Two law school professors make the case that the First Amendment won’t necessarily protect the news media:
When President Trump declared on Saturday that reporters are “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” it was not the first time he had disparaged the press. Nor was it out of character when, later that same day, his press secretary threatened “to hold the press accountable” for reporting truthful information that was unflattering to Mr. Trump. Episodes like these have become all too common in recent weeks. So it’s comforting to know that the Constitution serves as a reliable stronghold against Mr. Trump’s assault on the press.
Except that it doesn’t. The truth is, legal protections for press freedom are far feebler than you may think. Even more worrisome, they have been weakening in recent years.
The First Amendment provides only limited protection for the press. Over the centuries, courts have affirmed that it prohibits government censorship and offers some protection against defamation lawsuits. But journalists themselves have few constitutional rights when it comes to matters such as access to government sources and documents, or protection from being hounded by those in power for their news gathering and reporting. In those respects, journalists are vulnerable to the whims of society and government officials.
America’s press freedom, in other words, is something of a mishmash. There are some legal protections, but the press also relies on nonlegal safeguards. In the past, these have included the institutional media’s relative financial strength; the good will of the public; a mutually dependent relationship with government officials; the support of sympathetic judges; and political norms and traditions.
However, each of these pillars has recently been shaken.
A generation ago, perhaps the strongest pillar was the economic power of the institutional media. Even small, local newspapers could afford to undertake investigations and to hire lawyers to argue for access to public meetings and for open courtrooms. But today both large and small newspapers across the country are closing, and the surviving publications have diminishing resources to continue to fight.
Likewise, the public’s good will, which long sustained the freedom of the press in America, has evaporated. In the 1970s, nearly three-quarters of Americans reported they trusted the news media, and the press was able to translate this support into substantial opportunities for news gathering: People who trusted the media were more likely to bring them leads and to demand that the press be allowed to cover newsworthy events. Today, however, public confidence in the press has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history.
As for the relationship between the press and government officials, that too has changed. Until recently, the press relied on politicians for access to information while politicians relied on the press for access to the public’s ear. This ensured that government officials would never shut out the press entirely. But with the fragmentation of the news industry, this is less true; the established news media can no longer claim to be the primary source of the public’s information. (And when the president can convey his messages directly via Twitter, the press loses even more power.)
In addition, the courts cannot be relied on — at least not as they once could be — for forceful protection of press liberties. The Supreme Court has not decided a major press case in more than a decade, in part because it has declined to do so, and in part because media companies, inferring the court’s relative lack of interest, have decided not to waste their resources pressing cases. Several justices have spoken negatively of the press in opinions or speeches. Lower courts have likewise become less favorable to the press, showing more willingness than in the past to second-guess the editorial judgment of journalists.
As each of these press-freedom pillars weakens, the one remaining pillar must bear more than its share of the weight. It’s the one, however, that President Trump now seems most keen to destroy: tradition.
It is primarily customs and traditions, not laws, that guarantee that members of the White House press corps have access to the workings of the executive branch. Consider the Department of Justice’s policy of forcing reporters to reveal confidential sources only as a last, rather than a first, resort. Journalists have no recognized constitutional nor even federal statutory right for such protection. It’s merely custom.
This is why we should be alarmed when Mr. Trump, defying tradition, vilifies media institutions, attacks reporters by name and refuses to take questions from those whose coverage he dislikes. Or when he decides not to let reporters travel with him on his plane, or fails to inform them when he goes out in public. Or when he suggests he might evict the White House press corps from the West Wing and have his administration, rather than the White House Correspondents Association, determine who gets allowed to attend briefings.
We cannot simply sit back and expect that the First Amendment will rush in to preserve the press, and with it our right to know. Like so much of our democracy, the freedom of the press is only as strong as we, the public, demand it to be.
Michael Kruse goes to Pepin County to find Democrats surrounded by Republicans:
The morning after Donald Trump was elected president, Andrea Myklebust’s sheep needed new hay. Distraught by the results from the night before, feeling like this was the first day of a suddenly altered American reality, she walked down the driveway of her farm to meet the man who brings her feed for her flock. Myklebust didn’t know for sure, but she suspected he had voted for Trump, a person she considered odious, dangerous and unqualified for the job he had just won. She said nothing about the election, and neither did he, as they talked only about where to drop the bales of hay—a brief exchange during which, she told me, she tried to “rearrange” her facial expression into something “neutral,” “friendly.” She could do only so much, though, to mask her despair. The sculptor, shepherd and weaver had moved from Minnesota’s Twin Cities because she found this area’s rolling hills bucolic and welcoming—and now, and for the first time in her 11 years here, she felt uneasy.
