If you are old enough to remember the Glory Years Packers, the answer to the question of who was the Packers’ announcer those years might be Ray Scott, from CBS-TV.
Unless you missed their home games on TV because you lived near Green Bay or Milwaukee in the old NFL blackout days, in which case the answer might be radio announcer Ted Moore:
And if you’re not old enough to remember Moore, surely you remember Jim Irwin:
Before Moore, who started announcing Packers games in 1960, there was Mike Walden, who announced Badger, Packer and, on TV, Milwaukee Braves games. One of Walden’s games was the 1963 Rose Bowl, which he announced on the NBC radio broadcast with USC announcer Tom Kelly:
Apparently Walden liked southern California, because he then left Wisconsin and moved to California, replacing Kelly on radio while Kelly moved to TV.
USC’s broadcaster Mike Walden was in enemy territory when the Trojans’ basketball team finally handed UCLA its first loss at Pauley Pavilion in 1969. When it was over, Walden climbed atop the announcer’s table and yelled, “The Trojans win! The Trojans win! The Trojans win!” much like the legendary Harry Caray.
So Walden lost a few friends several years later when he took a job across town and became the only person to serve as the broadcast voice for both USC and UCLA.
“But Mike Walden was a journalist first, and did not want to be known as a homer,” his son, Gregory Walden, reminisced in an email.
Walden, a Southern California Sports Broadcasters Hall of Fame member best known for his coverage of the Trojans and Bruins, and for his loud sport coats, died Sunday at his home in Tarzana from complications related to a stroke, his son said Thursday. He was 89.
The interesting thing about the aforementioned Walden, Kelly (who died in June), Enberg, Miller and longtime Los Angeles Lakers announcer Chick Hearn is that they all grew up in the Midwest. Kelly’s first radio job was in Janesville, and though he started broadcasting for USC in 1962, he returned to Illinois for years to broadcast the Illinois state boys basketball tournament. Miller was one of the two UW hockey radio announcers (two stations broadcasted games until Clear Channel purchased both stations). Enberg is from Michigan, graduated from Central Michigan University, and earned a Ph.D. at Indiana while announcing its games before he too headed west. (Hmmm … do I know anyone who grew up in Wisconsin and then headed to California …) Hearn, who grew up in Illinois, preceded Kelly (for one season) at USC, and once worked with Kelly on the Illinois state tournament.
The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay starts writing about phobias, then says …
Me? I’m terrified of Aaron Rodgers.
Seriously. Who isn’t scared of Rodgers at this point? Besides exuberant Green Bay Packers cheeseheads, that is. The most frightening thing left in these NFL playoffs isn’t the Atlanta Falcons or the Pittsburgh Steelers or even Grumpy Bill Belichick’s New England Patriot Dance Machine, but a scruffy, solitary 33-year-old quarterback.
Rodgers. If my team is alive, I don’t want any part of him.
Consider Sunday’s thrilling Green Bay victory over Dallas. This thing was setting up to be a Cowboys comeback for the ages: the Packers racing to a 21-3 early lead, and then Dallas rallying to tie it late, led by rookie quarterback Dak Prescott.
When Rodgers took to the field deep in Packers territory in the closing minute, he noticed what he had left to work with:
35 seconds.
“There’s too much time left on the clock,” Rodgers said later.
Too much time!
Here a brief list of things I cannot do in 35 seconds or less:
1. Put on both shoes.
2. Find my keys.
3. Log into my company email.
4. Decide if I want hash browns (which is weird, because I always want hash browns.)
5. Dress my kids for a snowstorm (I also cannot do this in 35 years or less.)
But 35 seconds is plenty enough for Rodgers to help his team win a football game, as it turns out. Even after a crushing Dallas sack (how did Rodgers not fumble?) left Green Bay with a third-and-20 from its own 32. It was enough time for a rolling Rodgers to locate tight end Jared Cook, who brilliantly tiptoed on the sideline’s edge and pulled in a 36-yard completion. It was enough for Mason Crosby—and let’s hear it for Mason Crosby, a historic performance, kicker man—to come on for 51-yard field goal, and that was that.
Another Aaron Rodgers Green Bay epic in the book.At this point, it’s absurd, expected. When you play Rodgers, you don’t really play him. You’re at his mercy. I don’t want to use some cliché like “standard rules of space and time don’t apply” but it’s true: standard rules of space and time do not apply. If you give him a few seconds, he’s good. If you give him one play from his own side of the field, he’s good.
Which leads us to the Hail Marys. Rodgers is to Hail Marys what Steph Curry is to midcourt 3-pointers. It’s a fluky thing for everyone else. For them, not so much.
Ask yourself: If it’s your team, do you want to watch Aaron Rodgers heave a Hail Mary in the closing seconds of the half?
I don’t need an answer, because I know it. If you’re on the other sideline, a Rodgers Hail Mary is absolutely terrifying. Ask the New York Giants.
The Packers are a quirky kind of headache. They are probably the most imperfect team left in the NFL postseason. They have a depleted roster, especially on defense. After that early deficit, Dallas was able to move the ball rather easily on both the ground and in the air. Rodgers is without his best receiver, Jordy Nelson, who suffered broken ribs against the Giants in the Wild-Card round (it isn’t clear if Nelson will be back for the NFC title game.)
Green Bay’s flaws aren’t news. The Packers began their 2016 season 4-6, on the outside of the playoff picture, with chatter swirling about head coach Mike McCarthy’s job status and Rodgers’s diminished effectiveness. He isn’t the same, was the prevailing criticism.
That’s when Rodgers suggested that the Packers might be able to “run the table,” win their final six games and get a playoff spot. Which is a rather brash thing to predict. And it’s exactly what Green Bay did.
I’m assuming Atlanta was happy the Packers won Sunday—it means another home game for them, a championship closer for the Georgia Dome. The Falcons were impressive in handling Seattle on Saturday.
And yet this also means facing Rodgers in a climate-controlled environment. I always assume that when great quarterbacks from harsh-weather outdoor stadium teams get to domes, they turn into giddy free-range chickens. They think: This is amazing! I can’t believe people get to play here! I can feel my fingers!
It certainly felt that way for much of Sunday’s game in AT&T Stadium. It will probably feel that way for portions of next Sunday’s. Packers fans can’t wait. Aaron Rodgers is on the loose. The rest of us should be hiding behind the couch.
5:00 left, fourth quarter: Green Bay 28, Dallas 20. Cowboys driving, but even if the kid quarterback, Dak Prescott, can score here, he’ll still need a two-point conversion to tie, and have a prayer of extending the game.
4:17 left: The kid squeezes a seven-yard TD pass into Dez Bryant on a short post route. The kid executes a quarterback draw well, but Packers linebacker Jake Ryan corrals him around the 1. Prescott’s will, and his body, barrel across the goal line. Prescott has brought Dallas all the way back from a 21-3 deficit against the great Aaron Rodgers. Two facts here. One: No rookie quarterback has thrown three touchdown passes in a playoff game in the past 50 years, and now Prescott has. Two: Prescott’s ridiculously good. Tie, 28-28.
2:00 left: Rodgers throws an ill-advised pick (that is the last time in this column you will read “Ill-advised” and “Rodgers” in the same sentence) to Dallas safety Jeff Heath … but wait. Rookie corner Anthony Brown gets called for pass interference for hooking Ty Montgomery early in his route. Iffy call, but watching it six more times Tuesday, it’s the right one. Brown hooked him and interfered with his route. Jason Garrett doesn’t like the call. Why would he?
1:33 left: Mason Crosby ambles onto the field to try the longest playoff field goal of his career–56 yards. He’s made 21 straight playoff field goal. His last miss: a 50-yarder he shtoinked off the left upright six years ago to the day in Atlanta. He boots a low, half-knuckleball liner that’s eight feet above the crossbar, just inside the right upright. Rodgers shows more glee on the sidelines than he ever shows after a TD pass, punching the air violently. Green Bay, 31-28.
0:49 left: Who exactly is the rookie here? Prescott to Terrence Williams for 24 up the gut. Prescott on a cross to Jason Witten for 11. First down, Packer 40. And then Prescott does something that looks stupid in the moments after the game. He spikes the ball. Odd, because the Cowboys have one timeout left, an incredibly reliable kicker (Dan Bailey), and they’re five to seven yards from a low-risk field goal in the weatherless stadium. If they’re playing for the tie and overtime, they should let the clock run. If they’re playing to win it right here, they’ll need that down they just gave away. Sure enough, Prescott throws a seven-yard out to Cole Beasley … clock stops … and Nick Perry bats down a pass at the line … clock stops … and it’s fourth down. What have the Cowboys done? Have they left enough time for Rodgers to score?
0:35 left: Bailey, with the easiest-looking 52-yard field goal in world history. Rodgers confers with Randall Cobb on the Green Bay sideline. I am guessing he might have said, “Can you believe they spiked it and left us enough time to win?” Tie, 31-31.
