We’re going to combine two Presteblog traditions here — schadenfreude over a win over an archrival, and starting the hype machine for Saturday night’s NFC divisional playoff game at San Francisco.

Saturday’s win proved a point I made here Friday, that late-regular-season games usually end up with different results than postseason games.

One big difference between Sunday and Saturday was the subtraction of Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder, who hurt his right elbow during Sunday’s game, tried throwing before Saturday’s game, and couldn’t.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s ancient Sid Hartman:

If you want an expert’s opinion on the Vikings’ 24-10 playoff loss to the Packers, former NFL MVP Rich Gannon said the Vikings would have certainly had a legitimate shot to win Saturday night had they had a healthy Christian Ponder.

But with Ponder sidelined by a bad elbow after not practicing most of the week and Adrian Peterson operating with a quarterback who hasn’t played all season and lacking the passing ability to make Peterson’s running game effective, the Vikings were eliminated from the NFL postseason.

At halftime, the Packers, behind Aaron Rodgers, had 197 passing yards, compared to the 6 net yards passing for the Vikings with Joe Webb at quarterback.

Gannon, the former Vikings and Raiders quarterback now in his eighth season working as an analyst for CBS, said a big reason for the loss is that when coaches spend time during the week trying to get two quarterbacks ready to play while not knowing which one will, it creates complications that mean neither one is ready to do well in the game.

“That poor kid Joe Webb goes in there, and the speed of the game is so different and you know you’re flying around,” Gannon said. “It’s tough. He doesn’t have the timing and the rhythm with the receivers and the passing game, the offense, it’s tough. It’s a tough way to do it. It’s hard.”

On how Webb handled himself, Gannon said: “I thought he handled himself OK. He didn’t throw the ball well. He was all over the place with his footwork. He was missing throws high, I mean, you know you go up against a good defense like that, tight coverage, he was very erratic with his location on throws and his accuracy.”

The amusing irony is that before the game some Packer fans on Facebook were freaking out because of the last-minute QB switch.

The oddity was the late nature of the switch, as the Star Tribune’s Dan Wiederer reports:

Before Saturday, the prospect of Webb starting seemed unlikely. Christian Ponder had been limited in practice and was put onto the injury report as questionable Friday, still battling an elbow and triceps injury he suffered in last week’s victory. But the Vikings were hopeful the tightness in Ponder’s bruised throwing arm would subside and allow him to play.

It didn’t.

Suddenly, with Ponder’s limited range of motion pushing him onto the inactive list 90 minutes before kickoff, Webb became the emergency starter.

“It just wouldn’t have been smart to put [Christian] in that position,” Vikings coach Leslie Frazier explained. “Some of the things we asked him to do, he wasn’t very good at getting them done. And he needed to be able to do them for us to put him out there.”

And if ever, in an NFL playoff game, there has been a greater disparity between quarterback competency, it’d be difficult to find.

Rodgers, making his 85th career start including playoffs games, threw for 274 yards and one TD.

Webb? He hadn’t throw a pass in a game since Aug. 30 in the preseason finale. And Saturday, on a brightly lit stage with a national TV audience, he demonstrated why the Vikings have firmly favored Ponder as their starter since last spring.

It wasn’t only that the Vikings had only 6 net passing yards in the first half and didn’t have a passing first down until midway through the third quarter, it’s that so many of Webb’s throws were way off.

His first pass, with pressure coming, bounced a yard short of Michael Jenkins. Later, a deep ball to Jerome Simpson sailed 4 yards too long.

A pass to Jarius Wright on an out-breaking route might as well have been intended for sideline reporter Michele Tafoya. And we haven’t even gotten around to the inexplicable pass he threw straight up in the air on his second series while being hogtied by Erik Walden.

Or the lost fumble in the third quarter, forced and recovered by Clay Matthews. Or the interception by Sam Shields later that quarter. …

Sure, Webb and Adrian Peterson (22 carries, 99 yards) led a 53-yard march for a field goal on the opening series. But that 3-0 lead never had much chance of holding up.

Not with Rodgers holding target practice, spreading the ball to 10 different receivers and commanding the offense with ease. In all, Green Bay scored 24 unanswered points.

The game proved that Peterson is the Vikings’ best offensive player, but you can’t win NFL games just with running backs. The Strib’s Mark Craig:

The Vikings’ plan to bludgeon the Packers with Adrian Peterson for the third time in five weeks worked.

For five carries and about four minutes, that is.

After that, All Day was pretty much All Done as a factor in Saturday night’s 24-10 playoff loss at Lambeau Field. After rushing for 33 yards on five of the game’s first six plays, Peterson gained only 36 yards on his next 14 attempts as the Vikings trailed 24-3 entering the fourth quarter. …

A week earlier, Peterson and quarterback Christian Ponder worked perfectly in tandem to upset the Packers 37-34 at the Metrodome and make the playoffs.

But Ponder’s absence because of right-elbow and triceps injuries enabled the Packers to ignore the passing game and focus entirely on the running of Peterson and backup quarterback Joe Webb, who hadn’t thrown a pass all season.

Peterson and Webb combined for 53 yards rushing on the first eight snaps of the game. But the ninth snap was a 2-yard loss by Peterson, followed by a Webb incompletion and a field goal.

“We needed seven there,” fullback Jerome Felton said. “When we got three there, it seemed to throw off our rhythm. And we started going three-and-out, which gave the Packers the energy they needed to stop the run.”

What also didn’t help the Vikings was dumb play. The St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Ben Goessling:

The way the Vikings’ 2012 season ended, with a 24-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Saturday, Jan. 5, was laced with peculiarities from the time the team’s bus pulled up to Lambeau Field.

