Our occasional look at the foibles and finger-pointing of Packer victims moves south down U.S. 101 from Seattle two weeks ago to San Francisco.

The 49ers-Packers rivalry is of relatively recent vintage in the NFL scheme of things. Packer coach Mike Holmgren was previously the 49ers’ offensive coordinator. Former Packers assistant coach Steve Mariucci became the 49ers’ coach. And then there have been the recent losses to the 49ers and quarterback Colin Kaepernick, which seem a long time ago given how badly Kaepernick is now playing.

(To add Wisconsin ties: Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee and grew up in New London. His offensive coordinator is Geep Chryst, son of late Wisconsin assistant and UW-Platteville head coach George Chryst and father of Badger coach Paul Chryst.)

SFGate’s Eric Branch picks apart the offensive 49ers offense:

The 49ers made Green Bay’s all-world quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, look mortal Sunday, but their commendable effort came in a 17-3 loss at Levi’s Stadium because of the shortcomings of their quarterback.

On the heels of a career-worst, four-interception performance, Colin Kaepernick didn’t make many mistakes against Green Bay, but he also didn’t do much of anything else. Kaepernick directed an offense that produced 196 yards, eight first downs, six sacks and six punts.

Kaepernick completed 13 of 25 passes for 160 yards and one interception. He has thrown for 227 yards and five interceptions in 44 attempts in his past two games. Prior to that stretch, he’d thrown five interceptions in 209 attempts.

With the 49ers trailing 17-3 on their final drive, Kaepernick began by targeting wide receiver Anquan Boldin with two passes that sailed wildly out of bounds. He then showed excellent touch on a 47-yard strike to Torrey Smith, but he bent down in frustration two plays later after bouncing a short pass at running back Reggie Bush’s feet. The drive — and the 49ers’ last chance — ended when Kaepernick was sacked two plays later on a 4th-and-5 at the 15-yard line with just more than four minutes left. …

Meanwhile, Kaepernick directed a low-risk attack and completed 7 of 10 passes for 78 yards in the first half. More than half of Kaepernick’s yards came on a pass he completed four yards behind the line of scrimmage: Kaepernick shoveled a pass to wideout Quinton Patton, who caught in stride it as he came in motion and sprinted 40 yards down the left sideline.

[Wide receiver Torrey] Smith (2 catches, 54 yards), who didn’t have a catch until the last play of the third quarter, marched directly to the bench and ripped off his helmet after Kaepernick targeted him with wayward a deep pass on 3rd-and-9 late in the first quarter. Head coach Jim Tomsula appeared to have a brief “let’s-calm-down” meeting with Smith on the bench.

Trailing 7-3, the 49ers faced 3rd-and-11 from their 34-yard line on the first drive of the second half. The play call: a handoff to Bush up the middle, a decision that had Boldin throwing his hands downward in disgust when Bush was stopped for no gain.

Here’s how you know it’s a rivalry: Linebacker Clay Matthews sacked Kaepernick and told him “You ain’t no Russell Wilson, bro.”

The view didn’t look any better down San Francisco Bay to the San Jose Mercury News’ Cam Inman:

The 49ers (1-3) rarely threatened offensively behind embattled quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who got sacked a season-high six times and had to scramble far too often because of offensive-line woes.

The 49ers had won their past four meetings against the Packers, the most recent a wild-card playoff game at Lambeau Field in January 2014.

A week after throwing a career-high four interceptions in a 47-7 loss at Arizona, Kaepernick had one pass intercepted by the Packers. That came in the fourth quarter on a 50-yard bomb, which he underthrew to Anquan Boldin and instead landed in cornerback Sam Shields’ hands.

Kaepernick finished 13 of 25 for 160 yards and a 55.4 passer rating. His counterpart, Aaron Rodgers, followed up a five-touchdown performance by throwing for only one score against the 49ers and finishing 22 of 32 for 224 yards and no interceptions.