0:21 left: There’s going to be parade down the center of the Saginaw Valley (Mich.) State campus for Jeff Heath after the season. The feisty safety bursts around left tackle on a blitz and nails Rodgers for a 10-yard loss, back to the Green Bay 32. Watching at home in Columbus, Ohio, a good pal of Rodgers’, A.J. Hawk, is shocked, like the rest of America, that Rodgers has the ball in his right hand, ready to throw, and doesn’t feel the rush at all. You can see it in his eyes on the replay. He had no idea anyone was coming. And boom! Heath levels him. “Man, how’d he hold onto that ball?” Hawk wondered Tuesday, when I interviewed him for The MMQB Podcast With Peter King. “When that happened and he held onto the ball, I said to my wife, ‘He’s going to make a deep throw to win it, right now.’” On replay, it’s more amazing. Heath’s sacking arm is within eight or 10 inches of the ball but never could find the target to punch out. But it’s moot anyway. Rodgers needs 33 yards to get into field position and has maybe two plays to do it. But …
0:18 left: The act of the sack isn’t even done, but Rodgers, after a total clock-cleaning and his head bouncing back and forth like a crash-test dummy’s, pirouettes up quickly and signals for Green Bay’s second timeout. There’s some presence of mind.
0:12 left: Sideline route to Cook. Excellent coverage by Dallas’ Byron Jones, who sticks his arm in to bat a perfect pass away. Incomplete.
Third-and-20, Green Bay 32. How many 35-yard completions against seven DBs you got on that playsheet, Mike McCarthy? Shotgun snap. Ty Montgomery as a sidecar. Three Cowboys rush.
0:11 left: Rodgers spins completely around to face the left sideline and begins a loop.
0:10 left: Rodgers takes his first look downfield. Guard Lane Taylor breaks away from the mosh pit at the lane to protect Rodgers, and here comes the only rusher with a chance, linebacker Justin Durant.
0:09 left: Taylor engages Durant, who tries to use his quickness to get around the guard. Nothing doing. Rodgers stops. He bounces once, looking downfield.
0:08 left: Cobb’s open, slightly, just past midfield, but not deep enough. Useless throw. Rodgers pumps and recoils, and then jogs three more steps to his left. At home watching in Minnesota is Rich Gannon, who knows Rodgers well. “This is the most difficult throw for a right-handed quarterback,” Gannon told me on the podcast Tuesday. “Going to his left, throwing right-handed.”
0:07 left: Rodgers, three yards from the left sideline, now has Durant coming into his vision. But here’s the important thing: Taylor did a terrific job slowing Durant long enough for Rodgers to release it. Rodgers reaches back while still moving left slightly, never stopping to set up, and he rears back to throw, and the ball leaves his hand. He’s got a prayer to hit Jared Cook 38 yards away. Hey, it’s probably overtime. Take a shot.
0:06 left: “I can make that throw 15, 18 yards,” Gannon said. This Rodgers throw passes midfield with juice on it. A line drive.
0:05 left: Cook, who took a long, looping route to the left sideline from the right tight end spot, sees the ball coming toward him. “I used to watch him on the flights back home when I was on the Rams,” Cook said, “and I’d think, ‘He’s a beast.’ Now I see him make these passes every day.” Like this one. Here it comes, and Cook knows he has to be mindful of his feet. Stay inbounds, feet.
0:04 left: Ball hits hands. Cook falling out of bounds. Feet close to stripe. Ball secured. Cook on ground. Gannon is wowed at home in Minnesota. “He put it in a 12-inch box!” Gannon says, awestruck.
0:03 left: Cook on ground. Out at the 33. Head linesman Jeff Bergman, 15 yards behind the play, immediately signals no catch. “Pass is incomplete, out of bounds,” Joe Buck says on TV. Side judge Rob Vernatchi, 11 yards in front of the play, staring at Cook’s feet, sprints toward the play, signaling it was a catch. Bergman and Vernatchi converge at the 32. Bergman slaps Vernatchi on the rear end, as if to say, “You had it. Good call.” Which it was. Perfect, decisive call by Vernatchi.
Troy Aikman in the booth: “Unbelieva–
Buck: “Unbelievable!”
Two minutes and 40 seconds later, ref Tony Corrente has the ruling.
Corrente: “After review, the ruling on the field of a completed pass is confirmed.”
0:00 left: Crosby, from 51 yards for the win, good! But wait, Dallas timeout. He has to do it again.
0:00 left: Crosby, from 51 yards for the win … jussssst inside the left upright. Good. Green Bay, 34-31.
Three 50-yard field goals in the last two minutes of a game has never happened. “Really it was four,” radio host Chris Russo said Tuesday. “He made the other one and Garrett called time.” Never mind Rodgers: How about the icy kickers?
But that throw.
“To fit that ball in there,” Gannon said. “Incredible.”
Rodgers is breathless, seemingly, when Erin Andrews gets him on the field. “I mean, it’s just kind of schoolyard at the time,” Rodgers tells him. And as our Robert Klemko tweeted after the game, Cobb told him that Rodgers made up each receiver’s pattern in the huddle before the play. That really makes the whole story better.
The world moves so fast. Slow it down this morning, and appreciate one of the best games we’ll ever see.
Rodgers has had an unbelievable postseason. Pick your own favorite:
Gay is unfortunately correct that the Packers might be the worst team left due to their somewhat porous defense thanks to all the defensive backfield injuries and their sort-of adequate running game. (But the worst of four is still better than the remaining 28 teams, including the previously number-one-seeded Cowboys.) Not having Jordy Nelson Sunday and possibly not having Davante Adams will make things even more difficult.
If you thought the Packer defense was tested by the Cowboys, consider that the Falcons were the top scoring team in the NFL this regular season, ahead of fourth-place Green Bay. On the other hand, if you think the Packers’ defense wasn’t very good this season (21st in scoring), the Falcons’ defense was worse (27th in scoring). Based on that betting the over in an over–under bet (which as of now is 61.5) seems appropriate. (For comparison purposes, the Cowboys were fifth in scoring offense and scoring defense.)
This will be the third straight week the Packers will play in the postseason someone they played in the regular season. They looked awful and lost to Dallas 27–16 (and the game wasn’t that close), and then two weeks later lost to Atlanta 33–32 on a touchdown with 31 seconds left. The Packers lost three more games after that, and haven’t lost since then.
This looks eerily similar to the 2010–11 postseason (which included a surprisingly large win over Atlanta), but history generally doesn’t repeat itself, and one feels like the Packers’ magic can’t continue. The NFL would love a Patriots–Packers Super Bowl, but I don’t think the Falcons are going to cooperate.
Readers may have noticed I didn’t write much about the Packers–Cowboys NFC divisional playoff game before Sunday, and that’s because I thought the Packers didn’t have much chance of winning it.
I did not see the Cowboys going to the Super Bowl, because at some point a rookie quarterback and rookie running back hit a playoff wall. I was right about that, though I thought they’d lose in the NFC championship, not one week earlier.
Well, on this score I’m happy to be wrong. Thanks to an amazing catch by tight end Jared Cook …
… Mason Crosby’s 107 yards of fourth-quarter field goals sent the Cowboys to wherever they go for the offseason, 34–31, delighting all non-fans of Jerry Jones:
… along with the idiot sportsyakker Skip Bayless, who is more in the tank for the Cowboys than the Washington press corps was in the tank for Barack Obama. Bayless tweeted after the game:
More I see winning FG, more I see a very weird thing: It hooked hard left, then straightened out. Obviously no wind. Like meant to be.
Reportedly the Packers played the Cowboys’ “anthem,” Wiz Khalifa’s “We Dem Boys,” in the locker room afterward:
The Dallas Morning News’ Jon Maschota asks and answers:
1. What happened on the opening drive?
The Cowboys were moving the ball, then threw on third and 2 and settled for a 50-yard Dan Bailey field goal. Why didn’t they run Ezekiel Elliott? Instead, Dak Prescott threw to a double-covered Dez Bryant. After that pass fell incomplete, why not run Zeke on fourth-and-2? Bailey gave the Cowboys the early 3-0 lead but Dallas basically played catch up from there on out. Yes, it was only the first possession. But I think it went a long way in setting the tone for the next three quarters. …
3. Misplaced blame
Some will blame the Cowboys going nearly a month without playing a meaningful game. I don’t think that was the reason for Sunday’s final score. They entered the fourth quarter down 28-13 and were within a few seconds of forcing OT. Rust wasn’t the reason for the loss, it was just great QB play by the opposing QB. No doubt, this is a disappointing end to a 13-3 season. They were talented enough to go to the Super Bowl. They didn’t. But a young QB, RB and O-line make this result feel much different than the one two years ago in Green Bay. …
5. Aaron Rodgers is unreal
I don’t know if anyone has ever played the quarterback position at a higher level than Aaron Rodgers played it for most of Sunday afternoon. He was nothing like the player the Cowboys saw in Week 6. He was basically flawless. Without Rodgers, I don’t know if the Packers would win more than five or six games. With him, they have a chance to win the Super Bowl.
As the Cowboys found out Sunday at JerryWorld, the road to the Super Bowl doesn’t necessarily go through Corsicana, Buffalo and Huntsville.
Passes through Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan and probably Tom Brady, as usual.
And as Rodgers spectacularly demonstrated in a 34-31 win before 93,396 fans who’d practically lifted the lid on the joint, that’s a more dangerous passage for this Cowboys defense, in particular. And no Buc-ee’s to break it up, either.
Forget the Rodgers who looked lost in the Cowboys’ 30-16 win at Lambeau back in October. This was vintage Rodgers, and the Cowboys couldn’t stop him early or late.
No sooner had Dak Prescott led the Cowboys on an improbable game-tying drive, Rodgers answered.
Twice.
No Jordy Nelson? No problem. No Davante Adams? Ditto.
Rodgers went into the game without Nelson, his leading receiver. And he lost Adams on the Packers’ next-to-last drive.
But an unbelievable throw-and-catch from Rodgers to tight end Jared Cook as the latter was going out of bounds set up Mason Crosby’s 51-yard field goal as time expired.
