I Get It. LaFleur Makes Sense. It Didn't Work, But I Get It

So there they were two Sundays ago, the Green Bay Packers, 4th down at the Tampa Bay 8-yard-line, with 2:17 to go in the game, trailing by eight points, 31-23. Looked like a go-for-it moment.

But no: They kicked a field goal instead, cutting the margin to 31-26. I could hear millions of fans say, Are you nuts? You can tie the game with a touchdown and a two-point conversion! At least it might send it into overtime!

After all, you have Aaron Rodgers as your quarterback. Never mind that he had failed the previous three times during this set of downs: He has a fourth coming, and it's tough to bet against him. In fact, there's probably just one quarterback who you'd have a tougher time betting against--and that's Tom Brady.

So did Packers' coach Matt LeFleur give up on Aaron Rodgers, who had his absolute best regular season, ever, amidst several others that were otherworldly? Nope. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The last guy to give up on Aaron Rodgers did so two seasons ago. The Packers were playing the Los Angeles Rams, who were at that point one of the league's elite teams (and went to the Super Bowl that year). They had just scored and were ahead of the Packers by about a field goal (I'm doing this from memory). About two minutes remained, and Rodgers was about to get the ball back. Though he wasn't having exactly an all-world year and neither were the Packers, nobody was betting against Aaron Rodgers when he absolutely needs to score. Either.

Except running back Ty Montgomery was mad at then-coach Mike McCarthy, who wasn't using him as much as he thought he should be. McCarthy instructed Montgomery that, if the kickoff traveled even just a little bit inside the end zone, to down it there and allow Rodgers to take over at his own 25-yard line, with plenty of time to move the Packers into at least field goal range.

Easy enough, but Montgomery was going to show McCarthy and damn well the rest of the world what kind of talent he did actually have--which was considerable, except he's always needed blocking to accomplish that. He didn't get a whole lot of it and was tackled short of the 25. But he also fumbled, the Rams recovered, later went in for a touchdown, and put the game out of reach. They wound up in the Super Bowl.

Montgomery's teammates went a little nuts at him. McCarthy did, too, and by that next Tuesday, Montgomery found himself with another team for a 7th round draft choice. 7th round draft choices are kind of like the NFL's version of spam, either the mystery meat or the excessive e-mail, take your pick. I remember ESPN's commentator Michael Wilbon remarking that that was like trading for a ham sandwich, it was so worthless. He had to go, of course, or team discipline would have totally broken down (certainly morale did; Green Bay never did recover from that). That was the tipping point of the Packers' season; they went 7-9, and there went McCarthy out the other door.

So, no, Matt LeFleur didn't, and hasn't, given up on Aaron Rodgers. He believes in him totally, and implicitly. Which is why he ordered the field goal.

Because he was playing against Tom Brady, who has proved beyond a doubt that, with any time left over, he can break your heart. In fact, Brady had done that again one half ago when, with six seconds left and the ball at Green Bay's 39 and no time-outs left, he quickly decided against throwing a short pass which hopefully a receiver would catch and get out of bounds before the clock ran out so a field goal would be kicked, increasing Tampa Bay's lead to 17-10. He only needed five yards or so. It looked obvious. 

Instead, he spotted Scott Miller running free downfield, hit him on the dead run in the end zone, and made it 21-10 instead, all that with a second still left on the clock.

So, I think LaFleur figured, better to have the lead and give Brady almost no time on the clock to catch up. How best to do that?

First, give up on the touchdown and kick the field goal, making it 31-26. That gave the ball to Tom Brady again, but with the limited task of holding onto the lead instead of needing to score again.

The Packers had two advantages: First, their full compliment of three time-outs. This would allow them to call time-out at the conclusion of each of the next three plays, and hopefully holding Tampa Bay short of a first down and making them punt. That would give the ball to Rodgers with about 90 seconds left at his own, say, 20 or 25 yard line. Granted, he had no more time-outs and he needed a touchdown, but then the Packers would lead at least 32-31 (and maybe 34-31 after a two-point conversion try). Additionally, the Packers would probably score with so little time left that Brady would be able to run one, maybe two, plays and be unable to get his team close enough. Maybe.

All of that depended upon whether or not the defense would be able to stop Brady without a first down. But then the Packers got a break. The Tampa Bay kickoff returner, Jaydon Mickens, who until this point had done quite well, decided to flop down before he got close to any Green Bay player, thus taking away any chance of a fumble. Smart move, except for one thing: He did so with 2:02 left on the clock.