Carlos Hyde had only eight carries for 20 yards in his return to Levi’s Stadium, having run for 168 yards and two touchdowns in the season opener against Minnesota. …

When Kaepernick did try to stretch the field Sunday, overthrown passes often sailed out of bounds. Although he found Torrey Smith for a 47-yard completion to the 20-yard line with 5½ minutes remaining, that series ended without points, as Kaepernick was sacked on fourth down. …

Sometimes the digits and clauses say things that a coaching staff can’t or a front office won’t. And looking back at the $126 million extension Kaepernick signed in 2014, it’s fair to wonder how certain the franchise was in his development. The 49ers built a whole lot of exits into his deal with very little “real” guaranteed money from one season to the next. Concisely, San Francisco has an opportunity (multiple, actually) to cut the cord with Kaepernick in the coming offseasons. That means if his current decline continues, you have to wonder if the 49ers will take that opportunity sooner rather than later.

Is this hindsight quarterbacking just four games into the season? Sure. But the time is right for it, with Kaepernick seemingly on a weekly slide that takes him further from the player who nearly led the 49ers to a Super Bowl win following the 2013 NFL season. The 49ers have lost three straight to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Arizona Cardinals andGreen Bay Packers by a combined score of 107-28. In the past two horrific games, he has gone 22 for 44 for 227 yards and five interceptions with zero touchdowns. (If you want to throw in his 103 rushing yards with a touchdown as a redeemer, that’s your prerogative.) NFL Films’ Greg Cosell did a spectacular job of spelling out some of the problems recently.

The bottom line is exactly that – the bottom line. It keeps going lower for Kaepernick, and there are fewer things to blame beyond the quarterback. Strictly from the eyeball test, he has gone through a steady journey to the middle since that Super Bowl. The middle might actually be an improvement. He’ll enter Week 5 among the lowest rated quarterbacks in the NFL. And it’s not like he fell off a cliff over night, either.

In 2014, it was the Jim Harbaugh fallout and awkwardness that supposedly weighed on the whole franchise. Or it was the supporting cast. Michael Crabtree couldn’t get separation at the medium or deep level. Maybe Anquan Boldin‘s age was starting to show. His defenders suggested that could be why Kaepernick’s deep ball accuracy faded. Or he wasn’t 100 percent healthy. Or the offense hadn’t evolved to stave off changes from defensive schemes.

Now? The offensive line (which was intact during last season’s struggles) isn’t as good as it was a year ago. The free-agent addition, Torrey Smith (billed as a perfect match for Kaepernick’s arm), is too one-dimensional. The running game is banged up and inconsistent. Boldin hit a wall. Vernon Davis can’t play anymore. It goes on and on.

Or maybe it’s just the guy in the middle, who has never grown beyond the read-option scheme. Maybe it’s that Kaepernick has never shown he can consistently win from the pocket, or at the very least, build a passing acumen that makes surgical scrambling (like say, what Aaron Rodgers does) as effective as it can be. At this point, the 49ers would probably be happy to see him string together several first downs.

That’s scary for a guy who is due $16.7 million next season and $19.3 million the season after that. It’s hard enough defending those numbers for a quarterback who is proving to be average. Like, say, the guy Kaepernick unseated: Alex Smith. As much as 49ers fans want to cringe, there’s a legitimate argument that Smith is a better player right now.

This brings us back to that $126 million contract, which was announced in the summer of 2014 with no shortage of puffery. As the numbers trickled out, it was recognized that the segmented deal gave the 49ers a litany of eject buttons. And they can easily separate this offseason so long as Kaepernick doesn’t suffer a catastrophic injury that guarantees his 2016 salary. So long as they cut ties prior to April 1, the 49ers won’t be responsible for anything but the remainder of his prorated signing bonus, which would amount to roughly $7.4 million. After the numbers are crunched, they could cut him at a salary-cap savings of $6.9 million next year. And, poof, the contract is gone.

It is interesting to notice the apparent fate of such running quarterbacks as Kaepernick, Robert Griffin III and, before them, Michael Vick, who were going to revolutionize the NFL and then did not, or have not. NFL quarterbacks must be able to throw the ball first. It’s great to have a quarterback like Rodgers (and really that sentence could end right there) who can extend plays by moving inside and outside the pocket and even get you some yardage by running on occasion. But the dual-threat QBs like Kaepernick have their moment in the NFL sun for approximately one season, until NFL defensive coaches break down their weaknesses and, generally, work to make them throw instead of run, where their weaknesses, or their teammates’ weaknesses, get exposed. (As well as their insufficient NFL preparation while in college.)