It was all on the line, and it was the defensive line’s time.

Green Bay, leading the 49ers by a touchdown, faced third-and-8 with just over five minutes to play. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was gunning to convert a first down that could begin salting the snowy game away.

Arik Armstead had other ideas. So did 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans, who dialed up a safety blitz with the hopes of briefly discombobulating Green Bay’s offensive line.

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Confusion only lasted for a second, but Armstead has the burst to exploit even the smallest of openings. All 290 pounds of the defensive lineman ripped through the front. His 6-foot-7 strides corralled Rodgers, whose attempt to shuffle away was futile, a mere 2.6 seconds after the snap.

The sack was an excellent example of proactive coaching on Ryans’ part and an awesome display of athleticism from Armstead — all rolled into one destructive burst. It set up The Block, which came on the next play as the 49ers preyed on the Packers’ punt and scored the game-tying touchdown.

The 49ers’ furious endgame sequence was suddenly in full swing, and Armstead’s family went wild up above frigid Lambeau Field.

“We were in a heated suite, with Green Bay people,” Guss Armstead, Arik’s father, said in a phone interview this week. “That’s Arik, always thinking about others, he made sure we were taken care of. So we were with all these Packer people, going crazy.”

It was Armstead’s second sack of the game and third of this postseason, which the 49ers hope is only at its halfway point. Just like Armstead’s sack dance, which comes with a roar and a hearty rub of the belly, their team — and especially its D-line — seems hungry for more.

The next chance to eat comes in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game against the Rams, a team that the 49ers defeated just over two weeks ago on the fuel of five sacks and 14 QB hits. Armstead also delivered a huge chunk of that production in that one, racking up 2 1/2 sacks and hitting L.A. quarterback Matthew Stafford three times.

With six sacks this month, the 28-year-old lineman is on perhaps the most productive tear of his career. It’s extended into this string of elimination games, and that seems to be generating a newfound sense of outside appreciation for Armstead’s play.

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The lineman has long been a popular target for detractors, so his family has certainly appreciated the recent upturn in positive recognition.

“Sometimes, people don’t understand and see what’s going on in football,” said Guss, who works training professional basketball players (Arik played both football and basketball in college at Oregon). “Everybody gets caught up in sacks. In basketball, everybody is into 3-pointers, everybody is into scoring. But the guys that are doing all the work don’t get the credit.

“Arik has a basketball background, and he’s always been like that. It’s just something he has to deal with. He gets doubled by 350-pound guys and then someone makes a play, but no one gave him credit for that.”

Until now, since those sacks are rolling in just when the 49ers need them most.

To fully appreciate what Armstead is doing now, it’s necessary to understand the trajectory of his seven-year career. It certainly hasn’t been linear.

Previous 49ers general manager Trent Baalke took Armstead with the 17th pick in the 2015 draft. Armstead spent his first two seasons as a third-down pass-rushing specialist on a bad team, but a torn labrum ended his 2016 campaign. Then, in 2017, the current 49ers regime helmed by coach Kyle Shanahan and GM John Lynch implemented a 4-3 defensive scheme under new defensive coordinator Robert Saleh and asked Armstead to cut weight for a move to the speed-rushing LEO position — but his season again ended prematurely, this time with a broken hand.

In 2018, the 49ers took a beefed-up Armstead and experimented with him at several spots. He posted a good year, but an earnest breakout didn’t come for the first-rounder until D-line coach Kris Kocurek came aboard in 2019.

“I think Arik was penalized because he is so versatile,” Guss Armstead said. “So they weren’t able to figure out what to do with him. That’s why I really value the guys that came in, Saleh and Kris. They were able to get a read on the two things that Arik really does well.”

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Kocurek was quick to declare Armstead’s two strong suits: anchoring the strong-side defensive end position with stout run defense on base downs and working from an interior tackle alignment to pass rush against guards in nickel spots.

“I remember meeting with him on Day 1,” Armstead said of Kocurek during his breakout, 10-sack season in 2019. “He said, ‘I believe in you. You’re a dominant player. This year is going to be your best year yet. I truly believe that.’

“Everything he said has been consistent. He’s been pushing me to be better. Working hard in practice, cutting it loose and playing free. You play like that when you have a coach that believes in you and believes in your abilities.”

Armstead signed a lucrative five-year, $85 million contract extension shortly thereafter. The 49ers clearly valued him, and it appeared that his early-career struggles to earn a strong foothold in the court of public opinion had faded to the past.