You could argue that the Cowboys dug themselves a hole too deep in the first half, giving up three touchdowns to the Packers. The Cowboys’ defense couldn’t generate any pressure with a four-man front, and Rodgers picked the Cowboys apart.
Even when Rod Marinelli dialed up more blitzes in the second half, it still wasn’t enough with the game on the line.
Because with the game on the line, Rodgers is as good as they come. And that’s the problem getting to the Super Bowl in Houston. …
Dak showed signs late that he could go toe-to-toe with Rodgers, but that wasn’t the problem. The Cowboys’ offense answered. The defense didn’t.
Not against a quarterback on the level of Rodgers, which is what you get this time of year.
Troy Aikman is certainly a popular guy in Cowboys country, but apparently he and Fox broadcast partner Joe Buck aren’t as well loved out in Green Bay.
As of noon Wednesday, more than 16,000 people have signed a Change.org petition seeking to ban the Aikman-Buck duo from calling Packers games from the booth.
“This is a petition to get Joe Buck and Troy Aikman banned from announcing/commentating on the Green Bay Packers,” according to the petition’s page.
“On behalf of the Green Bay Packers fans across the world, we would like action taken to prohibit them from giving their constant negative input about our team. We are sick of the biased announcing always coming from them.”
On Thursday morning, Aikman broached the topic in an interview with The Musers on The Ticket (96.7 FM/1030 AM), saying “there’s a long line they’ve got to get in to try to keep us from calling games.”
He noted that the Packers have tried this before, as well as Seattle fans a few years back.
“I don’t know if there’s Cowboys fan petitions, but I get it from Cowboys fans too, saying that I’m against their team,” Aikman said.
In taking the criticism, Aikman said he relies on advice he heard from another man who spent quite a bit of time in the NFL booth.
“I remember what Pat Summerall years ago told me back when I was still playing,” Aikman said. “People didn’t have social media, they would write fan mail. And he said, ‘Hey as long as I’m getting fan mail — hate mail I guess you could say — from both sides, then I feel like I’m doing my job. But I think there’s some truth in that.’”
Many of the petition’s signees claim that the announcing duo are “too negative.” Other signees show off their failure to grasp basic grammar by calling them “bias” when the proper adjective is “biased.”
Aikman said he’s a bit confused by that suggestion.
“It is pretty remarkable, though, especially for Packers fans,” he told The Ticket. “We’ve had their games in recent weeks and they’ve played great, we’ve talked about how great they’ve been playing and how great Aaron Rodgers has been. So it’s a little bit confusing, but it is what it is.”
“I could not care less about that. I know Joe, he does get a little bit bothered by it. He’s a little sensitive when he hears that people don’t want us to broadcast their games.”
There is no requirement for action to be taken based on Change.org petitions, especially not for a private company like Fox. But it has become a popular venue for airing grievances online and seeking out others who agree with you.
“Last I’ve heard, we will be there on Sunday, and we’ll be calling the game and we’ll try to do the best job we can,” Aikman said.
Buck and Aikman, or at least one of them, have done a lot of Packers games, including …
Buck and Aikman called the Packers’ last five games of the 2010 season, including Super Bowl XLV. They’ve also done the Packers’ home playoff loss to Minnesota, the Packers’ home playoff losses to the Giants, the Packers’ overtime playoff loss to Seattle, and the infamous 4th-and-26 game, among others. This is more likely the result of Packer fans not wanting to hear bad news, which could be anything complimentary of the opponent.
People have theories on why Buck and Aikman are so despised, or just Buck and not Aikman, or just Aikman and not Buck. (Or Cris Collinsworth, but let’s not go there). Most petition signers offer little in the way of specifics, and many seem to type the wrong first letter when spelling Buck.
Some, while specific, were “heads I win, tails you lose” head-scratchers. One signer said, “Joe Buck never played a down of football and thinks he’s an expert … and Troy is just another ex jock that tries to sound important.”
But there were some thoughtful signers.
Marcia Van Gorden, a grandmother and Packers fan living in Minneapolis, gave an appropriately measured (i.e. grandmotherly) appraisal.
“Maybe I’m being sensitive, but it seems that in comparison to most other announcers, these two don’t seem to provide equitable focus on both teams. That’s in terms of the tone and what’s verbally expressed. An announcer may have played for a particular team, but when it comes to his or her announcing job, that needs to be set aside,” she said.
Don Tremby of Racine knows why “those two guys are lousy. (Last) Sunday’s game, I could tell specifically there was action going on and these guys were up there in the booth chattering about everything they were interested in instead of what was going on in this game. (Aikman) should be put in the bathroom and lock the doors.”
Gussert traces it to when they started doing games and Aikman was, he thinks, more negative.
“When there was a discretionary play-call by the coach or a referee’s call, he would always side against the Packers,” he said. “I would suspect someone (at the network) talked to him about it.”
The hatred is not universal.
“Some Packer fans seem to have a problem with Troy Aikman, but I am not sure why,” said Gary Getzin of Wausau. “Maybe it goes back to the Cowboys in the ’90s, when they beat Green Bay most of the time. Aikman’s analysis as a former quarterback is usually pretty interesting to me. Joe Buck seems to be on top of things and meshes well with him.”
Matthew Faulkner, a Packers fan in Milford, Del., agreed, preferring them to the other No. 1 network announcing teams.
“You know it’s a big game when they are calling it. As an analyst, I appreciate Aikman’s knowledge and experience — you always learn something whether it be about a particular play or scheme,” he said. “You won’t find a better play-by-play man than Buck in my opinion.”
In baseball, the only thing Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians fans could agree on was that Buck liked the other team better. And there’s this tweet from @LionsMemes: “Can Joe Buck shut up about the Packers winning the NFC North, or can’t he resist because he loves them so much?”
Granted, it was on a page called “Shut up Joe Buck,” which guaranteed, shall we say, a certain kind of response.
At least one Dallas fan signed the petition to have Buck and (gasp) Aikman taken off this week’s broadcast because they are biased (gasp, gasp) against the Cowboys.
Such profound hatred requires a professional appraisal. We offer two.
Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University, suggested that if fans watched the game alone, they might come away with a different impression. When people are watching the game in groups, they tend to cheer and holler and engage with one another when their team does well, but pay more attention to announcers when things aren’t going their way. As a result, they only hear the bad things about their team, or the good things about the other team, which is much the same thing.
“If they are doing their job, they are for the most part trying to be basically, usually objective,” he said. “Which means half of what they say is going to be objected to by the supporters of either team.”
Buck addressed being reviled by fans of just about every team when he talked to StewPod on Yahoo Sports and in an Esquire interview, both in October before the World Series.
“It’s kind of the world I live in,” he said on the podcast. “Baseball fans in particular are used to hearing their hometown guys and the team announcers go all summer, and then we show up. The deck is kind of stacked against you. I have to play it down the middle.”
Aikman defended himself Thursday to the Dallas Morning News. “I’m surprised they only came up with 25,000,” he joked about the petition’s signatures goal, before claiming the same level of disinterested interest in the game versus the teams.
“If you objectively and rationally look at the job these two do, each one has their own issues,” Thompson said. “Aikman comes not totally prepared, but when it comes to strictly football, he’s good. There might be some people that Joe Buck just rubs the wrong way. That seems to attach itself to Joe Buck.”
And let’s face it, we’re in an age when social media has an out-of-proportion effect. In other words, when people are of a mind to complain, they like to find other liked-minded complainers to commiserate with. Hello Twitter. Howdy Facebook.
“You can have these conversations turn into a critical mass within hours,” Thompson said.
Ryan Martin, psychology chair at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, specializes in studying anger and what to do about it. He said all that social media sharing probably is not healthy.
“That kind of venting usually gets people more worked up than it does help,” Martin said. “The more you invest personally in the outcome of a game, and the more you build your life up around it, the more angry you’re going to get when things don’t go your way.”
Martin, by the way, grew up a Vikings fan, and was convinced Buck loved the Packers.
USA Today ranked the top NFL announcers one year ago, and came up with …
4. JOE BUCK, FOX …
Disclosure, coming up with No. 1 and No. 2 and No. 9 and No. 10 were simple. Filling in the rest was next-to-impossible. Get me on a different day and maybe Buck is No. 3. Heck, maybe even Tirico is No. 2. The next guy on our list could be up there too. But today, we get Buck at No. 4, which feels about right. He got a lot of flak early in his NFL career for being too lifeless on the call — his lack of enthusiasm on the David Tyree catch became infamous — and over-talkative. He’s improved greatly at both. Here’s what he told FTW about his football strategy earlier this year:
If you’re well-read and you know what the storylines are, I think you can bounce around. You set up the play, you set up the players doing the play, then you get out of the way. This is TV. People are seeing the handoff to Rashad Jennings. Then you pick it up on the backside. Who made the tackle or who made the catch? Football is a more cut and dry.
It sounded like he didn’t have that mentality early on. Now he’s on top of calls, he always gets down-and-distance right, knows when to yell and knows when to flip on the cough button. (If it seems like I’m harping on those last three, it’s because it’s all anyone should ever look for in a football announcer.) …
8. TROY AIKMAN, FOX …
Here’s where we start our next level of announcers, fascinatingly the color men for three of the four broadcast network — two ex-quarterbacks and one ex-coach. Why is Aikman eighth instead of lower? Because he’s the easiest to ignore. The next insight Aikman gives to a game will be one of the first. He’s content to let the replay dictate what he says and where he goes with it. But Aikman is inoffensive enough that he rarely detracts from a game, except when he’s wishy-washy on replays (take a drink every time Troy says, “well, Joe, I’m not sure” and you’ll be on the floor by halftime). The worst you can say about Aikman is that he’s a non-factor.