When I met Myklebust, 51, in late November, these sentiments had not softened. She described the history-twisting election of 2016 in stark, before-and-after terms, unable to fathom how anybody could have voted for Trump, much less three-fifths of the people with whom she shares her adopted home in Pepin County. “There is sort of a baseline assumption of common sense and decency that’s been thrown into question in a way I never expected it to be,” she said. “And it’s a struggle. You have to continue to interact with people, and you have to wonder: Do you really have hate in your heart in this way? Really? At the core, I didn’t believe this about us.”
The population of the county is barely more than 7,000 people, which can give it an everybody-knows-everybody sort of allure. But in this tiny county, the smallest in Wisconsin, wedged against the east bank of the Mississippi River, Myklebust and so many other Democrats and progressives woke up November 9 jilted, deeply confused about where they lived—where they had lived for years, decades, even their entire lives. Wisconsin, after all, hadn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1984, and Pepin County itself had gone blue in every presidential election since 1972. This put it near the top of a sizeable, nationwide list of similarly flipped counties—the rural, out-of-the-way spots on the map that made Trump president. It left those on the losing end of the tally roundly stunned.
“Totally shocked,” said Wally Zick, 71.
“Blew me away,” said Jen Peterson, 36.
“My mom said, ‘What happened to our blue state?’” said Alex Johnson, 24. “I said, ‘Trump set it on fire.’”
Terry Mesch, 67, has lived here since 1976 and oversees the local historical society. He knows the story of the county better than practically anybody, and yet he was “dumbfounded,” he said, telling me he walked into his polling spot on the day of the election and voted alongside people whose names he knows. The results that rolled in later that evening were not at all what he was expecting. More than that, they came with an unsettling realization: “I said to myself, ‘I don’t know my own neighbors.’”
Democrats and progressives thought they lived in one kind of place. It turns out they live in another. That’s true in the nation as a whole, and it’s particularly, poignantly true here. Pepin County at first glance doesn’t seem like much of a microcosm of America—it’s 98 percent white, the overall population hasn’t changed in 120 years, and the unemployment rate this past fall was an infinitesimal 3 percent—but what I found in a week of talking to farmers and small-business owners, longtime residents and transplants, was a startlingly precise reflection of the national rift that animated Trump’s campaign. “Stronger Together” versus “Great Again.” Move-ins versus natives. Urban versus rural. The loss wrought by long-term change here isn’t so much a visible picture of a closed, rusted factory as it is a less measurable communal decline in morale, a slow seep of self-worth, a perceived slippage of relevance in the national conversation.
As Donald Trump takes the oath of office—a phrase that still has the power to make those on the left shudder in shock—an easy way to process the election is that people in rural areas all over America loathe Washington and New York and San Francisco and Hollywood and finally had a chance to show it in a big way. But Pepin County is one of those rural areas, and the resentment isn’t just directed at the coasts. It’s local. Here, the urban elite isn’t a faceless, distant other: It’s the enclave of liberal, mostly Twin Cities newcomers who have moved here over the past few decades—not just an abstract political imposition, but an actual physical presence. It has spawned anger and bitterness, a simmering undercurrent of alienation among many people locally born and raised. It has made “Democrat” mean something it didn’t mean a generation ago. And it was made manifest on November 8.
Pepin County represents not only the most compelling reasons Trump won but also the reasons so many liberals were so surprised. If more people from more places had been talking to the people of Pepin County—and if the people of Pepin County had been talking more to one another—the notion of a Trump victory wouldn’t have seemed farfetched in the least. But my interviews, with Democrats and Republicans alike, started to feel to me like listening to disconnected halves of conversations that had never occurred. And still weren’t.
“We have found a whole community here,” said Pat Carlson, Wally Zick’s wife, “of very like-minded—it’s going to sound elite—but bookish, artsy, I’d say compassionate … organic foodies, the whole nine yards. It’s all transplants. It’s mostly liberals.” As for this election, and the locals, she continued, “I think they thought the liberal elite was looking down on them, and I guess, in some ways, we were. Because we couldn’t believe anybody would vote for Trump.”
Zick described a fault line here between the old and the new, the people who have lived in the county forever and the move-ins from over the Minnesota border, clustered primarily on the southwestern end of the county. “They don’t come here,” Zick said. “We don’t go there.”
“We don’t know them,” Carlson, 72, said.
“I could ask them, ‘Why did you vote for Trump?’” Zick said. “Then what would I do about it?”
“You don’t want to make them mad,” Carlson said. …
Katherine J. Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, recently wrote a book about this. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker came out just last March. It’s based on research she did from 2007 to 2012, when she essentially kept inviting herself to informal but regular gatherings of people in more than two dozen rural communities around the state—and listened. For decades, Wisconsin has been politically malleable, but the window for Cramer’s work ended up being particularly fascinating and telling. When she started, the state had a Democratic governor and two Democrats in the U.S. Senate, and its voters had picked a Democrat for president in four straight elections; by the time she finished, Democrat Russ Feingold had lost his 18-year spot in the U.S. Senate, and Wisconsin’s governor was Scott Walker, a union-busting, public-employee-attacking Republican. In her book, she wrote about “rural consciousness” and “multifaceted resentment against cities.”
