Cowboys vs. 49ers Will Be Super Match : NFL: Their showdown in the NFC championship game could be better than anything the Super Bowl offers.

So who needs Pasadena and the American Football Conference? Those nice folks in California who stage the Super Bowl should consider moving their schedule up about 14 days, because the most meaningful game in the National Football League this season will be played up the West Coast in Candlestick Park this Sunday, when the San Francisco 49ers meet the Dallas Cowboys for the National Football Conference championship.

That is so far and away a better matchup than anything the Super Bowl can give us two weeks down the road that Pasadena’s little clambake Jan. 31 may as well be one of those afterthought college games that sprinkle the postseason. The Super Bowl will be to the NFC championship game what the Peach Bowl on Jan. 2 was to the national-championship Sugar Bowl the night before.

North Carolina played Mississippi State in the Peach Bowl. Who cared?

The AFC will send another sham (the Buffalo Bills or Miami Dolphins) out to play San Francisco or Dallas in the Super Bowl; and next to the NFC championship game, it will be a snoozer.

That the two best teams -- at least the two best teams, and maybe the best six teams if you include the Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints -- in the league play in the NFC is beyond question. The 49ers (15-2) and the Cowboys (14-3) have the league’s best records, and their game Sunday will pit the NFL’s No. 1-rated offense (San Francisco) against its No. 1-rated defense (Dallas).

That’s the way it should be in the last game of the season, but the Super Bowl can’t possibly measure up -- on paper, anyway. And the best offense against the best defense is only scratching the surface of the matchups that make Sunday’s NFC game so absorbing.

“This is the game that people want to see,” San Francisco strong safety David Whitmore says. “I guess it’s like a big fight. People like to see certain matchups, and everyone wanted this one. This is ‘The Game.’ ”

The 49ers have the game at home, which is an enormous advantage. But don’t think, even for a second, that the Cowboys will go to San Francisco as a significant underdog. The way they broke Philadelphia last weekend in their 34-10 conference semifinal victory is affirmation of their strength.

In fact, it says here -- with corroborating testimony from a couple of the Cowboys’ NFC East Division character witnesses -- that Dallas goes on to the Peach ... er, Super Bowl in Pasadena.

“We thought going in that the winner of our game would represent the NFC in the Super Bowl,” Eagles cornerback Eric Allen says.

“I don’t think anybody is as strong as Dallas,” says Washington strong safety Danny Copeland, even after San Francisco eliminated the Redskins, 20-13, last Saturday. “I think they have more weapons than anybody else I’ve seen. Dallas is playing great special teams, they’re playing well on defense and they’ve got a solid offense with a great running game. Hey, I mean that’s a total football team. I’d like to see the 49ers do it, because they beat us. But I’m going to have to give that edge to the Cowboys.”

Because they are the best in the business, the Cowboys’ defense against the 49ers’ offense is a good way to start. But, as we mentioned, that’s only a beginning. The games within “The Game” will be fascinating.

So nobody has really stopped the 49ers’ short passing attack this year, especially now that Ricky Watters complements it with strong support on the ground. So Steve Young’s mobility and intergalactic passing efficiency rating (107.0) during the regular season made him the league’s Most Valuable Player.

So what?

Last Sunday, Dallas faced a quarterback just as mobile and probably more dangerous than Young and made Randall Cunningham look clueless (160 passing yards and five sacks). And did it without tricks on defense. The Cowboys played a straight-up, 4-3 alignment with only an occasional nickel back in place. A number of their sacks came on a three-man rush, and they didn’t even put a spy -- a player who shadows the quarterback everywhere on the field to contain his scrambling -- on Cunningham. Their pass rush and their coverage was so good and so disciplined, they did not need it; and they likely won’t need it against Young and the 49ers, either.

Young, incidentally, did not take a mother-may-I giant step forward last week in his campaign to make the Bay Area citizenry forget Joe Montana. In his first playoff start, Young was sharp enough to win, but he also lost three fumbles and threw one interception, and all three fumbles led to points for Washington.

In the second half, Montana gave the Candlestick Crazies even more reason to root against Young by warming up on the sideline as if he were about to enter the game. All in all, Young’s playoff debut could not have been much of a confidence-builder.

A better question than how Dallas will stop the 49ers is this: What in the blazes could the rest of the NFC have been thinking when it did not vote a single Dallas defender to the Pro Bowl team?

“People make excuses for us each week,” Cowboys linebacker Vinson Smith says. “We just go out and try to keep at it each week. I guess we’ll have to win it all before we get any respect.”

The 49ers’ offense lives with the quick, three-step-drop or five-step-drop pass. Dallas can stop it because the Cowboys are quicker up front and at linebacker than any other team San Francisco has seen.