Gene Mueller, who works for the Packers’ flagship radio station, commits an act possibly against his own professional interests:
Green Bay football fans are touted as among the best in the game: endlessly loyal, savvy and smart. …
Why is it then, that this gaggle that bleeds green and gold, that pays hundreds of dollars so they can frame a worthless piece of paper in a man-cave (I’m one of ’em), that can recite the name of every coach back to the founder by heart have its collective undies in a bundle about … television announcers?
Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are working a lot of Packers games these days on Fox–that’s what happens when your team is really good. The network assigns you their top crew. Yet some in Titletown have worked themselves in a froth about the two, claiming they’re biased against Green Bay. One chucklehead is going so far as to launch a petition drive to have them yanked from Packers telecasts.
Puh-leez.
We seem to slog through these same smelly waters each year around this time as Green Bay is advancing in the postseason. It was just two years ago this month that Buck took to the pages of the Journal/Sentinel to affirm his respect for franchise. Buck told columnist Gary D’Amato the origin may be the guilt-by-association that comes with being alongside former Cowboy Troy Aikman, renowned 1990’s Packers-slayer. Three times, Green Bay went to Dallas in the Jimmy Johnson era to fluff it’s playoff progress. Three times, Aikman and crew sent them home for the winter. “it’s just the nature of the business,” Aikman told D’Amato. “It’s part of the job. … they want you to be biased toward their team.” Buck’s dad, Jack, worked the Ice Bowl for CBS so the offspring’s Green Bay chops run deep. “In the NFL there’s Green Bay and then there’s everywhere else,” he told J/S. “It’s just rare. It’s an honor to be there.”
We live in a time of “fake news”, of people believing what they want to believe and reading only that which supports their suppositions, facts be damned. Truth is, Aikman and Buck have no anti-Packers bias, and the haters have yet to present the smoking gun that proves a slant. None. There’s nothing in it for the duo to take a side, to pick a fight, to emit even the slightest bit of a bias. They’re in the league up to their elbows every week, needing to talk to coaches, players and front-office types. If anything, the networks–not just Fox–are too quick to anoint the next super-star, to make irrational comparisons between a hot rookie four games into a pro career and a legend with his retired number on a stadium wall. Or, to ask the hard questions about a sport that is having a hard time dealing with players who end up on police blotters or who die way too young from the hits they’ve absorbed over a career.
Are Aikman and Buck critical of Green Bay when the Packers are playing poorly? Certainly. That’s their job. Fun fact: we here at Radio City get accused occasionally of being too soft on the Packers in tough times, the thought being that the front office keeps an editorial boot on our collective necks since we’re “The Flagship Station”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Listen to Wayne Larrivee and Larry McCarren, who call it like it is no matter what. And, having worked the network pre-game for a season, I can honestly say that NO ONE in local programming or in the Packers front office EVER told me what to say. The only edict: always refer to the team in the plural, as in “Packers”. Thus, in the team’s eyes, you aren’t a “Packer fan”. You’re a “Green Bay Packers fan.”
Does anyone question the loyalty–or the pigskin acumen–of the local fan base that booed the Packers offense and Aaron Rodgers during the regular season loss to the Cowboys back in October? Or the legion of sports talk radio listeners/self-appointed GM’s who wanted everyone fired and Green Bay’s city charter revoked amid the four game slide that left the Packers 4-6? What then of those loyal season ticket holders took a pass on playoff tickets when the offer to buy came around at the height of the slide? Enough to give thousands who’d never get inside Lambeau a chance to buy in for Sunday’s win over the Giants, thank you very much. How about the folks who’ve owned seats since Lisle Blackbourn yet eagerly sell their tickets at huge profits, handing someone swaddled in purple and gold a prime spot at the Lambeau 50 yard line?
You can’t spell “fanatic” without “fan”. Our love knows no boundaries, and a lot of us think we always know more than the executives/coaches/players who’ve worked the sport all of their lives. We pay for our seat, buy our schwag, invest our emotions and think that gives us the right to spout off. Fine. These traits aren’t unique to Packers fans.
What IS ours, and ours alone, is the respect the rest of NFL fandom seems to have for us: the way we honor our past, embrace our present, anticipate our future. While other franchises can’t sell all of their seats Green Bay’s season ticket waiting list stretches from DePere to Waldo–single spaced, I might add. Other cities think we’re smarter than the average NFL bear, loyal to the end and wise to the ways of the oddly-shaped ball.
So why would some of us diminish our cred with such a ridiculous, petty, baseless fight? A good fan should be more concerned with Jordy’s ribs, the sporadic run game, the banged-up secondary and the need to stop a Dallas ground attack that shredded the Pack’s defense that first time around.
THAT’S what a solid, head-in-the-game Packers fan is thinking about as Sunday approaches, not the men who’ll be describing the game for a national TV audience, two guys who are convicted of nothing but trying to do an occasionally glamorous job rendered thankless by a few who hear what they want to hear while disregarding the rest.
You’re smarter than that, Packers fans. And the Rhodes Scholars among us will turn down the TV volume and let Wayne and Larry describe what we hope is another Green Bay win Sunday night.
The other option — which won’t happen before Sunday and probably won’t happen at all — is for the networks to use available technology to allow fans of each participating team their own announcer in the much-lower-tech 1960s. (And as CBS and Turner have done in three broadcasts of the NCAA Final Four, the second two featuring announcers for each team.) If you want Packer-oriented announcers, Fox would have to hire Kevin Harlan from CBS and Jon Gruden from ESPN. (Gruden was a Packer assistant before he was Tampa Bay’s coach, but Fox can use its John Lynch for Bucs games.)
The Packers ended their two-postseason-game losing streak to the New York Giants yesterday, 38–13, by playing one great half and three plays:
The New York media is unparalleled in objective, impartial, dispassionate analysis of the home team’s season’s conclusion, as shown by front and sports pages:
The New York Post’s evisceration of the Giants starts with Mark Cannizzaro‘s obligatory reference to the mid-week player trip to Miami:
Yacht’s all, Giants.
Their season of such progress and promise sank like a stone in a stunning 38-13 NFC wild-card loss to the Packers on Sunday night at Lambeau Field six days after four of their receivers partied in a well-publicized bender in Miami with Justin Bieber and other celebs.
To exacerbate matters, the receivers, led by star Odell Beckham Jr., came up smaller than small. Beckham caught only four passes for 28 yards on 11 targets and — worse yet — he had three key drops, a potential TD in the second quarter and two others on third-down conversions.
If you bet Tavarres King as the Giants leading receiver with three catches for 78 yards and a touchdown, you won a lot of money.
As bad as Beckham was in the biggest game of his career, the Giants first playoff appearance in five years, the Giants really were done in by a Hail Mary at the end of the first half.
Honest.
Yes, the Giants had seen this movie before.
But five years ago, they were the stars of the show. They were the ones basking in the glow of a euphoric happy ending. They were the ones moving on to an even better place and eventually the Super Bowl.
In an utterly uncanny occurrence, the climactic moment of both the 2012 show and the one that played out Sunday night took place at the same time of the game in the same end zone of the same stadium.
It came via the Hail Mary pass.
This time, though, the Packers were the stars of the show, moving on to play the Cowboys in Sunday’s divisional round in Dallas.
Five years ago in a divisional playoff game between the Giants and Packers, it was Eli Manning connecting with Hakeem Nicks on a 37-yard Hail Mary on the final play of the half to give the Giants a 20-10 lead in a game they’d go on to win 37-20 en route to the Super Bowl.
This time, it was Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Randall Cobb crushing the wills of the Giants defense, with Rodgers launching a Hail Mary into the frigid Green Bay night sky as the Packers’ faithful watched it land into the arms of Cobb with no time remaining for a stunning 14-6 Green Bay lead at the half.
It was the second of four touchdown passes by Rodgers, who completed 25-of-40 for 362 yards.
On the play, Cobb got away with a push-off on Giants safety Leon Hall just before he leaped into the air and caught the ball in the back of the end zone with Landon Collins, Eli Apple, Keenan Robinson among others around the play.
The play capped a demoralizing final few minutes of a first half the Giants defense had mostly dominated.
The Giants’ worst sin of the half — other than yielding the killer Hail Mary — was trying to beat Rodgers with field goals.
When the Packers took possession of the ball from the Giants’ 38-yard line with 3:45 remaining in the half, they’d produced a total of 29 yards of offense in the game.
On the first play of that series, Rodgers connected with receiver Davante Adams on a 31-yard pass play over the head of Apple, the Giants rookie cornerback, to the Giants 7-yard line.
So in one play, the Packers outgained their previous output by 2 yards.
Two plays later, Rodgers, after dancing, darting and dodging around the Giants pass rush for a whopping eight seconds, hit Adams on a 5-yard scoring pass to give the Packers a 7-6 lead with 2:20 remaining in the half.
So all that work, nearly 28 minutes worth of dominating, and the Giants, who’d taken a 6-0 lead on two Robbie Gould field goals, were losing a game they would soon lose complete control of.
You don’t think athletes have long memories? You don’t think things stay with them as much as they stay with you? This was Aaron Rodgers, talking about one of the daggers of his career, delivered late on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2012.
“It’s a 13-10 game,” Rodgers said, shaking his head, frowning at a memory exactly one week shy of five years old. “And then it’s a 20-10 game.”
Rodgers was on the sideline for that one, watching Eli Manning float a 37-yard prayer toward the north end zone at Lambeau Field in an NFC Divisional playoff game. When Manning launched it, the Packers were losing, but they were 15-1 and believed they were invulnerable. When it landed somehow in Hakeem Nicks’ arms, it was the Giants who were suddenly bulletproof — and who would win a championship three weeks later.
“That,” the Green Bay quarterback said, “was a momentum change.”
So now, here was Rodgers, six seconds to go in the half. The Giants had dominated the first 25 or so minutes of the game, chasing Rodgers down, blanketing his receivers, frustrating him — “I looked up at one point,” he would say, “and we had like 7 total yards” — beyond measure. …
So when Rodgers led a late touchdown drive, it put the Giants in a 7-6 hole, but on the road, at the half, you’ll take that, especially as well as they’d played. So Rodgers dropped back, and if it’s true nobody ever has thrown these Hail Mary balls better than him — “He gave it a great arc, so the receivers really have a chance,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy would say — it’s still a ball that winds up on the ground 98 percent of the time.
Except this time, it landed in Randall Cobb’s arms. In the exact same northern end zone where another ball landed in Nicks’ arms four years and 51 weeks earlier.
“I’m supposed to be the guy who boxes their guys out and opens things up for the other guys,” Cobb would explain. “But I got behind the defense.”
“I thought it was overthrown,” Giants safety Landon Collins said.
“They just chuck it up there,” Odell Beckham Jr. said. “And score.”
Said Rodgers: “Suddenly, you feel like maybe this is going to be your day.”
Actually, as it happened, that was exactly the message this one play delivered, a devastating memorandum the Giants were going to pay for their early reluctance to place their cleats on the Packers’ necks.
But Beckham made that boat, and now he’ll have to sink with it. He failed to make the big-time catches that big-time players are supposed to make. The catches that Randall Cobb (three touchdowns) was making all night.
Beckham’s bid to be legendary turned into a legendary drop of the ball.
Sterling Shepard dropped a touchdown pass as well, so he apparently should have been home with milk and cookies instead of partying with Beckham and Victor Cruz and Roger Lewis Jr. in Miami Beach on the most infamous day off in the history of days off.
Party’s over now for all the Giants — losers to the Packers.
For a boatload of reasons.
Ship of fools everywhere you turned Sunday night in Lambeau Field.
There were six seconds left in the first half of the 2011 divisional round when Eli Manning lofted a prayer toward the end zone marked GREEN BAY in gold letters and Hakeem Nicks answered it and the Giants were on their way to San Francisco and then Super Bowl XLVI.
There were six seconds left in the first half of Sunday’s wild-card game when Aaron Rodgers lofted a prayer toward the very same end zone and somehow, some way, Randall Cobb shoved Leon Hall out of the way and answered the prayer in the back of the end zone behind an army of Giants and it was Packers 14, Giants 6 at the half.
The Hail Mary five years ago was 37 yards. This one was 42 yards.
Lambeau fell silent five years ago. Lambeau exploded in ecstasy this time.
What the football gods giveth, the football gods taketh away sometimes.
Hail No.
Hail No the Ben McAdoo Giants won’t be headed to Dallas next weekend.
Hail No there won’t be any fifth Lombardi Trophy in the Lobby showcase.
NYPD — New York Pass Defense — was an abbreviation for New York Putrid Defense.
Manning was more Playoff Eli than Regular-Season Eli, but against Rodgers (four touchdowns), you better be Playoff Eli on every possession. …
Rodgers had been flustered. He threw incomplete left when Aaron Ripkowski was wide open in the right flat. He was sacked out of field-goal range by Coty Sensabaugh, filling the void left by the early departure of Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (thigh).
Then, on his third possession, Rodgers was sacked by Kerry Wynn and Romeo Okwara.
Manning found Will Tye with a seam pass worth 51 yards and soon it was 6-0.
A dangerous game, kicking field goals when you almost always need touchdowns against Rodgers.
But with Rodgers third-and-4 at the Giants 34, Rodgers scanned the field and found no one open and was flagged for intentional grounding.
Finally, Rodgers broke through.
Brad Wing’s 37-yard punt positioned Rodgers at the NYG 38. With a flick of the wrist Rodgers found Adams streaking past Eli Apple along the right sidelines for 31 yards. Two plays later, as the Packers double-teamed Olivier Vernon, Rodgers had all the time he needed to thread the needle to Adams against Sensabaugh and the 5-yard TD made it Packers 7, Giants 6.
Then came the crusher.
Party’s over.
The New York Daily News’ Pat Leonard must have been looking over Vaccaro’s shoulder:
No prayers could save the Giants from the wrath of Aaron Rodgers on Sunday, least of all the holy Hail Mary they used to beat the Packers five years ago.
The Giants, twice in a decade the NFL’s team of destiny, saw their postseason hopes slip away at Lambeau Field in an agonizingly cruel twist of fate.
In one of the most unbelievable cases of karmic symmetry in football history, Big Blue’s season-ending 38-13 Wild Card loss swung on a 42-yard Aaron Rodgers Hail Mary touchdown pass to Randall Cobb on the final play of the first half. …
Rodgers’ rope from the right hash marks similarly put Ben McAdoo’s first Giants team on the ropes. His pass improbably fell to Cobb in the back-middle left side of the end zone with Giants defensive backs Leon Hall, Eli Apple and Landon Collins closest in coverage, but none of them leaping high enough to defend the pass. …
And as Manning’s offense floundered and the Tom Quinn-coached Giant special teams had an awful game that is going to get somebody fired, Rodgers picked the Giant defense apart in a bloodbath of a second half. …
But the Giants’ shortcomings began with big drops by the two most prominent members of the Giants receivers Miami boat party last Monday: Odell Beckham Jr. and Sterling Shepard. They wasted a terrific start by Manning, who came out throwing the ball better than he had all season.
Beckham and Shepard dropped two passes apiece in the first half, including dropped touchdowns for each. Beckham dropped a touchdown pass on the Giants’ second drive, Shepard on the Giants’ third drive.
FOX’s Jimmy Johnson, the former Dallas Cowboys coach, said at halftime of the receivers who partied in Miami on Monday: “The Boat Crew was 8-for-15 in the first half on targets their way. The rest of the receivers were 5-for-6.”
Beckham wore these shoes, by the way:
And how did Beckham respond to the loss?
Odell Beckham’s hands reportedly did more damage after the Giants’ 38-13 loss to the Packers than they did during Big Blue’s season-ending Wild Card playoff game.
Beckham, the Miami Monday party-goer who dropped a touchdown and two total passes to squander a hot start by Eli Manning, punched a hole in the wall outside the visiting locker room at Lambeau Field after the defeat, according to multiple reports.
Beckham also reportedly banged his head against the wall and had to be calmed down by stadium security.
When you are Odell Beckham Jr. and draw attention to yourself the way only a few athletes do, there is no in-between.
You either capture the imagination of the sports world with magnificent plays, like that impossible one-handed catch against the Cowboys in 2014. Or you become the object of scorn when you act out and turn into an uncontrollable diva, like the Josh Norman set-to in 2015 or the fits of temper through the first half of this season.
Or when you go on a jaunt to South Florida with a few teammates, hang out with Justin Bieber and two rappers and are shown shirtless on a boat a week before your first playoff game. And then underperform by dropping two key passes early on and another later in the game and finish with just four catches for 28 yards and no touchdowns. One of his drops was a key third down on the Giants’ first series, and another a would-be touchdown later in the quarter.
There were several miserable performance by several Giants in a 38-13 beatdown by the Packers in Sunday’s NFC wild-card game, but none was as scrutinized or criticized as much as Beckham’s. He draws attention with his play and his off-field lifestyle, and you cannot help but focus in on him more than anyone else on this team. More than the coach and more than the quarterback, almost invariably the most scrutinized people on any team. …
The optics were certainly not good, especially when a picture of a shirtless Beckham and teammates Victor Cruz, Sterling Shepard and Roger Lewis Jr. swirled around social media and created plenty of heated discussion. But coach Ben McAdoo dismissed the issue almost immediately, saying the players could do as they wished on their day off. Eli Manning joked that the only disappointment he felt was that they didn’t dress accordingly because they forgot to bring shorts and flip-flops.
After the game, Manning said he saw no evidence of a carryover from last week’s trip.
“I thought our preparation was wonderful,” he said. “Guys made plays all during practice and were ready for today and ready for the moment. No one knows why you don’t go out and play your best. Overall, the Packers played better than we did and I think that’s what it came down to. I guess we’re used to (Beckham) making unbelievable catches. He didn’t come down with some of those tough catches today. This game doesn’t come down on him, it comes down on the whole offense and on everybody. Everybody had their miscues today, and those add up.”
Linebacker Jonathan Casillas said he knew how the storyline might go.
“At the end of the day, we all knew if he had a bad game or we lost the game or if he dropped a pass it would come back to him, but I don’t question his focus and I don’t question his loyalty to the team, either,” he said.
If anything, Beckham might have been too fired up.
“The guy was so fired up before the game he was emotional about it,” Casillas said. “That had nothing to do with last week. It’s the type of person he is, preparing for the game emotionally. It might have been too much for him. You have to have somebody like that who is a spark, an emotional spark, not only himself but for our team. I know he didn’t finish the way he wanted to, for sure.”
