Column: Niners were too deep and physical for sloppy Cowboys

“Go Niners!”

It’s a greeting John Lynch hears from strangers when he’s out in San Diego.

The Niners are still going — to Green Bay — thanks to a deep, well-coached team assembled by Kyle Shanahan and GM Lynch that rose up Sunday in Texas.

Overcoming injuries to stars Nick Bosa and Fred Warner in the second and fourth quarters, respectively, the 49ers beat the favored Dallas Cowboys, 23-17, in an NFC wild-card game they never trailed.

They’ll face the top-seeded Packers on Saturday, reprising a playoff match they won two winters ago in Santa Clara en route to the Super Bowl.

The Niners outmuscled and outclassed a Cowboys team whose shoddy, dysfunctional performance — 14 penalties and other breakdowns — should give Dallas owner Jerry Jones reason to ask hard questions of coach Mike McCarthy and staff that Jones seems unable to ask of himself.

The final score sold short the 49ers’ dominance of a matchup that got the featured time slot in the Super Bowl tournament’s first round, while surfacing Niners-Cowboys playoff matchups of decades ago.

Led by their two fronts, the visitors mauled the Cowboys (12-6) on the ground (169 yards on 4.9 per carry), took away the run (77 yards on 3.7) and tilted the passing games in their favor.

San Francisco (11-7) took leads of 10-0, 16-7 and 23-7 before surviving a fake punt in the fourth quarter that led to three points and Jimmy Garoppolo’s errant pass that set up a short-field touchdown drive.

They had outgained Dallas by nearly double — 6.4 to 3.3 in yards per play — through three quarters. “We moved the ball,” All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams said after the first playoff victory of his 12-year career. “We didn’t get touchdowns, we got field goals. And that’s why the game was close at the end.”

Dallas brought in the NFL’s No. 1 offense in points (31.2 per game) and yards.

Bosa sat out the second half with a head injury. In the first quarter he raised his team-best sack total to 16.5.

But the Niners still held Dallas scoreless in the third quarter.

Minus both Bosa and their defensive signal-caller Warner, the 2020 All-Pro linebacker from San Marcos Mission Hills High who left inside of nine minutes with an ankle injury, the defense nevertheless stopped Dallas twice in the final seven minutes to secure the victory.

Coordinator DeMeco Ryans created uncertainty with varied blitzes, stunts and pressure fakes that complemented a timeless virtue: a reliable four-man pass rush.

“Dallas has stars all over the field,” said Niners tight end George Kittle. “The way that our defense stepped up (without Bosa and Warner), that’s super tough.”

Kittle added: “They kept playing, they kept hitting and they held a very explosive offense to 17 points.”

Afterward Lynch, the Hall of Fame safety who grew up in Solana Beach and is San Francisco’s general manager, hugged beleaguered Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott.

A deep defensive front, led by interior rushers Arik Armstead and D.J. Jones, unsettled Prescott for most of the game.

Prescott was sacked five times, matching his season high in a 19-9 loss at Kansas City in which Dallas failed to score a touchdown. He completed just one of five targets to his favorite receiver, Cee Dee Lamb.

While the Cowboys’ offense seldom resembled a unit that dominated the weak NFC East, the Niners maintained their physical identity on both offense and defense.

Shanahan’s offense got a consistently sharp performance from a San Diegan: right guard Daniel Brunskill, a durable alum of Valley Center High and San Diego State whom Lynch signed soon after the San Diego Fleet’s parent league folded in March 2019.

Brunskill’s frontside blocks aided his team’s two TD plays: rookie Elijah Mitchell rushing 4 yards untouched for a 7-0 lead and Deebo Samuel running 26 yards to stretch the lead to 23-7.

Finishing off a clean block late in the game, Brunskill frustrated Cowboys end Randy Gregory, who responded by wrapping him up and incurring a holding penalty.

If football lovers wanted both teams to reprise the excellence of the early 1990s, when the franchises met in three consecutive NFC title games, only the Niners came close to succeeding.

Shanahan’s team overwhelmed the Cowboys in the first quarter, outgaining them 110 to 7 and never allowing Dallas past its 25. The fast start recalled San Francisco claiming a 21-0 lead in the first half of the 1994 NFC title game. It had to doubly please Shanahan, who as the son of ’94 offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, was on the sideline for those playoff games.

Shanahan showed his team film clips of those Niners-Cowboys games leading up to Sunday. “We stand on the shoulders of legends, we really do,” said Kittle.

A tougher test awaits at Lambeau Field. The Niners can’t expect the Packers to embarrass themselves like the Cowboys, whose many miscues included seven pre-snap penalties.