But just two days after Armstead signed that deal, the 49ers traded defensive tackle DeForest Buckner to the Colts. This was jarring, perception-shattering news. Though the move was part of a complex salary-cap shuffle that the team deemed necessary for longer-term financial stability, critics characterized it differently.

They claimed the 49ers chose Armstead over Buckner. Those assertions, regardless of their accuracy, pressurized the subsequent 2020 season for Armstead.

The fact that Buckner logged 9 1/2 sacks and earned first-team All-Pro honors for playoff qualifier Indianapolis while Armstead managed only three sacks for the 6-10 49ers in 2020 made for poor optics. Matters further devolved early this season, hitting a nadir when Buckner delivered a sack on the final play of the Colts’ Week 7 win over the 49ers.

Armstead, meanwhile, had only one sack on the season at that point. The 49ers were 2-4. Detractors lambasted the front office. Many of them re-solidified their pre-2019 takes on Armstead, with “overpaid” replacing “draft bust” as the chief pejorative.

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For Armstead’s family, the onslaught was a callback to earlier days, when Armstead so often found himself in the crosshairs of criticism.

“I think that there were times that just because of his stature, people have always taken shots at him, and this goes back a long way,” Guss Armstead said. “Arik was 6-8, 300 pounds — he was literally that big in high school. People would say, ‘oh, he’s not that good, he’s just big.’

“And then moving to the NFL, that’s the kind of stuff that’s always been a part of it. Professional athletes, it’s very frustrating, so you have to try to separate yourself from it and remind yourself that the people who really make the decisions — John and Jed (York) and those people — I think they value Arik.

“We live in a negative world where everybody is always taking shots.”

Armstead has spoken of how he deals with some of the toxicity. He hasn’t been shy about occasionally firing back at critics on social media or even reposting denigrating talk about him that didn’t age well.

But Armstead has often repeated that, above all else, he’s intrinsically motivated. Family drives him. Armstead and his wife, Mindy, welcomed a baby girl last year. His first child is his central anchor point.

According to Guss, his son’s sense of ingrained drive stretches to childhood. He remembers Arik, even at a young age, waking up and insisting on joining dad’s early-morning training sessions for NBA players in Sacramento.

“I thought he’d want to sleep in,” Guss said. “But he wanted to go. So he saw Matt Barnes, Bobby Jackson and Mike Wilks, all these guys that I trained. He saw them every day as they trained.”

Wilks even lived at the Armstead’s house while he was training with Guss.

“So Arik actually got to see a pro guy in his house that was dialed into working hard and being humble,” Guss said. “So Mike was like Arik’s bonus brother. He got to see all of that. It makes it easier when you have that blueprint. You can see that this is possible.”

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Arik’s actual brother is Armond Armstead, who played defensive line at USC before playing one year for the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. Armond is three years older than Arik, was roughly the same size during his playing career (6-5, 305 pounds) and played a similar mix of D-line positions as his younger sibling does now.

“Armond showed Arik that he could do it,” Guss said. “And he took it and ran with it.”

As Armstead rose through the ranks, first at the Sacramento area’s Pleasant Grove High School and then in college at Oregon, Guss reminded him to stay grounded — especially in the event that he ever run into criticism that he deemed unfair.

“For us, it was always — that’s always going to happen to you,” Guss said. “Consider the critic, first of all. Because a lot of people have a lot of stuff to say, but they may not necessarily know what they’re talking about.

“You take the good with the bad. You get a lot of praise, you stay at one level, and you get a lot of the negativity, and you’ve gotta still stay at that level. And when you’re compensated well, people start taking shots at you for that — that’s all part of it.”

It’s certainly been a backdrop this season, but Armstead did manage to keep an even keel through 2021’s low point, and that made him a central point of the 49ers’ turnaround.

Following that Week 7 loss to Buckner and the Colts, during which Indianapolis rushed for 148 yards on 4.5 yards per carry, Ryans and Kocurek made a big adjustment. They moved Armstead to defensive tackle on more than just a situational rushing basis. He played inside for the majority of the game.

That shift to tackle paired Armstead with 49ers nose tackle D.J. Jones, and the two have since developed into perhaps the best interior run-stopping tandem in the league. Jones and Armstead finished the regular season ranked Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, of all defensive tackles in ESPN’s run-stop win rate.