But even Cramer was surprised by the extent of the resentment stemming from a growing rural-urban divide, and now its consequences. “I did go into the evening saying that Hillary Clinton was going to win,” she admitted to me. The reason Clinton lost: “It’s people looking around,” Cramer said, “and then making the assessment that their way of life is under threat.”
“It feels like somebody is coming from the outside and changing their world,” said the area’s state senator, Kathleen Vinehout, a Democrat. It feels that way because it is that way.
“People are wondering just what their place will be in this 21st-century global economy,” said the congressman who represents western Wisconsin, Democrat Ron Kind. “This is very unsettling for a lot of folks.”
“It’s more than the loss of a job or a wage,” Cramer added. “It’s the death of an expectation of a certain kind of life. … Across society, what’s seen as up and coming, successful, whatever you want to call it—it’s not you anymore.”
And what I heard in Pepin County, again and again, is that they’ve had it. In conversation after conversation with people who have lived here forever and who voted for Trump, some people were more measured and diplomatic than others—but the same blunt, base feelings kept coming up.
“Where’s the richest place to live?” said Gerald Bauer, 74, born and raised on a local dairy farm, who now is the vice chairperson of the county board of supervisors. “The area around Washington, D.C.—that’s wrong.”
And here these city people have come, with their money and their politics, right to Pepin County, which now has its very own liberal left coast. “The ones that move in try to change everything,” said Gary Samuelson, 72, “and the people who’ve been here a long time don’t care too much for change.”
“They don’t share our views on anything,” Vic Komisar, 41, the president of the ATV club, said of the people from Minnesota. “They got this picture that we’re all country bumpkins, the locals are, that we’re not educated. The people who move in talk down to the natives. I don’t know how you want to word that, but that’s the persona given off.”
Komisar said he frowned upon some of Trump’s rhetoric, calling him an “oddball.” But one thing he liked a lot: “I think he’s going to stand his ground on—how the hell do I want to word this?—I don’t think he’s gonna get ran over by the social agenda.” He cited gay marriage, the legalization of marijuana and Black Lives Matter. “It shouldn’t be center stage with troops overseas and the economy. We got other things to worry about than Black Lives Matter having a protest. Come on—we got bigger issues. To me, that’s what it’s been for eight years. I’m not a racist. I’m not a homophobe. I’m not any of those things. But OK, you guys have your rights—can we move on?”
***
When these feelings collide with politics, it’s the Democratic Party that tends to take the hit. Once, the party was a coalition of farmers and workers and union members, along with urbanites and minorities. A lot of farmers in Pepin County come from longstanding Democratic families. But over time, the party has come to represent a way of seeing America with which people here have trouble identifying.
John Andrews, 68, was the sheriff in Pepin County for 28 years. He is a Republican. He used to be a Democrat, though—and not just any Democrat, but the boss of the Pepin County Democrats, the position currently held by Bruce Johnson. Andrews told me he switched parties in the mid-2000s after the newcomers started coming to the meetings. “They actually took over the party,” he said.
He agrees with Komisar’s opinion concerning the overemphasis on “the social agenda.”
“When the people came in—and the things that they were trying to push on the rest of us—that’s why I left,” Andrews added. “I didn’t want to deal with these people. I didn’t want to be a part of what they were a part of. You’re talking about people from the Cities who are very progressive. I call them tree-huggers, a bunch of tree-huggers. They referred to us, meaning the people who’ve lived here and worked here all our lives, as a bunch of hicks. They just think they’re a little bit better than everybody else, and that we’re not as smart.”
The number one British single today in 1958 was the first in British chart history to start at the top:
Today in 1969, New Jersey authorities told record stores they would be charged with pornography if they sold the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album “Two Virgins,” whose cover showed all you could possibly see of John and Yoko.
The number one album today in 1976 was Bob Dylan’s “Desire”:
That was some opening act for the 45th President’s term.
The most frequent question I got on Friday was: “What did you think of the speech?”
My answer was the same to all:
“It wasn’t the speech I would have written, but it was the speech President Trump wanted to give. That’s why I didn’t vote for him.”
If his speech had been one of soaring Sorensonian rhetoric or Noonanesque oratory, no one would have believed that Donald Trump had believed a single word he had uttered.
I think your answer to the question is pretty simple. If you voted for Donald Trump you liked it. It was a speech to his base, promising to follow up on his campaign promises.
