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The average query and response consumed 13 seconds, hardly enough time for enlightenment. Eighteen of the 23 answers were more succinct than the questions, including the last one.

"You don't like to reveal a whole lot, which you might have in common with your coach," a reporter began. "Why is that?"

"The more that you reveal, the less of an advantage you have," Kaepernick said. With that, he walked away.

Presuming Jim Harbaugh was not hidden behind Kaepernick like a ventriloquist with a hand up his jersey, the coach must have been pleased with his student's performance. It was straight from Harbaugh's public relations playbook.

Kaepernick is Harbaugh's quarterback, molded in Harbaugh's stony persona. He was drafted for the purpose of eventually leading Harbaugh's team and was promoted in November to carry Harbaugh's immediate championship aspirations.

So the attention in these playoffs is on Kaepernick. But it is the man behind him, working the controls, who has the most at stake.

Harbaugh is perched at a peculiar turning point in his coaching career. He is popular in the Bay Area because he has won, not because he is liked, relying on victories instead of personality to build good will. Now, due to the late-season swap to Kaepernick, and the rising expectations caused by his own success, Harbaugh's popularity promises to be tested like never before.

"Two things sustain you as a coach," said the former quarterback Trent Dilfer, an ESPN analyst who lives in the Bay Area. "Winning, No. 1. Likability, No. 2. Very few coaches have both. Jim does not have the consciousness of the public perception of him to have sustainability unless he wins. That's just a fact. He has to win."

So far, Harbaugh has won plenty. After four seasons of resurrecting Stanford into a powerhouse, in part behind quarterback Andrew Luck, Harbaugh moved triumphantly to the nearby 49ers in 2011.

His wealth of confidence and dash of intensity lifted San Francisco's enviable roster to a 13-3 record. The 49ers came within one game of last year's Super Bowl, losing to the Giants, 20-17, in overtime last January.

For the first time, he faces the full weight of expectation. The 49ers feel built for a championship. And Harbaugh, in his final tinkering, benched the rejuvenated and widely admired Alex Smith for the unleashed potential of Kaepernick.

"If it all blows up on Saturday, that will take a lot of that good will out of the bank," said Steve Young, the Hall of Fame quarterback who led San Francisco to its last Super Bowl, 18 years ago.

Before November, a key to the franchise's renewal was Harbaugh's rehabilitation of Smith. He was the first overall draft choice in 2005, tested and abandoned by a string of failing coaches. Harbaugh turned him into a trustworthy player of robotic efficiency.

On Oct. 29, Smith completed 18 of 19 passes for 232 yards and 3 touchdowns in a victory over the Cardinals. The 49ers were 6-2. Two days later, Smith and Harbaugh chauffeured cars in the San Francisco Giants' World Series victory parade. It was easy to imagine a Super Bowl parade come winter.

But Smith left the next game with a concussion, after throwing a touchdown pass through blurry vision. Kaepernick started the next game, against the Bears. His poise and pinpoint passing led the 49ers to a prime-time blowout victory.

Smith recovered. He had the league's highest passer rating. He had completed 25 of his previous 27 passes, for 304 yards and 4 touchdowns. He had led the 49ers to a 19-5 regular-season record under Harbaugh, including a season-opening 30-22 victory at Green Bay in September.

Harbaugh, somewhat clumsily over a couple of weeks, handed the job to Kaepernick.

"For the first time, fans have a little bit of pause about Harbaugh," said Brian Murphy, who co-hosts a morning sports radio show in San Francisco. "Because it's the first thing that isn't perfectly aligned with good feelings and wins."

The debate among fans has swirled since, funnel-like, all spilling into the story line of Saturday's game. Now people will know whether it was the right move.

"He went all in," Young said. "But that's Jim."

Harbaugh remains a bit of a mystery in San Francisco, stalking the sidelines in a black sweatshirt tucked into khaki pants. He can be hard to read behind his revolving kaleidoscope of expressions: perplexed, angry, smiling, wild-eyed, sometimes all at once.

He has a reputation, dating to his 14 years as an N.F.L. quarterback, for being a pugnacious sort. He once broke his hand punching the retired quarterback Jim Kelly because he did not like Kelly's critiques.

He is the rare coach to pick spats with opposing coaches, including a rare handshake controversy. Excited after a victory at Detroit in 2011, Harbaugh brusquely shook the hand of Lions Coach Jim Schwartz and slapped his back while jogging past. Schwartz, miffed, chased Harbaugh down. Players surrounded the coaches in a surreal scrum.

"I shook his hand too hard," Harbaugh said later, calling it a "slap-grab handshake." Without apologizing, he said, "That was on me."

When the Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride said this season that 49ers defensive lineman Justin Smith "gets away with murder" — part of an otherwise complimentary assessment — Harbaugh issued a statement. It demonstrated, among other things, a loyalty to his team and a flair for hyperbole.

"Kevin Gilbride's outrageous, irrational statement regarding Justin Smith's play is, first, an absurd analogy," Harbaugh said. "Second, it is an incendiary comment targeting one of the truly exemplary players in this league. It's obvious that the Giants coaching staff's sole purpose is to use their high visibility to both criticize and influence officiating."

In the locker room and on the practice field, Harbaugh is high energy. "Attack each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind" is an axiom he brandishes regularly, handed down from his father, Jack, a longtime football coach. (John Harbaugh, Jim's brother, coaches the Baltimore Ravens.)

But little of that is on display to the broader world. During news conferences and television interviews, Harbaugh looks like a man distracted, as if he were perpetually trying to remember if he left the coffee maker on at home. He has no aversion to awkward silences, and can rival Bill Belichick's ability for spoken minimalism.

On Monday, a reporter reminded Harbaugh that he said San Francisco's division was "arguably the best."

"Arguably," Harbaugh said.

The reporter asked if he wanted to bolster the argument, given the playoff victory of the rival Seahawks.

"Yeah, I'm willing to go further, a week later, to continue to argue that," Harbaugh said. "I think that's a fair argument."

So you think it is the toughest division?

"Arguably the toughest division," Harbaugh said.

The reporter, tugging hard on the verbal leash, asked what made it so tough.

"The strength of the teams," Harbaugh said.

Occasionally, a memorable line helps take the edge off Harbaugh's persona of quirky intensity. Earlier this season, Harbaugh described public concern over Alex Smith's confidence as "gobble gobble turkey."

And, coach, what is gobble gobble turkey?

"Just gobble gobble gobble turkey from jive turkey gobblers, you know," Harbaugh said with a smile.

On Wednesday, during a typically laborious news conference, Harbaugh said that the injured Justin Smith would play, "God willing and the creek don't rise."

Someone later asked Harbaugh if he was a fan of the entertainer Tennessee Ernie Ford.

"Who isn't?" Harbaugh said.

You just quoted him, Harbaugh was told. (Actually, Ford's catchphrase usually began, "The good Lord willing.")

"That was Tennessee Ernie Ford?" Harbaugh replied. "I thought that was Jack Harbaugh."

Performances like that, while hardly necessary to win football games, could go a long way toward endearing Harbaugh to the masses cheering him on. And maybe they will rub off on Kaepernick, his intriguingly talented, tight-lipped quarterback.

Or the two of them could just keep winning games.

"There's a tremendous amount of pressure on Saturday night for 'the decision,' " Murphy, the radio host, said of the lingering quarterback controversy. "A lot is on No. 7. And a lot is on the guy in the black sweatshirt and khakis."