earrings. Fight!”  • And speaking of Boldin, you know things are getting out of hand when he has to be the one telling his head coach to cool off on the sideline.  • San Francisco fans may struggle to get hold of a ticket to their game in Seattle on Sunday, after the Seahawks restricted sales to just six US states and two Canadian provinces. Unless you have a credit card billing address in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, British Columbia or Alberta then your only hope will be applying through secondary markets such as the NFL’s official ticket exchange.  • The people of Omaha, Nebraska, finally acknowledge all free publicity that Manning has been giving them with his line calls.  • Wes Welker played in an oversized helmet for Denver on Sunday, a move apparently designed to reduce the chances of him suffering another concussion following the two that he has endured so far this season. I am willing to be corrected on this, but my understanding of the science of concussions would suggest that a larger helmet is going to have next to no impact on likelihood of suffering such an injury, so I can only hope they have some other technology in there to make it worth his while.  • Trumpet player Jesse McGuire plays one of the coolest pre-game anthems I have heard in some time, before San Francisco’s game against Carolina.
Paolo Bandini: Marshawn Lynch makes Seattle quake; Broncos vs Patriots will be more than Manning vs Brady; Colin Kaepernick reveals the chip on his shoulder