“We had trouble with their quickness, and I think that’s a fact,” Eagles coach Rich Kotite says.

Shutdown ... Not! Ah, but what about Jerry Rice and John Taylor, the best wide-receiver tandem in the league? How do the Cowboys cope with that?

Granted, what worked against the Eagles’ Fred Barnett and Calvin Williams last week may not seem so nifty against Rice and Taylor this week. But Barnett and Williams are not pushovers, and the two-deep zone Dallas played for much of the day against Philadelphia kept the Eagles from getting a sniff of a big play from their passing game.

“We tried to have some motions to try to get some one-on-ones,” Kotite says. “But again, pass protection was the problem any time you had to hold the ball.”

Yes, defending the 49ers is more formidable than defending the Eagles, mostly because Rice and Taylor are big, fast receivers who don’t drop passes.

“It’s a scary sight,” Cowboy free safety James Washington says.

But the difference in Dallas’ defense, again, is that linebackers Smith, Robert Jones and Ken Norton are quick enough to take away most of Young’s underneath options: Watters out of the backfield or tight ends Brent Jones and Jamie Williams. That makes it easier on the secondary.

Then there is the Charles Haley issue. Once a Niner, he is now the Cowboys’ starting right defensive end. Haley led the team in quarterback pressures, although he trailed Jim Jeffcoat and Tony Tolbert in sacks. Until a trade last August, Haley was doing all that for San Francisco; and the 49ers have been burned before by a former defensive star. As a Los Angeles Raider, safety Ronnie Lott had Al Davis’ offense more than ready for San Francisco’s defensive signals and alignments.

“It’s going to be tougher (for Haley) to do that because as a lineman, you don’t spend the time on the practice field with the quarterbacks and receivers that a defensive back would,” Young says. “But Charles is a smart guy, and I’m sure he’s taken a lot with him mentally over the years that he might be able to help them with. But as a lineman, that might be a little more difficult.”

Left tackle Steve Wallace, who is going to the Pro Bowl for the first time this year, draws the assignment of blocking Haley for the 49ers on Sunday. Keep an eye on those two.

Like Young with San Francisco, Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman started his first playoff game last Sunday. Unlike Young, his success came easily. Aikman was 15 for 25 for 200 yards and two touchdowns.

And the Cowboys have Coach Jimmy Johnson, who has found a way to win on the road. Dallas is 12-6 away from home, including a split in its two playoff games last season, over the past two years.

“One thing about Coach Johnson,” Cowboys scout Walter Juliff says, “It doesn’t matter if we’re playing in Russia. He’s going to get them ready to play.”

Playing on the road is one thing. Playing on the road in a mud bath is another. Candlestick Park, drenched by days of rain last week, was a quagmire for the Redskins game and may be just as sloppy this Sunday.

According to 49er offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, the 49ers’ offense was not able to execute its inside running game against Washington because of the footing between the hash marks in the middle of the field. The inside running game, behind league rushing leader Emmitt Smith, is a big part of the Cowboys’ offense.

From a statistician’s point of view, the matchup between the Dallas defense and the San Francisco offense is the most compelling angle Sunday. But for half of the game, the Cowboys will have the football. What happens then?

The 49ers ranked 26th in the league in average yards allowed per game (299.2), and Dallas’ offense averaged 350.4 yards per game, second-best in the NFC. The advantage appears to favor the Cowboys here, but San Francisco’s defensive numbers have been misleading. Through most of their games, they have been protecting leads, and teams have accumulated yardage -- especially passing yardage -- in late comeback attempts.

Against Washington, the pass defense was outstanding.

“Their defense -- they’ve been overlooked,” Aikman says. “I just don’t see it. I saw Mark Rypien standing there trying to find guys to throw the ball to, and I didn’t see guys running free like everybody says they are.”

Still, if San Francisco has a weakness, it is in a young secondary. Free safety Dana Hall is a rookie, and a strained hamstring may slow him up this week. Left cornerback Eric Davis is a second-year player, and Whitmore at strong safety is in his third year. Only right corner Don Griffin, in his seventh season, is a solid veteran.

Washington had a modicum of success last week with decoy routes that took the cornerbacks out of underneath coverage in the Niners’ zone defense. Michael Irvin, Alvin Harper and Kelvin Martin for the Cowboys are not quite the challenge that Art Monk, Gary Clark and Ricky Sanders presented.

“I know Michael Irvin is a great receiver,” Davis says. “I know he’s a big guy, a big strong guy, a physical guy with a lot of confidence. He runs good routes, and he has good speed. We’ve just got to be ready.”

The other interesting matchup in the Cowboys’ passing game is the way Whitmore will deal with Jay Novacek, who set a Dallas record for tight ends this season with 68 catches and had a touchdown against Philadelphia.

* PLAYOFF REPORT

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