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“He’s the most important piece on this team to me,” Jones said after the 49ers’ wild-card round win over Dallas. “Arik Armstead is a force. He can play outside, inside, 3-technique, 2i. He’s a Swiss Army knife, and I love it when he’s inside with me.”

Collectively, per EPA and DVOA numbers, the 49ers’ run defense has been the league’s best since Armstead’s move. The 49ers have allowed only 3.1 yards per carry over the past three games against potent Rams, Cowboys and Packers offenses, and that’s been the defense’s key ingredient toward earning pass-rushing opportunities.

In that way, Armstead has benefited through sack opportunities from the run-stopping that he’s helped provide.

“I think our run defense improved drastically because of the unselfish play by Arik Armstead,” Ryans said last week. “I think people forget we lost our starter in (Javon) Kinlaw early in the year, and we were trying to figure that out inside. When you want to play good run defense, you have to have two really good interior defensive linemen. And Arik unselfishly moving inside helped, and D.J. Jones has been outstanding all year.”

Armstead and Jones, teammates since the 49ers drafted the latter player in 2017, have become even closer friends this season after assuming the role of run-stopping pillars in the defense’s middle.

Jones, along with linebacker Fred Warner and Armstead’s family, was on hand to surprise Armstead and inform him that he was the 49ers’ Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee for the second straight season in December.

That honor came as a result of Armstead’s continually diligent community work in both his native Sacramento and the Bay Area. It shined a light on another aspect of Armstead’s unselfish nature, which the 49ers value greatly.

“That’s just my parents, growing up in my family,” Armond Armstead said in a phone interview this week. “There’s four of us. My mom and my dad made it work for us, being sacrificial. Arik just loves serving. It’s a big motivator for him. Our family cultivated a culture of unselfishness.”

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Armond has been particularly excited about the pairing of Arik’s 6-7 frame with Jones, who’s 6 feet and 305 pounds, since it reminds him of his own college playing days. At USC, he was paired with future NFL Pro Bowler Jurrell Casey — a 6-1, 305-pounder — on the inside.

“It creates a unique matchup ability,” Armond said. “And that’s what you want. When I played with Jurrell, we’d ask each other, ‘how’d you do that?’ Because he’s 6-foot. ‘How’d you get that leverage? I’m 6-5. How you doing that?’

“So when the 49ers have a combination of someone like D.J., with his acceleration and strength, and Arik, it’s tough. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Some guy who matches up with Arik might match up better with D.J. But when you’ve gotta go against both of them, then you switch ’em out, one time it’s D.J., one time it’s Nick (Bosa), one time it’s Arden (Key), it’s tough, man. It gives them unique matchup abilities.”

Those advantages, so many of them unlocked by Armstead’s athletic versatility, have been on increasingly clear display lately. While Armstead’s second sack at Green Bay was impressive due to his raw explosiveness, his first one — which also came on a critical third down and held the Packers to a field goal — showcased pure power.

Armstead drove straight through Green Bay right guard Lucas Patrick into Rodgers. That sight of such a tall D-lineman overpowering such a relatively compact guard made Armond smile, because he remembers how Arik developed the unique skill set that he’s now consistently showcasing.

“Arik has a natural gift of people-moving, and a lot of the movement skills go back to training basketball,” Armond said. “If you’re playing on the post, you can’t back a guy down standing straight up. You can’t box out for a rebound standing straight up. Long levers make strong levers, but if you’re not taking the right levers, you’re not using your length to your advantage and you’re not going to be able to create that push.”

That, of course, hasn’t been a problem for Arik Armstead. He’s unleashed the full potential of his physical gifts. Opposing run games are hitting brick walls as a result. Sacks are pouring in.

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And all that criticism that seemed to pervade the first several years of Armstead’s career, even if it might not have been fair? It seems far back in the rearview mirror now, both for Armstead and for his 49ers’ D-line, which enters this NFC Championship Game again surging as one of the league’s best fronts.

“(Kocurek’s) getting it out of them boys,” Armond said. “It felt like a lot of the year, they were still jelling. Guys would run into each other, but by the time they got to the end of the year, they were really jelling. Teammates were learning how to work together. Now, things are firing on all cylinders. They’re executing.”

And Armstead’s family, of course, is cheering.

“What can you say?” Armond said. “For Arik: keep going.”

(Top photo: Jeff Hanisch / USA Today)