HIGH AND MIGHTY; ATLANTA STEPS OVER 49ERS TO MOVE AHEAD : ATLANTA 20, SAN FRANCISCO 18.

Byline: Ron Borges Boston Globe

The Dirty Birds nearly ate crow Saturday, but in the end they ate up the 49ers instead.

In a game they should have been won by halftime, the Atlanta Falcons gave the longtime-NFL powerhouse every opportunity to knock them out of the playoffs, but the aging Niners couldn't quite do it. Their legs were a little too old and their bones were a little too brittle and the Falcons put just a little too much doubt in their minds.

Not a lot, just enough. Just enough to claim a bone-crushing 20-18 victory at the Georgia Dome that sent the Falcons to their first NFC Championship Game, against the winner of today's Minnesota-Arizona matchup.

The Falcons ran out to a 14-0 lead by pounding a defense weakened by injury and age with a young running back named Jamal Anderson and by harassing the San Francisco offense with a defense that was younger, faster and more aggressive. All of that seemed to have wrought a rout after Chuck Smith picked up an apparent Terry Kirby fumble and returned it for a 43-yard touchdown and a 21-0 lead with 1:57 left in the first half.

But before TV clickers could start switching to the Cartoon Network or the Discovery Channel, whistles started blowing and next thing you knew everything had changed. The officials correctly ruled that Kirby had fumbled a backward pass from Steve Young but was down when he fell on it because Falcons linebacker Cornelius Bennett landed on him going for the ball.

That negated the rest of the play and nearly the entire first half of Falcons dominance. Three plays later, rookie linebacker Keith Brooking blew a coverage and left 49ers back Chuck Levy so open that he ran 34 yards with a Young pass and two plays after that Young found Jerry Rice with a 17-yard TD pass that made it 14-7 with 70 seconds left in the half.

Three plays after that, the supposedly dying 49ers rose up, and defensive tackle Junior Bryant intercepted a Chris Chandler pass that was tipped by Charles Haley to set up a 36-yard Wade Richey field goal as time expired. Thus the Falcons went into their locker room having held the Niners' league-leading rushing game to 9 yards, knocked out Garrison Hearst with a broken leg on the first play, and injured his backup, Kirby, three plays later - yet barely held the lead, 14-10.

Enraged, 35-year-old safety Eugene Robinson, who had been a part of many classic battles with the 49ers while in Green Bay, roared at his young teammates that it was time to make a statement.

``I came in here and said we can't let a team like the 49ers back into the game,'' Robinson said. ``We made a relatively easy game hard and now they were smelling blood. If we'd gone up 21, we could have broken their spirit and we could have easily been in that position. But we weren't. Now we had to fight.''

Fight they did, and it was Robinson who showed them how. After the Falcons had gone for it and failed on fourth and 1 near midfield to open the second half, you could feel the momentum shifting. Down the 49ers marched again, moving from their 42 to the Falcons' 24, intent on taking the lead.

It was time for someone to make a play and that turned out to be Robinson, who read Young perfectly, cut in front of Terrell Owens at the 3-yard line and picked off a pass, returning it 77 yards to the 49ers' 20.

Yet the battle was not over. The 49ers refused to buckle to Anderson (who had 83 yards at halftime but only 30 in the second half), and Atlanta had to settle for two Morten Andersen field goals that followed Robinson's interception and one by William White to lead, 20-10, with 10:33 to go.

With Hearst out and Kirby limping, Young had no running game to fall back on, so he began to rifle passes, completing seven straight, including a 33-yarder to J.J. Stokes on third and 4. He capped a 13-play drive that consumed 7:36 with an 8-yard run to cut the deficit to 20-18 with 2:57 remaining after holder Ty Detmer took a high snap and found tight end Greg Clark for a two-point conversion that stunned the Falcons.

``Despite all the things we'd been faced with, with 2:57 left, I really felt we'd get the ball back, move down the field, and Wade Richey would be the hero,'' a dejected Young said. ``I would have bet on it.''

If he had, he would have lost, but not before the Falcons gave him one last chance. Anderson, who had done so much all day by running for two touchdowns and controlling the clock with his power rushes, foolishly ran out of bounds on third down with 53 seconds left and the Niners out of timeouts. That stopped the clock, forced a punt, and presumably gave Young one last chance.

But R.W. McQuarters fielded that punt at the 11 and ran backward 7 yards before being hauled down. It was the kind of mistake you make after a long day of punishment. Young would throw five times after that in hopes of repeating his miracle finish of a week ago, when he beat another aging champion, Green Bay, as time ran out, but these were not the old Packers. Nor were they the old Falcons.

``I think you saw a changing of the guard,'' Robinson said. ``They fought tremendously, but we're not the lowly Falcons anymore. The days of kicking sand in our face are over. They ain't doing that anymore.''

NFC DIVISIONAL PLAYOFF: SAN FRANCISCO vs. ATLANTA

THE HERO

With a nod to Atlanta coach Dan Reeves, who returned to the sidelines after his Dec. 14 quadruple-bypass heart surgery, Falcons running back Jamal Anderson stole the show. He ran for a game-high 113 yards and scored the game's first two touchdowns, setting the tone for Atlanta's victory. It was the 13th time this season Anderson has rushed for over 100 yards, tops in the NFL.

THE GOAT

Both teams played admirably - the 49ers without stars Garrison Hearst and Bryant Young and Atlanta overcoming its lame history. But for San Francisco, the poorest play came from interim team president Larry Thrailkill, who couldn't even wait for the end of the highly charged game to resign, bolting from the Niners' chaotic front office.

STAT OF THE GAME

0 - the number of times Atlanta had advanced to the NFC Championship Game before Saturday. It was the first playoff game in Atlanta since 1980, this in a season when the Falcons won the NFC West for just the second time in franchise history. The 49ers had won 14 of the last 17 division titles.

QUOTE OF THE GAME

``My emotions are there. The thing is you don't have is the lung capacity to get loud.''

- Atlanta's Reeves, who TV cameras showed screaming and yelling obscenities without restriction throughout the game.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, 2 Boxes

PHOTO (1--Color) Atlanta's Jamal Anderson (32) celebrates with Calvin Collins (68) after Anderson's first-quarter touchdown. Anderson rushed for two touchdowns and 113 yards on 29 carries in the victory.

Brant Sanderlin/Associated Press

(2) San Francisco's Jerry Rice (80) watches the seconds tick down on the clock in the final moments of the 49ers' loss to the Falcons.

Dave Martin/Associated Press

(3) Jamal Anderson

John Bazemore/Associated Press

BOX: (1) NFC DIVISIONAL PLAYOFF: SAN FRANCISCO vs. ATLANTA (see text)

(2) 1999 NFL PLAYOFF SCHEDULE

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