If you voted for Hillary Clinton, you hated it. It was a speech to his base, promising to follow up on his campaign promises.
The weekend wasn’t about that.
On Saturday, some millions of people – mostly women – around the country and around the world demonstrated against the inauguration of Donald Trump.
I said, on Saturday, about those demonstrations that if the marchers had been similarly organized in the weeks before the election and had gotten on busses to Florida and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Iowa and Wisconsin to urge women in those battleground states to get out and vote for Hillary Clinton on November 8 – then they would have been celebrating on Friday, rather than demonstrating on Saturday.
A friend of mine – a really good friend of mine – went in to downtown Washington, DC to show her support for the marchers. She texted she wanted me to support “what we are standing for.”
I texted back that more than a million Americans (1,196,552 Americans, according to PBS) have died in large part to ensure that more than a million living Americans could peaceably assemble to demonstrate their revulsion with their government just one day after that government came to power.
Not only would their new government do nothing to them in retaliation; but, in fact, would spend millions to make sure they were safe. I am standing tall for that.
But the weekend wasn’t about that, either.
On Saturday – after the swearing-in, after the parade, and after the balls – President Trump traveled to Langley, Virginia to the CIA headquarters to, one might have thought, make peace with the employees, agents, analysts, and officers.
In the end, he used the remarks to castigate the press corp for underreporting the number of people on the Smithsonian Mall for the inauguration ceremony. From The Hill newspaper:
“Honestly it looked like a million and half people, whatever it was it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument … and by mistake I get this network and it showed an empty field, and it said we drew 250,000 people. Now that’s not bad, but it’s a lie.”
Later in the afternoon, Press Secretary Sean Spicer went into the briefing room to read a statement defending the notion that President Trump’s inaugural was the biggest, bestest, greatest inaugural what ever was:
“Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period.”
It was important to the President that not only had more people attended his inauguration than any President before him, but he was far more concerned about suggestions that the anti-Trump demonstrations were larger than his inauguration.
It does no good to ask “Who cares?” when the answer is: “The President cares.”
Short of committing an Article II, Section 4 offence; that is, being impeached for, and convicted of, having committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” we’re going to have President Trump to deal with until at least January 20, 2021.
The Hill reports on something all Republicans should favor:
Donald Trump is ready to take an ax to government spending.
Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned.
The changes they propose are dramatic.
The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.
The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition.
Similar proposals have in the past won support from Republicans in the House and Senate, who believe they have an opportunity to truly tackle spending after years of warnings about the rising debt.
Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. The RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.
Two members of Trump’s transition team are discussing the cuts at the White House budget office: Russ Vought, a former aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence and the former executive director of the RSC, and John Gray, who previously worked for Pence, Sen. Rand Paul and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan headed the House Budget Committee.
Vought and Gray, who both worked for the Heritage Foundation, are laying the groundwork for the so-called skinny budget — a 175- to 200-page document that will spell out the main priorities of the incoming Trump administration, along with summary tables. That document is expected to come out within 45 days of Trump taking office.
The administration’s full budget, including appropriations language, supplementary materials and long-term analysis, is expected to be released toward the end of Trump’s first 100 days in office, or by mid- to late April.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), Trump’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget, has not yet weighed in on the proposed spending reforms because he is still awaiting confirmation by the Senate.
Mulvaney voted for the RSC budget offered as a more conservative alternative to the main House Republican budget in 2015. The House did not vote on the RSC budget for fiscal year 2017. …
It’s not clear whether Trump’s first budget will include reforms to Social Security or Medicare, two major drivers of the federal deficit.
Trump vowed during the campaign not to cut Medicare and Social Security, a pledge that Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), his pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday has not changed.
Yet it could be very difficult to reduce U.S. debt without tackling the entitlement programs. Conservative House budgets have repeatedly included reforms to Medicare and Social Security, arguing they are necessary to save the programs.
The presidential budget is important in setting policy and laying out the administration’s agenda, though Congress would be responsible for approving a federal budget and appropriating funds.
It should be pointed out that there was little mention of budget cuts in the early days of the previous Republican administration, since George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative.” And then eight months after he took office 9/11 happened, and federal spending ballooned.
Budget cuts, of course, depend on whether Trump can be trusted to keep his (most recent) word. That was one of the major objections of the NeverTrumpers, and it remains to be seen whether Trump will do what he claims he’ll do.
Our first item comes from the Stupid Laws File: Today in 1956, Ohio youths younger than 18 were banned from dancing in public unless accompanied by an adult, the result of enforcing a law that dated back to 1931.
The number one single today in 1965:
The number one British single today in 1971 was the first number one by a singer from his previous group:
Today in 1977, Patti Smith broke a vertebra after falling off the stage at her concert in Tampa, Fla.
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.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 