Quarterback Christian Ponder was unable to play in the game because of a deep bruise on his right triceps muscle, watching the game from the sideline after a short pregame throwing session proved he was unable to drive the ball.

He saw the Vikings hand the Packers one first down when defensive tackle Kevin Williams lined up in the neutral zone, and saw the Packers score a third-quarter touchdown after a 12-men-in-the-huddle penalty gave them five yards on a fourth-and-4 play. And after turning the ball over just twice in their last four games, the Vikings gave it away three times Saturday.

And whose fault is it that that Vikings had an inadequate replacement for Ponder? The St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Bob Sansevere:

While dissecting his wretched performance against the Green Bay Packers, Joe Webb noted several times that he would use it as a learning experience. He isn’t the only one in the Vikings’ organization who needs to learn, and not just from the playoff loss to the Packers but from the regular season as well.

General manager Rick Spielman and coach Leslie Frazier have every right to be proud of the way their team went on a four-game roll to finish 10-6 and make the playoffs. Then they watched, likely in horror, as Webb made panicky decisions that often resulted in a display of his erratic arm.

Spielman and Frazier need to learn from that, as well as be held accountable for not having a bona fide backup quarterback who could give the Vikings a chance of winning a big game.

Webb’s scant resume includes wins over the Philadelphia Eagles in 2010 and the Washington Redskins in 2011. Even in those victories, it was apparent to anyone watching that Webb was a terrific runner but not much of a passer. He is a nice, likable young man — as nice and likable as anyone in the Vikings’ locker room. But unless he is used in an occasional role that features his running skills, his quarterbacking days should be over.

Meantime, how inadequate must third-stringer McLeod Bethel-Thompson be to be left stranded on the sideline while Webb imploded the offense.

Instead of spending the duration of the 24-10 loss Saturday night, Jan. 5, tweeting about the game, Sage Rosenfels should have been playing. The Vikings cut him in training camp, though, choosing to go with Webb as the No. 2 quarterback. That worked fine during the regular season because Webb wasn’t called upon other than to hand off twice and kneel down to run out the clock in the fourth game against Tennessee. But when Christian Ponder was unable to play because of a deep contusion to his triceps, Webb went in and the Vikings’ season went south.

As for Ponder, he played decent down the stretch and appeared to have locked down the job. Now you have to wonder about his durability. Can you imagine Tom Brady or Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers missing a playoff game over a contusion, even if it’s to their throwing arm? Ponder should have started against the Packers. The decision to make him inactive was made after he struggled to throw about 10 passes more than two hours before the game began. Ponder talked afterward about injuring his arm in the first half of the final regular-season game and banking on adrenaline to be able despite the injury. If he had started Saturday night, chances are adrenaline would have kicked in again and he might have been able to play — at least better than Webb did. Of course, we’ll never know.

Spielman and Frazier need to go back to the more traditional lineup of quarterbacks. If you have a young starter, as they do, you should have a veteran backup who can at least manage a game and offer some concern for defenses that he might be able to beat them with a throw.

On to Saturday night, when the Packers face perhaps their biggest non-division rival, the 49ers. SFGate.com’s Vic Tafur:

The Packers got a first round bye after all. With Minnesota quarterback Christian Ponder sitting out with an elbow injury that was worse than anyone thought, the Vikings turned to Joe Webb, better known as the guy on the sideline always seen wildly cheering Adrian Peterson in the highlight clips. …

Make no mistake, though. Green Bay, with receivers, linebackers and cornerbacks looking healthy for the first time all season, looked ready to make a run at another Super Bowl championship. The Packers will face the 49ers in a divisional round game at 5 p.m. Saturday at Candlestick Park.

Green Bay would like to avenge a 30-22 season-opening loss at home to San Francisco, and you know its quarterback has had a chip on his shoulder for longer than that. The 49ers chose Alex Smith over Aaron Rodgers in 2005, and Rodgers fell all the way to 24th to the Packers.

Now the ever-grinning Chico native and Cal product gets to make his first NFL start in Northern California.

“It will be fun to go back to Northern California,” Rodgers told reporters Saturday night. “Hopefully, we’ll get a lot of Cheeseheads from Chico to go down to the game. It will be a good test.” …

The Vikings had 6 passing yards in the first half. In what was a truly ugly start to the postseason, that was the fewest first-half passing yards in a playoff game since the Bengalshad negative-6 a few hours earlier.

Webb finished 11-for-30 for 180 yards, and at one point under pressure, threw the ball straight up in the sky.

“There’s a reason he’s not starting,” Packers nose tackle B.J. Raji said.

Webb can still tell his grandkids that one day he started an NFL playoff game. If they ask for details, he can tell them to go to bed.

Rodgers, meanwhile, might be able to tell his grandkids that he won multiple Super Bowl rings as the Packers are peaking, especially health-wise, at the right time. He completed 14 of 18 passes for 205 yards in the first half before the Packers booked their hotel in San Francisco and started humming Tony Bennett. …

The Packers play especially well with a lead – now 9-1 if they’re up at halftime – and are trying to get running back DuJuan Harris going (47 yards rushing, 53 receiving and a touchdown).

For the 49ers to have a chance win, it sure seems like they are going to need All-Pro defensive tackle Justin Smith. Smith missed the final two regular-season games with a partially torn left triceps, but returned to practice this week wearing a bulky black brace.

He and the 49ers will be rested. But so will the Packers, thanks to the Vikings and a future footnote in history named Joe Webb.

More later this week.