Beckham could have stayed home and read a few chapters of “War and Peace” or meditated on his day off, and he still might have played poorly. After all, how many times have prominent athletes — from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to Max McGee to Jim McMahon — partied on their down time and come back to shine when the games started? There’s no evidence of cause and effect here, because Beckham has been the subject of controversy before and still gone on to produce signature games.
This was not one of them, and he’ll have to live with the consequences. And the criticism. It doesn’t help his image that he reportedly punched a hole in a piece of sheetrock inside the Giants’ locker room area after the game. But we’ve known all along that Beckham is a hot-tempered competitor, and this is in keeping with that narrative.
The New York Times even got in on the South Florida snark:
The Giants were not in Miami, and there were no boats in sight. But once again, Odell Beckham Jr. and several Giants wide receivers bared their chests, this time in defiance of the 12-degree temperature at Lambeau Field on Sunday.
The Giants players did it in early warm-ups, more than two and a half hours before their N.F.C. wild-card game against the Green Bay Packers.
“You want to come and get used to the elements,” Beckham said. “We just kind of wanted to come out and say, forget about the cold.”
The show of toughness, however, did not carry over to the game. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw four touchdown passes in a 38-13 rout, a loss that began with Beckham and his fellow wide receiver Sterling Shepard dropping four passes on the Giants’ first two series. They each dropped one in the end zone.
The Giants dominated most of the first half, but they managed only two field goals by Robbie Gould. The Packers, however, came to life in the final three minutes of the second quarter as Rodgers threw for two touchdowns, including a 42-yard heave to Randall Cobb that six Giants defenders failed to knock down as time ran out on the half. …
Beckham caught four passes for 28 yards in his first playoff game, and he said that the trip he and three other receivers made to Miami last Monday after a victory over the Washington Redskins had nothing to do with it.
“It put it in people’s minds that O.K., if the Giants lose, it’s because you went to Miami,” Beckham said.
He added: “At the end of the day, I went through practice, had zero drops, zero missed assignments. There was nothing that can connect seven days ago to today and how we came out and executed, nothing in the world. It’s not realistic. It created a distraction for us. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way the world is. The connection is just not there, in my opinion, but everybody is going to have their own opinion.” …
The game carried a certain revenge factor for Rodgers, who had lost to Manning and the Giants in their two previous playoff matchups, both in Green Bay. And as many have noted, the winner of a Packers-Giants playoff game has gone on to win a championship in all five instances.
Green Bay, winners of its last six games, hosts the New York Giants in both teams’ first, and possibly last game in the wonderful world of the one-and-done NFL postseason.
Why will the Packers win, and not just today? Dieter Kurtenbach gives three reasons:
Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers did exactly what the quarterback and MVP candidate said they would do — ran the table in the final six games of the 2016 season — and because of that they’re NFC North champions and will host a first-round playoff game Sunday.
No team goes into the playoffs with more momentum than the Pack — here’s why they’ll carry that momentum through the next four games this postseason and win Super Bowl LI: Aaron Rodgers
Enough said.
Rodgers was otherworldly in the final seven games of the 2016 season, throwing 18 touchdown passes with no interceptions over that stretch, in which the Packers won their last six games of the season to finish 10-6 on the year.
The Packers’ passing game is in perfect harmony right now — Jordy Nelson is back to being one of the NFL’s finest receivers, and there seems to be a new standout secondary option every week (who saw Davante Adams and Geronimo Allison coming?).
Who is going to stop it?
Some of the best defenses in the NFL have been exposed by Rodgers in recent weeks — the Vikings were torched for four touchdowns (zero picks) and a 136 quarterback rating, the Seahawks were hit with a 3-0 performance (QB rating 150), and the Texans, who boast arguably the top defense in the whole league, allowed only two touchdowns and a 108 QB rating.
Rodgers’ worst game down the stretch was against the Bears — you might recall that he threw a 60-yard pass in the final minute to set up a game-winning 32-yard field goal as time expired and had two earlier perfect passes dropped in the end zone. That was not a bad day.
Rodgers is on a roll, and if he can get past the New York Giants’ defense in the Wild Card Round, there’s no reason to think that any team — even the Seahawks, Patriots or Chiefs — is going to slow him down this postseason.
Offensive balance, at long last
A big part of Rodgers’ exceptional play as of late has been the emergence of a viable run game in Green Bay.
Who would have thought a wide receiver — a third-round draft pick in his second year — would be the game changer the Packers needed to make the postseason?
After a woeful midseason for the running game following Eddie Lacy’s injury, Ty Montgomery has averaged more than 60 yards per game in his last five contests on fewer than 10 carries per game.
The Packers don’t need a massive contribution from the run game — the passing game is more than capable of carrying the heavy load — but the balance and threat that has been presented by No. 88 (seriously) out of the backfield in recent weeks, alongside fullback Aaron Ripkowski and free agent pickup Christine Michael, has opened up more channels and lanes for Rodgers to exploit.
Montgomery is the outside-the-tackles runner — the big-gain threat — and Michael and Ripkowski have come on in recent weeks as more inside zone runners.
It might not be the most-used rushing attack, but it is certainly versatile, and behind one of the best offensive lines in football it is viable.
Did we mention Aaron Rodgers?
But it all comes back to this man. The Packers’ defense isn’t stellar and it’s all sorts of banged up — safety Micah Hyde might be the team’s No. 2 cornerback for the Wild Card game — but defensive coordinator Dom Capers has done an exceptional job of putting the Packers in a position, week in and week out, to win.It’s not because they’re holding teams to paltry point totals — they’re just holding them below what Rodgers can put on the board.
There isn’t a team in the NFL that’s truly exceptional on both sides of the ball this year — the Cowboys, Patriots, Steelers, Falcons, and (to a degree) Seahawks have questions on the defensive side of the ball this postseason, and the Chiefs, Giants, and Texans might not be able to muster the offense necessary to beat Green Bay’s.
It’s all about A-Rod, and so long as he’s playing exceptional football, the Packers have a puncher’s chance at winning any game they play.
Don’t get too excited, because Fox Sports apparently wrote a bunch more “3 Reasons” for all the other teams still in the playoffs, including, yes, the Giants.
My concern about the Packers’ postseason future is not with Rodgers or the offense — the Packers were fourth in scoring offense and eighth in offensive yardage this season — but the defense. It could be argued that defense as longtime football fans understand it is largely absent during the regular season. That is certainly not the case during the postseason. The Packers were 21st in the NFL in scoring defense (the only defensive statistic that matters), 22nd in yardage given up, and 29th in yards per play. (If you give up, as the Packers did, 5.9 yards per play, the next play after first down is a second-and-4, and there are all kinds of plays for second and medium distance.)
The Packers were 21st in the NFL in scoring defense (the only defensive statistic that matters), 22nd in yardage given up, and 29th in yards per play. (If you give up, as the Packers did, 5.9 yards per play, the next play after first down is a second-and-4, and you can call every play in your playbook for second-and-4.) Their defensive backfield has more injured players than healthy players, which poses a major problem for the Packers.
The Giants had the second best scoring defense in the NFL this season, giving up just 17.8 points a game. That’s their good news. Their bad news is that they were 26th in scoring, just 19.4 points per game, and 25th in offensive yardage, despite having two-time Super Bowl quarterback Eli Manning under center.
According to Steve Serby, the Giants’ hopes rest on Manning:
The good people here in Titletown, USA, wouldn’t want any quarterback defending Lambeau Field when the playoffs begin Sunday other than Aaron Rodgers.
Nevertheless, it is likely that even the ghosts who inhabit the storied place, from Vince Lombardi on down, will feel a knot in the pit of their stomach at the sight of the one quarterback who owns old Lambeau in January and relishes turning it into a green-and-gold burial ground on his way to the Super Bowl.
The man named Eli Manning.
They have heard he is not the same quarterback, not at 36. They know he has trouble putting 20 points on the scoreboard, and yet the memory of how this quarterback left Brett Favre frozen in despair nine years ago, then discount double-checked Rodgers five years ago haunts them.
Manning can’t extend plays the way Rodgers can. He can’t unleash accurate missiles from any angle. It is comforting to the good people of this so-called drinking town with a football problem that Giants coach Ben McAdoo can’t find any kryptonite for Rodgers.
But what if Packers coach Mike McCarthy has no kryptonite either, and the sequel to this movie turns out to be SuperMann III?
What if there really is a Playoff Eli? What if the magnitude of the moment ignites whatever greatness is left inside Manning? You don’t get to be a two-time Super Bowl MVP by luck, right? What if he can flip that switch?
Why is there an undying loyalty to him among all Giants and an unflinching belief that this is his time? Is it because he is capable of changing everything with one deadly slant to Odell Beckham Jr.? Is it because “defense wins championships” means Manning won’t be forced to bear the burden of a shootout with Rodgers? Is it because he was still quarterback enough to find a way to win 11 times and may now have a running game to aid and abet him?
You ask Victor Cruz what he is expecting from Manning and this is what he tells you:
“His greatness. He understands that this is a moment, this is a time where his best is expected. And I think he’s always risen to the challenge and we understand that, and we’re right there with him. We want to play our best football for him, and he wants to play for us. So I expect nothing but the very best out of Eli this weekend.”
Manning has waited five years for this chance. He has had two offensive coordinators and two daughters since the last time he broke cheesehead hearts, and Tom Coughlin won’t be red-faced on the sidelines with him this time.
“He’ll never show it because his name’s Eli Manning, but he’s very excited,” Cruz said. “You can tell in his preparation and the things that he does, that he’s ready to get after it, man, he’s ready to go. So we just gotta be ready to go right with him.”
They know that Manning will not be nervous in crunch time.
“You like being down four when you know you have to score a touchdown to win the Super Bowl,” Manning said after engineering the game-winning TD drive in Super Bowl XLII to beat the unbeaten Patriots.
There have been disturbing red zone interceptions and questionable decision-making this season, and Manning will have to be efficient against Rodgers.
“We know we gotta put up points,” Rashad Jennings said.
How many points?
“We at least gotta be in the 20s … upper,” he told The Post.
That may be asking too much. Or maybe it won’t be. What if Manning suddenly remembers he is the guy who beat Tom Brady twice in the Super Bowl?
This was what Coughlin said after Manning outplayed Favre in the 2007 NFC Championship game: “He just willed himself to play well.”
This was what Coughlin said after Manning outplayed Rodgers in the 2011 Divisional playoff round: “I think it is his mentality. It is his approach. Nobody sees what he does behind the scenes. He is a studier and a pounder.”
And still is.
“He’s always been a leader in the playoffs. He’s been efficient in the playoffs. He’s always stepped up and made big plays in the playoffs,” Jennings said. “So it’s good to have somebody who’s been there that’s gonna touch the ball every play. That gets everybody in the right positions. Our leader is somebody who manages the football. We’re gonna rally around him.”
Eli Manning is the last quarterback the Packers wanted to see out here. He is the only one who can be typecast for the lead role in SuperMann III.
Asked if there is a Playoff Eli, Dwayne Harris said, “There is a playoff Eli.” Then he laughed and said, “And everybody’s seen him.”
This game will interestingly feature both teams’ strengths — the Packers’ offense and the Giants’ defense — and weaknesses on the field at the same time. When the Giants have the ball, it may look like a resistible force against a movable object, unless Playoff Eli shows up. In that case, the Packers’ season will end today, leading to an offseason with questions about who the Packers’ general manager will be next season, with GM-in-waiting Eliot Wolf possibly headed to San Francisco and GM Ted Thompson reportedly stepping down to prevent that from happening.
The first harbinger that the Vikings’ trip to Green Bay might not go well came Friday afternoon, when their plane slid off the runway at Appleton International Airport.
And then things went downhill from there. After a 5–0 start, the Vikings’ 38–25 Christmas Eve loss to the Packers ended the Vikings’ chance of making the playoffs in a season where the Vikings traded a first-round draft choice to get quarterback Sam Bradford.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan reports on a surprising story that came out after the game:
After getting stuck on the team plane for hours on the runway in Appleton on Friday, the Vikings played on Saturday as if they had already pulled the emergency exit on the season and leaped into the void.
For the second time in six days, Mike Zimmer’s defense was filleted by a top quarterback in a meaningful game. The Packers and Aaron Rodgers beat the Vikings, 38-25 shortly after the Colts and Andrew Luck beat them 34-6.
For the first time, Rodgers dismantled a Vikings defense coached by Zimmer, and for the first time Zimmer found himself publicly at odds with players he values.
In previous games against the Packers, Vikings cornerbacks have played a side of the field rather than following Packers receiver Jordy Nelson. Zimmer said Saturday that he wanted cornerback Xavier Rhodes to follow Nelson.
That’s not what happened in the first half. On the Packers’ first possession, Rhodes, Terence Newman and Captain Munnerlyn all covered Nelson, who finished the first half with seven catches on seven targets for 145 yards and two touchdowns.
In the second half, Rhodes covered Nelson on both sides of the field. Nelson caught two more passes for nine more yards.
“Well, that’s what he was supposed to do all game,” Zimmer said. “Someone decided that they wouldn’t do that.”
When did Zimmer notice that the players weren’t following the plan? “In the first half when Terence Newman came over and said something to me like ‘I can cover this guy, let me have him,’ ” Zimmer said. “I said, ‘Do what you’re supposed to do.’ ”
Asked about Zimmer’s quotes, Rhodes said: “To be honest, I really don’t want to answer that. That’s something. … That’s … nah, never mind. I will not answer that question.”
Rhodes reconsidered, saying: “Matter of fact, forget it. We felt as a team and as players we came together, we felt like we never done that when we played against the Packers and, I mean, as a DB I felt like we can handle it. So we felt as DBs that we could stay on our side and cover him because in the beginning, we always played against him, we always played sides, we never followed …”
When did the players decide to create their own plan? “The decision was all through practice,” Rhodes said.
Did Zimmer say anything to him during the game? “Not to my memory,” Rhodes said.
Did the defensive backs broach the subject with Zimmer? “We just felt like we should play sides,” Rhodes said. “As the game went on our coaches demanded and told me I needed to follow him.”
Zimmer’s perceived strengths are taking a beating. In a crucial six-day stretch, his team gave up 72 points, lost two must-win games and displayed a lack of respect for his leadership.
The Vikings’ postseason mission, redemption for that bitter arctic loss to Seattle, officially died at 3:13 p.m. Central Standard Time Saturday at Lambeau Field, their epitaph a sad but inevitable 38-25 loss to the surging Packers.
The Vikings face one more must-win Week 17 at home against woeful Chicago to avoid a losing record after opening the season with five consecutive wins.
Bah, humbug.
Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson delivered last rites with a pitch-and-catch tutorial. But the Vikings came bearing ample gifts of turnovers, penalties and porous defensive backs who hatched their own coverage scheme against coach Mike Zimmer’s edict to Xavier Rhodes that the Pro Bowl cornerback shadow Nelson, one of the NFL’s most dynamic receivers
Exploiting gaping holes in Minnesota’s secondary, Nelson accumulated seven receptions for 145 yards and two touchdowns. At halftime. He caught only two more passes for 9 yards in the second half after Rhodes retreated his original assignment.
“That’s what they were supposed to do the whole game,” Zimmer fumed. “Someone decided that they weren’t going to do that.”
Rhodes stammered when asked about his freestyling.
“Um, to be honest, I really don’t want to answer that,” he said.
Rhodes explained the Vikings never shadowed Nelson in the past, so the defensive backs decided during the week they would revert to their customary positions on either side of the field.
“We felt as a team, as players, we came together,” he said. “We felt like we could handle him on that side of the field. That’s what felt right.”
Sure, why not. Toss a supersized helping of insubordination onto the Vikings’ funeral pyre.
Fifty-one weeks ago, on this very field, the Vikings celebrated a division title by downing Green Bay 20-13, the crowning achievement thus far in Zimmer’s ragged three-year reign.
They were one butchered 27-yard field goal last January from advancing to the divisional playoffs. After starting 5-0, the confident Vikings seemed more than capable of overcoming the loss of franchise quarterback Teddy Bridgewater and superstar running back Adrian Peterson to injury.
But that imperfect perfection covered up structural deficiencies on offense and defense, not to mention razor-thin depth that was unable to underpin an injury-ravaged offensive line that was the root cause of so much misery.
At this point, pounding on T.J. Clemmings another week is akin to abuse that warrants a restraining order. Left to block six-time Pro Bowl linebacker Clay Matthews with a minute remaining in the first half, the resulting strip sack of Sam Bradford at midfield was predictable if not negligent.
Zimmer and offensive line coach Tony Sparano own this calcified breach for insisting they could boost an overmatched pass protector who has no business playing left tackle. And general manager Rick Spielman for buying what Clemmings was selling in college and spending a fourth-round pick on a player whose confidence has been shredded.
The bedrock of the Minnesota Vikings‘ defense — indeed, the identity of their program under Mike Zimmer — has been a scheme which is often ironclad when players trust it.
Zimmer has preached for three seasons to his players about the interconnectedness of a defense, building a theater-style meeting room so he could address position groups together and issuing impromptu quizzes to defensive backs about the three-technique tackle’s job on a particular play. Sayings such as, “Do your job so someone else can do theirs” have bordered on dogma, and Vikings players professed almost total devotion to a set of ideas that had built one of the league’s top units.
That is what made what happened at Lambeau Field on Sunday so striking.
Zimmer said after the Vikings’ 38-25 loss to the Green Bay Packers that the Vikings had planned for Xavier Rhodes to shadow Jordy Nelson — as he had done with top receivers for much of the season — but that “someone decided they wouldn’t do that.” The coach added that veteran cornerback Terence Newman told him in the first half, “I can cover [Nelson]; let me have him,” to which Zimmer replied, “Do what you’re supposed to do.”
Nelson caught seven passes for 145 yards and two touchdowns in the first half, hauling in a 15-yard pass from Rodgers while matched up on Newman during the Packers’ first series. On the second series, when Nelson caught three passes for 45 yards, the Packers had him in the slot, where Rhodes never shadows receivers. Nelson was also in the slot on a 48-yard catch, before Rhodes moved to the left side of the Vikings’ defense to shadow him for the first time with 2:42 left in the first quarter.
Think again about what happened here. Zimmer — who coached Deion Sanders and Darren Woodson in Dallas — volunteered the fact that Rhodes was supposed to cover Nelson, until players decided on their own plan. Newman — who was a rookie when Zimmer became the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator, who followed the coach to Cincinnati and Minnesota, who lobbied for Zimmer as a head coach and once said the coach could be enshrined in Canton based on what he had done to make teams better — apparently was part of a group that decided not to listen to him in this instance.
Evidently, so was Rhodes, whose development into a Pro Bowl corner has largely been on Zimmer’s watch, and who said after the game the Vikings’ defensive backs settled on the plan not during the game, but in practice last week. …
Players whom Zimmer has developed, who would be seen as some of the coach’s star pupils, suddenly decided not to follow a game plan — and apparently not to tell Zimmer, defensive coordinator George Edwards nor defensive backs coach Jerry Gray about it. Did they lose faith in the scheme after a 34-6 loss to the Colts last Sunday? Did they think their ideas wouldn’t be heard if they approached coaches with them?
