Packers, Steelers move on after NFL playoff routs
NFL PARING DOWN NEXT SATURDAY Seattle at Atlanta Houston at New England SUNDAY Pittsburgh at Kansas City Green Bay at Dallas
GREEN BAY, Wisc. — It’s time to rename the Hail Mary. At least when Aaron Rodgers throws it.
Because when the Green Bay Packers quarterback heaves it high and deep at the end of a half, it’s not a prayer. If only everybody’s prayers had such a success rate.
A year ago last month, Rodgers completed a 61-yarder to Richard Rodgers at game’s end to beat the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving.
A year ago next weekend, he heaved a 41-yarder to Jeff Janis at the end of regulation at Arizona, to force overtime in an NFC divisional playoff game. Moments earlier, Rodgers had kept the desperation drive alive with a 61-yard completion to Janis on 4th-and-20 from Green Bay’s four-yard line with 53 seconds left.
On Sunday, as the first half closed in on Green Bay’s 38-13 carving of the New York Giants in the weekend’s second NFC wild-card playoff game, Rodgers did it again.
From the New York 42, with six seconds left on the clock and Green Bay up 7-6, Rodgers dropped back from the right hash, planted and lofted a ball that looked overthrown from the press box. Nope. Green Bay receiver Randall Cobb — who afterward said he wasn’t even sure he’d get to play for the first time in three weeks because of an ankle injury — squeezed to the back of the pack of the usual throng of Packers receivers and Giants defensive backs prepared to jump and jostle. There, inches in front of the back line of the end zone, a few yards left of the goalposts, he easily caught the pass for the half-ending score that put Green Bay up, 14-6.
That was Rodgers’ second TD pass of the quarter (the first was to Davante Adams). Rodgers added two TD throws in the second half, both to Cobb, who tied an NFL playoff record with three TD catches.
The victory propels the Packers into a showdown on the road next Sunday against the top-seeded NFC team, the Dallas Cowboys.
As his post-game news conference, I asked Rodgers how often the Packers practise the Hail Mary, and whether they’re as successful in practice with it as they are in games over the past 13 months.
“No, we’re definitely more effective in games,” he deadpanned, to laughter. “I haven’t thrown a Hail Mary in practice probably since Week 4 or 5.” He was serious.
Not all otherworldly quarterback trends continued here Sunday.
Giants quarterback Eli Manning could not work his Lambeau Field magic a third time, to the delight of most of the 77,549 in attendance on a cold (but not brutally so) night.
After piloting the Giants to unlikely road playoff victories here after the 2007 and 2011 seasons, in which he out-quarterbacked first Brett Favre and then Rodgers, Manning was simply pedestrian this time around.
The youngest Manning brother completed 23-of-44 for 299 yards, much of it after Green Bay had pulled far ahead in the second half. Manning threw one TD pass and one interception.
A Giants team that had averaged only 19 points per game in the regular season was worse than that, although the game did start promisingly for New York. The Giants led 6-0 with 7:42 left before halftime, on two Robbie Gould field goals.
That’s when Rodgers and the lethargic, frustrated Packers offence shook off their miserable start. A long laser-guided throw down the right sideline from Rodgers to Adams, for 31 yards to the New York 7, was the catalyst, Rodgers said.
Two plays later he took about 7-8 seconds in the pocket, juking around in the makeshift human cage that Giants pass rushers hoped to contain him in, then finally found Adams zipping across to the far left corner. Rodgers hit him in the palms for the game’s first TD.
From that point on, fans chanted “MVP! MVP!” louder and more frequently.
Rodgers completed 25-of-40 for 362 yards against probably the NFL’s best secondary, and he became the first Packers quarterback to twice throw four touchdowns without an interception in a playoff game. Favre did it only once.
Rodgers now has thrown 19 touchdown passes without an interception since Green Bay had a 4-6 record in late November, when the ninth-year starter made his now famous “we can run the table” statement to the press.