Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Packer Plus
Packers hit where it hurts at Metrodome
Editor’s note: This story was published Nov. 6, 1995.
Minneapolis — It can’t get any more painful than this.
Well, maybe. Terrell Buckley’s alltime blunder that cost the Green Bay Packers a victory in the closing seconds at the Metrodome two years ago perhaps was even more horrifying.
“This still is not as bad the (Eric) Guliford game,” general manager Ron Wolf said. “But I can’t believe this. I think we’ve exhausted ways to lose here.”
An enthralled crowd of 62,839 watched in screaming wonderment Sunday when Fuad Reveiz kicked a 39yard field goal as time expired to give the Minnesota Vikings a 27-24 victory over the snake-bit Packers in a game the Vikings could not afford to lose.
His boot ended an almost surreal 31⁄ 2- hour struggle in which the Packers expended almost a season’s worth of emotion and energy only to have it go for naught when their third-string quarterback committed an egregious error and their defense folded with everything on the line.
Six turnovers the most for a Mike Holmgren-coached team since a Monday night debacle at Kansas City in 1993 ruined the Packers’ chances to sweep Holmgren’s No. 1 adversary, Vikings coach Dennis Green, for the first time since they became pro head coaches in 1992.
It also extended to 10 the Packers’ losing streak on AstroTurf. Holmgren fell to 2-6 against the Vikings, 11-21 on the road.
More important, the Packers (5-4) squandered an opportunity to draw even with the Chicago Bears in the Central Division of the National Football Conference. The Bears, falling to 6-3 with an overtime loss against Pittsburgh, visit Lambeau Field on Sunday in as significant a game as the Packers probably will play this season.
This pulsating struggle boiled down to two of the basic elements of football: discipline and play-making.
Quarterback T.J. Rubley, playing in his first regular-season game since he was with the Los Angeles Rams in late 1993, walked to the line on third and about a foot.
Only 1 minute remained. The score was tied, 24-24. The line of scrimmage was the Minnesota 38.
Chris Jacke had been on fire with field goals of 42, 50 and 46 yards. All he needed from Rubley was another yard or two.
“I called a quarterback sneak,” Holmgren said. “He changed the play. He thought he had the choice. Under normal circumstances. . . .”
Rubley saw a safety moving up into the run defense. His linemen believed that by making a call of their own, the sneak still could have been successful, but Rubley went for the audible in the heat of the moment.
He rolled right out of a four-wide-receiver formation, looking for Mark Ingram or Antonio Freeman. With a defensive lineman bearing down from behind, Rubley made the unthinkable throw: a flip back across his body into traffic.
Nickel back Robert Griffith went up for the ball with Robert Brooks and it caromed to linebacker Jeff Brady, a former Packer who had left his man-toman coverage on Edgar Bennett and drifted back to help. Interception.
“I made a mistake and compounded it,” Rubley said. “It probably ended up costing us.”
Still, only 50 seconds were left as Warren Moon started from his 28. To that point, the Packers had yielded a modest 273 yards to the Vikings, stopping them on their previous four possessions.
With any pass rush and coverage at all, the two teams would settle it in overtime.
On first down, Jake Reed beat Lenny McGill on the left sideline for 23 yards. George Teague was there, too.
After an incomplete pass, a missed tackle by McGill on another sideline route in a blitz enabled Reed to stretch an 8-yard pass into a gain of 22.
The Vikings (4-5) called time out with 31 seconds left. After an incomplete pass, an offside penalty on Sean Jones moved Reveiz 5 yards closer, to the 22.
After a rush for 1 yard, the Vikings stopped the clock with 3 seconds remaining. The Packers then called one timeout to ice Reveiz, who had missed from 47 yards with 71⁄ minutes left.
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As Reveiz lined up again, Jones and Fred Strickland backed off from their field-goal block position and asked an official for another timeout. The official waved them away because, said Gil Haskell, a Green Bay assistant and former special teams coach, the rule book prevents a team from calling consecutive timeouts.
The weakened rush didn’t get close, and Reveiz’s kick was true.
Rubley was pressed into duty only after the Vikings’ previously moribund pass rush forced Brett Favre to retire after three quarters with a sprained ankle and knocked backup Ty Detmer out with a torn ligament in his right thumb with 5 minutes left.
In came Rubley, who promptly bungled a center exchange with Frank Winters.
Another former Packer, Esera Tuaolo, recovered at the Green Bay 20.