Those questions remain open, and Zimmer’s ability to discipline players next Sunday against the Chicago Bears would be hampered somewhat by the lack of other options in his secondary. But Saturday’s developments, at the end of a season that began with Super Bowl aspirations and will end with a meaningless Week 17 game, suggest there’s more at play in the Vikings’ demise than just injuries and some bad luck.
A team that started 5-0 now needs a victory just to avoid a losing record. A defense that bullied MVP quarterbacks at the beginning of the season has now been picked apart for 72 points in the last two games. And a group that has long seemed to thrive on its harmony, seemed, on Saturday at least, to be in discord.
It looks like it’ll be an interesting offseason in the Twin Cities. The Vikings’ first season in their billion-dollar indoor football palace started off well, but has collapsed like a Viking ship with a hole under the waterline. Zimmer, a highly respected defensive coach, may be coaching his last game as head coach against Da Bears under the truism that it’s easier to fire the coach than the players. Players have varying relationships with coaches (see Favre, Brett, and Holmgren, Mike), but to see open revolt is not normal.
The Packers, meanwhile, now look like the football reincarnation of Team Streak, the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers and their epic winning streaks followed by losing streaks and vice versa. The Packers reversed their four-game losing streak by winning five in a row, and winning in Detroit Sunday, where the last time the Packers played this happened …
… will clinch the NFC North title. They could also earn a wild card spot or even miss the playoffs if they lose depending on what other teams do. (At least I think that’s the case based on what I read.)
In the first version of NFL free agency, a player only moved on to a new locale when the team that drafted him wanted nothing more to do with him; in that climate the Packers were getting the dregs of the dregs. In 1992 a man nicknamed “the Minister of Defense” led an antitrust lawsuit against the league that resulted in true free agency. That was great for players—after their rookie contract ended, they could now offer their services to any team in the league, choosing the town in which they wanted to play—but it sent a chill through the scouts and personnel men employed by the most successful NFL franchise of the league’s first seven decades. Thanks to free agency, the task of assembling a competitive roster in small-town Wisconsin was about to get significantly tougher.
“Among players, Green Bay was depicted as some Russian place where you go and no one ever hears from you,” says former NFL tight end Keith Jackson, a first-round draft pick of the Eagles in 1988 who would go on to play for the Dolphins and the Packers.
Then something unprecedented happened. Upon becoming an unrestricted free agent in 1993, a player who had been named to six consecutive All-Pro teams in Philadelphia made a shock decision that would change the course of a franchise and the tenor of a town.
“Before that decision guys would say, ‘If Green Bay drafts me, I don’t want to go.’ It was Siberia,” says Jackson. “But Reggie White saw something different about it.” …
Packers legend holds that it was coach Mike Holmgren who whispered the divine words into White’s ear to get him to choose the Packers, a team that had six winning seasons in the 25 years before 1993. After White had expressed that he would go with God in his decision, Holmgren called White and got an answering machine. “Reggie,” Holmgren said. “This is God. Come to Green Bay.”
In reality, the bulk of the recruiting legwork was done by Ray Rhodes, the 42-year-old African-American defensive coordinator who joined the team in 1992. “Everybody suspected he’d go to a big city for outside endorsements,” says [former defensive line coach Greg] Blache, who went on to serve as defensive coordinator in Chicago and Washington before retiring in 2009. “But Ray Rhodes did a phenomenal job of talking to and recruiting Reggie. I think it blew everybody’s mind that he would come to Green Bay. It set the tone. He was the premier guy, and it turned the tables to where guys didn’t just run to the big market.”
White’s decision to come to Green Bay, a city that was 95% white, with a TV market the size of Wichita’s, raised eyebrows across the league. Not long after he signed a record four-year, $17 million deal, White began calling on the network of pros to which he’d essentially provided free agency, looking for them to return the favor and give Green Bay a chance. The Packers had a young, promising quarterback in Brett Favre, and having made the playoffs that ’93 season for the first time in 10 years (they fell to the dynastic Cowboys in the divisional round) they seemed on the cusp of something big.
Players who joined the team in the ensuing seasons recall White’s gruff baritone voice and folksy manner of speaking during recruitment. “When I talked to Reggie,” says former NFL center Jamie Dukes, “he said in that Reggie voice, ‘Quit playing games and come win some football games.’ ”
After eight years in Atlanta, Dukes took a shot with the Packers in 1994. “There is no question, had Reggie not gone to Green Bay to make Green Bay cool, that wouldn’t have happened,” says Dukes, who retired in 1995 and went on to work as an analyst for NFL Network. “Prior to that, Green Bay wasn’t on the menu of places you wanted to go.”
Jackson, a former teammate of White’s in Philly, signed with the Packers in 1995 and was a Pro Bowl selection and Super Bowl champion the next season. He compared the perception of Green Bay to the Allegory of the Cave, Plato’s commentary on human ignorance. Jackson says the typical NFL player’s view of Green Bay pre-Reggie White was a shadow image that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“Reggie saw all these positives about Green Bay that nobody really knew about,” Jackson says. “He saw it as an opportunity to go somewhere where the people are super fans. And when you lose a game, there’s nobody screaming at you saying you’re a bum. The media is reporting the facts and not trying to create a controversy. It was actually an oasis to play football, and you really concentrated on being a football player.”
Getting players to follow Reggie was easy enough, but the day-to-day of living in Green Bay for African-Americans who had grown accustomed to life in the league’s coastal and urban destinations was a new challenge. Defensive end Sean Jones had spent four seasons in Los Angeles after the Raiders drafted him in the second round in 1984, then played in Houston for six more seasons, before White helped bring him to Green Bay in 1994. Jones had been a part of a group of players around the league, organized by White, who regularly discussed ways to use their voices to promote racial equality in their communities. Jones arrived in Green Bay to discover that equality was not exactly an issue.
“The thing that people have to know is that just because there’s a lot of white people, that doesn’t make them racist,” Jones says. “It’s probably the least racist place I’ve ever been in my life.
“That said, they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know how to cut a fade with a No. 2, and they don’t know how to make fried chicken and cornbread. Where’s the black history museum? Where’s Chinatown? They didn’t have any of that, but they embraced you and they wanted to win.”
To provide a taste of home and some semblance of normalcy for White’s wave of recruits, general manager Ron Wolf arranged for more regular visits from a Milwaukee barber. He also contracted a Milwaukee soul food eatery to cater a meal on Wednesdays at the team facility. The players pigged out on fried catfish and barbecue from Bungalow Restaurant and had enough time to work off the calories in advance of Friday weigh-ins.
Says Jackson: “I think management said, ‘We’ve got to figure out how to make sure that when they come here, they feel at home,’ because Green Bay didn’t present that by itself.”
Management could do the little things to make its black players more comfortable, but it couldn’t do much to replicate the metropolitan environment of an Atlanta or a Miami. Honestly, they didn’t want to. White fostered an increased sense of fellowship among religious teammates, serving as bible study leader and mentor to young players. He even served as a sort of marriage counselor for young couples.
By 1996 the roster had coalesced to the point where 50 out of 53 players could be found staging a takeover of a local bowling alley on Thursday nights. (The teetotalling White reluctantly approved a local hangout where beer was served. He drank only Diet Cokes.). But the true test of Green Bay’s transformation would come with the arrival of a player who seemed ready to challenge that sense of community.
Andre Rison had been a veteran of four clubs by the fall of 1996, most recently in Jacksonville, where he had requested his own release during the ’96 season after reportedly being late to meetings and confrontational with coaches. He also had a checkered relationship with Favre dating back to their time as teammates in Atlanta. (After Favre expressed relief that the Pack hadn’t signed Rison before the ’96 season, saying he was a “problem internally,” Rison responded, “Maybe a couple of years ago, I would have said he’s a hillbilly jealous of a black man making money. But now I’m at this age. No comment.”) Despite this, and despite a tempestuous off-field history that included a 1993 domestic violence and shooting incident, the Packers signed Rison, a four-time Pro Bowl receiver, after his Jacksonville release in November 1996, to plug holes left by Robert Brooks’ season-ending knee injury and Antonio Freeman’s broken arm.
“Dre was about winning,” Jones says, “but he was also about the swag, the pomp and circumstance. It took him a minute to embrace the culture and really believe. You have to buy into the pattern and the routine, and he did that. The guy ended up being one of the best teammates.”
A quick convert in Green Bay’s new oasis, Rison lasted just a half-season, but in Super Bowl XXXI he caught two passes for 77 yards, including a 54-yard touchdown from Favre to open the scoring. White’s influence had sent one fish out of water swimming upstream and would usher an era of prosperity that saved one NFL franchise from the potential crush of a changing economic landscape.
“You ask anybody that played there long enough and they will tell you Green Bay was the best thing that happened to their careers,” Jackson says. “But nobody really wanted to see until Reggie said ‘God sent me to Green Bay.’ ”
The game was announced by Fox Sports’ Joe Buck, who had an interesting moment at the start:
That is why I always make sure I visit the men’s room before the broadcast. Of course, if you drink too much coffee (as I did before the first state basketball game I announced), you have to run to the first-floor bathroom in the ancient UW Fieldhouse from your broadcast position at the front of the upper deck, leaving the halftime to your broadcast partner.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 