This might have made him the goat of the game. Tampa Bay needed to run one more play until the two-minute warning, which is an automatic time-out charged to neither team. This allowed the Packers to save all their time-outs for one more down. Then--again, if all worked out--they would get the ball back with those 90 seconds left (maybe 95 or 100, in fact), and a time-out left. The odds of Rodgers moving the Packers into the end zone thereby increased.

The additional advantage was that the Packer defense had played quite well against Tampa Bay's running attack nearly all game. In fact, the only run the Buccaneers had had over ten yards was a remarkable run by Leonard Fournette for 20 yards and a touchdown in the first half. So if Tampa Bay needed a first down to run out the clock, it would have to pass. Not that that bothered Tom Brady at all, but the Packers had already intercepted him three times, so it looked riskier than it might have otherwise been. An incomplete pass would stop the clock, giving the Packers one more time-out that it wouldn't have had to use.

Then Aaron Rodgers would have at least 1:35 left and two time-outs. Aha. LaFleur had a chance to look not only smart, but absolutely brilliant. But all of that depended upon everything turning in the Packers' favor, including not hurting themselves with mistakes, and Tampa Bay doing what everybody figured they'd do.

Neither happened. Brady didn't wait until third down to pass. On the first play, he threw a screen to enormous tight end Ron Gronkowski, who had not seen the ball very much that day, but who very nicely rambled down the sideline for some twenty yards. Time out for the two-minute warning.

Then the Packers really did stuff the Buccaneers for two running plays. Except they goofed big-time, leaving twelve men on the field for the second time in the game, a dumb foul emanating from sideline disorganization, which I can't recall the Packers doing the entire season up to that point. (What a time for such a dumb mistake! But then, see the kickoff.) That made it third and two, not third and seven.

Tampa Bay figured that the Packers would be ready to stop a run, so Brady threw--incomplete. But the Packers' Kevin King, who had given up that devastating touchdown at the end of the half, was guilty of defensive holding, giving Tampa Bay a first down. It then ran out the clock.

Could all of this have changed with a Packer touchdown and two-point conversion to tie the game, back with more than two minutes left? Sure. Did LaFleur respect Brady too much? Maybe. Did he lack belief in his defense? Not really. He just wanted it to come through in a different way. He didn't want to go through an overtime session and leave that to the coin flip. He saw a way through to win in regulation.

Let's not forget, too, that on third down at the Tampa Bay eight, Rodgers had scrambled out of the pocket and it looked as if he had a decent chance to run the ball in from there. Had he failed, he would still have been close, and a fourth down try might have been a more obvious choice. He threw into a crowd instead, believing he had a small but workable window. But in-between raising his arm and letting the ball go, it closed (I've played the position, and I can tell you, that happens). It fell incomplete. So there's that.

So that prompts the obvious question: Why didn't Rodgers run for it? I have an answer: Because he wouldn't have made it, and he knew it.

But that isn't it alone. If you recall watching Rodgers run, ever, you can conclude two things: He will either slide down, protected by rule, or run out of bounds (as he did against the Rams, when he ran the ball in at the near corner of the end zone). He was in the middle of the field, so going to the sideline would be an enormous, and unproductive, detour. And sliding on the two-yard line?

You have to be kidding. So he'd have to lunge for the touchdown, And there would be two, maybe three, Buccaneers coming at him at full speed, delivering contact that you could feel at home. If you doubt this, consider that Aaron Jones had been dispatched with that kind of a hit early in the second half, which made him cough up the ball in that fateful fumble. Jones did not return. (Granted, neither did the guy who hit him.)

Sure, Rodgers could have tried to do that. But he's no dummy. He might not have gotten up. And the Packers' substitute quarterback had not played a meaningful down the entire season. So there's that, too.

LaFleur pointed out his choices at a press conference yesterday, which he wisely held more than a week after the debacle. He has people up in the observation deck that see things that he can't--as do all teams--and relies on them to tell him what's really going on. He didn't have five yards, or three, or two. He had eight. That takes away some options. They told him to kick the ball. He stands by that decision.

If Rodgers does run and gets to the five-yard line (or inside it, which he probably would have), "then we're having a different kind of conversation," LaFleur said. Which means he would have been asking upstairs, Do you have a play that can work?

Okay, it didn't happen that way. But I get it. It's a huge letdown, though. If there was ever a chance for Aaron Rodgers to return to the Super Bowl, this was it, the tenth anniversary of the Packers' last win there. It's getting late for him now. It's absurd to say that Rodgers will ever have the kind of year he's just had. Green Bay remains the best pretty good team in the league.

Tom Brady, on the other hand, gets defending champ Kansas City, a tough task. But for the first time ever, a team playing in the Super Bowl has it on their home turf, as Tampa Bay does Sunday. Some guys have all the luck. As if he needs it.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark