An aspiring fiction writer pitching the story idea to a group of producers would be met with a lot of rolling eyes and sideways glances, and then shown the door.
“Fourth-and-20 from your own 4-yard line and you complete a 60-yard bomb? Nice try, kid, but it wouldn’t happen in an NFL playoff game, not when everyone in the stadium knows what’s coming, and never against a defense as good as you’re saying.
“A credible action story is one thing; what you have here is a fairy tale. This bit about finishing the drive on the last play of the fourth quarter with by a long Hail Mary touchdown pass? An audience can give you only so much suspension of disbelief. Anyway, that story’s been done already this season.
“Worst of all, the ending is wrong. After all these thousand-to-one long shots coming home, your team loses in the overtime? Thanks for coming in, but no one is going to buy a story like this.”
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, as demonstrated by the Green Bay Packers last weekend in the divisional round loss in Arizona. James Bond and Indiana Jones together would be hard put to match the breakneck pace and plot twists of the 26-20 tachycardia special won by the Cardinals three plays into the overtime.
“Losing in that fashion, especially with the offense pulling out another Hail Mary,” Packers linebacker Clay Matthews said, “is unbelievable.”
He was right. Unbelievable was the operative word of the night that brought a sad but somehow representative end to a Packers season replete with theatrical highs and lows.
“A microcosm of our season,” was how coach Mike McCarthy characterized it.
In nearly avenging a 30-point on the same field three weeks earlier, the 7½-point underdog Packers played as audacious a football game you will ever see. Behind a resolute defense that collared the league’s best offense almost all night, they took a 13-10 lead into the fourth quarter, fell behind 20-13 and then tied it in the most unlikely manner.
With their top four wide receivers out of the picture due to injury, a new hero emerged in the person of Jeff Janis, whose contributions this season had come on special teams. Janis caught seven passes for 145 yards, including his first NFL touchdown that gave the Packers their third-quarter lead.
His second TD was the real heart-stopper, coming in a crowd with no time on the clock and forcing the overtime. Coming what it did with what was at stake, the clutch grab – which mirrored last month’s 61-yard bomb caught by Richard Rodgers to beat the Lions on the game’s final play – defied description.
The Cardinals pulled out the victory on the legs of Larry Fitzgerald, a future Hall of Fame wide receiver who made a broken-play 75-yard gain on the first play from scrimmage in the OT and won it moments later on a 5-yard shovel pass.
“Bizarre plays made by both teams,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. “It’s tough. We’ve lost a few over the years where we don’t touch the ball in overtime.”
One year ago, a 48-yard field goal with 14 seconds left in regulation lifted the Packers to a tie with Seattle in the NFC championship game. The offense got a frustrating eyeful from the sidelines in that one, too, as the Seahawks drove to a touchdown on their first possession of the OT.
Rodgers finished his postgame presser with the wistful note that “it’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
How true. It’s not always a happy ending, not even in the most swashbuckling, unbelievable of finishes. The only thing left for the vanquished is to take the hit, move on and hope for better things in the sequel.
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