TO HELL & 'BACK
GREEN BAY, Wis. — On a day that was a clinic for smart football, and tough football, and daring football, this was a little bit of everything: fourthand2, just under five minutes to go. The weather hadn’t quite cooperated, so this wasn’t Ice Bowl II, not really, but a couple of quarterbacks had conspired to give us something better: Vise Bowl I. The pressure was enormous, and it was evident on every down, every snap, Aaron Rodgers and Tony Romo absorbing shot after shot, blow after blow, delivering brilliantly despite the various agonies howling from various precincts on their bodies. Rodgers had just put the Packers ahead, 2621. Now it was Romo’s turn.
“Those quarterbacks, with everything on the line, with their seasons on the line,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. “That was something to see.”
So here was Romo, a Lambeau Field record crowd of 79,704 screeching like banshees, the Packers dropped in zero coverage, refusing to allow Jason Witten an inch of space, Romo realizing his best play was the most audacious: Go deep. Go for it all.
“There’s a chance to take a lead,” Romo would say. “A chance to get the ball to one of your best players.”
That would be Dez Bryant, and this is why you get the ball to him: because he leapt, he floated over Packers cornerback Sam Shields, he got his hands around the ball, he took a step, then two, then three, then lunged for the end zone …
And then, again, second time in two weeks, a terrific football game was hijacked, taken from the field to the replay booth. Mike McCarthy, the Packers coach, saw three replays on the Lambeau Jumbotron, thought he saw something wasn’t right, threw a red flag. “Dez caught the ball,” he said later, “and then he dropped the ball.”
Garrett: “I thought it was a catch when I saw it. And I thought it was a catch after I saw the replay.”
Jerry Jones: “I’m convinced it was a catch.” Bryant: “I want to know why that wasn’t a catch.”
Soon, probably too soon for the Cowboys, referee Gene Steratore was explaining why: because that last part of the play wasn’t a football move, common to the game. It’s a terrible rule that should have been wiped off the books when it cost Calvin Johnson a touchdown late in a regularseason game against the Bears a few years ago. It wasn’t. And a rule’s a rule. Good call, bad rule. “The only thing that would bother me the most is if I hear during the week that was a catch,” Bryant said, his voice cracking.
He won’t. This wasn’t an unprecedented officials’ gaffe, the way last week’s comedy of errors in Dallas was. What it was, was a reminder that while replay has giveth more than it’s taketh through the years it can still be intrusive.
At what cost do we get every call technically correct? Would football have been better if replay existed in 1967, if offsides calls were reviewable (just as ludicrous a notion as the commontothe game rule), and a referee were allowed to note, on further review, that Jerry Kramer probably jumped an instant too soon on the play that won the Ice Bowl?
Garrett took the high road, noting, correctly and classily and on more than one occasion, “We had three hours and 60 minutes in the game to win. That was a big play but there were plenty of other plays and we didn’t make enough of them. In the end we didn’t do enough to get it done.”
In the end this goes down as another endofseason letdown for Romo but there was little more he could do, tossing two touchdowns, completing 15 of his 19 throws, building a QB rating of 143.6.
“He was terrific,” Garrett said. “He gave us a chance to win. He’s tough. He’s resilient.”
He may well have been the secondmost valuable quarterback in the game this year. But on this day, he was facing the one who lives in a stratosphere north of him, north of everyone else. Rodgers’ calf was clearly killing him, he could barely drag himself from huddle to snap. But he threw three scoring passes, piled up 316 yards, was every bit as crafty and precise on one leg as all but a handful of QBs can be on two.
“I can go for another 120 minutes,” Rodgers said.
That would mean 60 next week in Seattle, 60 in the Super Bowl. The Packers will take their chances with that. And with whatever weekly whackiness the refs will have in store for all of us, too.