Packers beat Rams to reach NFC final
GREEN BAY, WIS. » Don’t tell Aaron Rodgers the lack of capacity crowds in a pandemic will limit the Green Bay Packers’ home-field advantage in the NFC championship game.
He’s been waiting too long for this moment to have any such negative thoughts.
Rodgers threw two touchdown passes and also ran for a score as the topseeded Green Bay Packers beat the Los Angeles Rams 32-18 in an NFC divisional playoff game Saturday. He will play a conference championship game at home for the first time in his Hall of Fame-caliber career.
“I’m definitely a little emotional, just thinking about what we’ve been through,” said Rodgers, who went 23 of 36 for 296 yards. “It got me emotional with the crowd out there today.”
Rodgers threw a 1-yard touchdown pass to Davante Adams and a gameclinching 58-yarder to Allen Lazard with 6:52 left. Rodgers also had a 1-yard touchdown run, the first by a Packers quarterback in a playoff game at Lambeau Field since Bart Starr’s winning sneak in the Ice Bowl
against Dallas on Dec. 31, 1967.
The Packers (14-3) reached the NFC championship game for the fourth time in seven seasons as they chase their first Super Bowl berth in a decade. It will be their first NFC title contest at Lambeau Field since hosting for the 2007 season, when they fell to the New York Giants 23-20 in overtime.
Green Bay won the Super Bowl for the 2010 season as the NFC’s No. 6 seed, and
has lost at Seattle, Atlanta and San Francisco in its last three conference championship game appearances.
Saturday’s game showed what a home-field edge can mean. The Packers played in front of 8,456 fans — a crowd that included paying spectators for the first time all season — but that small crowd made plenty of noise as the Packers built an early lead amid snow flurries.
Rodgers said it felt like there were 50,000 fans. Running back Aaron Jones
said it seemed more like 80,000, while Lazard added that “it felt like 90,000 honestly.”
That crowd chanted “M! V! P!” during the closing minutes to salute Rodgers.
“It’s hard to really put into words how special that feeling is, but you can feel it,” Rodgers said. “It’s so palpable. You can feel the energy in the stadium. It’s just different. It’s different playing in front of a crowd. It’s a little more special and obviously more sweet.”