After the Green Bay Packers stunned the football world by
overcoming a 23-point halftime deficit to defeat the Dallas Cowboys 37-36, the
Packer press marveled at the “heart” the team showed, and how there was no “quit”
in them. But over at the Dallas Morning-News there was no respect
for the Packers, just relentless lamenting about the Cowboys defense, quarterback
Tony Romo’s mistakes, wide receiver Dez Bryant’s behavior, the wrong people
wearing on-field headsets, and why the coaches didn’t call more running plays. The word "choke" is being thrown about, although I seem to remember that another quarterback with a 9-11 playoff record blew a 24-0 halftime lead a few weeks ago against New England.
Even the game announcers for the national broadcast, Joe
Buck and Troy Aikman—both Cowboys homers—couldn’t contain their partisanship,
with Buck claiming that it “one of the worst defeats in the history of the
Dallas Cowboys,” while Aikman bellyached about clock management, and blamed
Romo’s second interception that sealed the win on poor route-running. To be “fair”
about Romo, he is not an interception machine like Brett Favre or Eli Manning,
and most of his mistakes seem to occur near the end of games in which he had played
well but was asked to throw one too many passes to keep up with the team’s frequent
defense collapses. Unfortunately for Romo (as was often the case with Favre) it
is usually the bad that tends to stick more in the mind than the good.
Disbelief at the result was due in part to the contempt for Packer
quarterback Matt Flynn in the Fox Sports studios, at ESPN and around the football media
generally; no one thought the Packers had a twigs’ chance in a bonfire
against the Cowboys without Aaron Rodgers in the line-up. One may recall that quarterback
“expert” Ron Jarworski rated Flynn the worst quarterback in the league before
the season started, and this kind of attitude became a self-fulfilling prophecy
when Flynn didn’t perform spectacularly in his only start with Oakland before
being cut. After the stunning victory, backhanded “praise” for Flynn’s
performance was typified by former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson “apologizing” to
Flynn, stating that he “forgot” that he was “playing against the Dallas
Cowboys.”
To be certain, at halftime these same people were
congratulating themselves on their “accurate” prediction of how the game would
develop, with the Cowboys having their way with the seemingly hapless Packers,
building a 26-3 lead at halftime. The last time the Packers faced such a
deficit was the 1982 strike-shortened season opener against the Los Angeles Rams, down 23-0 at
halftime. But that game was played at home, and the Packers helped the Rams build
that lead by committing 6 turnovers—fairly typical of the sometimes brilliant
but usually erratic play of quarterback Lynn Dickey; in the second half, the
Packers got their act together and outscored the Rams 35-0 to win going away.
This game was a different matter, however. The Packers committed
only one turnover, but they simply couldn’t get out of their own way either running
or passing the ball in the first half. In front of a (mostly) hostile road crowd, all seemed lost,
at least to the uninitiated. The Cowboys had shown at times they could score at
will against questionable defenses, and save for the fourth quarter in the Minnesota game that ended in an
overtime tie, the Packers offense was inconsistent at best in the absence of
Rodgers. But given all his setbacks in the past two years, Flynn is nothing if
not resilient. He has confessed that the criticisms that others have directed toward
him and the lack of faith that the teams he spent time with have weighed on him.
But back in Green Bay with players he spent four years with and had a comfort
level with, and knowing what his role is there without the pressure of heavy
expectations, a bad half against an erratic team like the Cowboys—as against Atlanta last week—wasn’t
the end of the world.
To be certain, the Thanksgiving Day massacre suffered
against the Detroit Lions showed that panicking and forcing the issue only made
a bad situation worse. No doubt the team loathed to repeat it. Now was the time
to pull oneself together in the second half and make a respectable account for
oneself. Against the lowly Falcons, victory at home was still a reasonable
possibility, but against the Cowboys on the road, it was just put together a
few scoring drives and see where the chips may fall. My own impression was that
having observed Flynn’s tendency to start cold—against Detroit in 2011 he was only
10-18 for 100 yards midway in the second quarter before erupting for 380 yards passing
the rest of the game—he only needed to get”warmed-up” against the Cowboys’ porous defense. I saw the beginning
of this on the last possession in the first half, when Flynn started to shred
the Cowboys defense before time expired.
That the Packers were able to score touchdowns on five
consecutive drives showed that putting one’s best effort one play at a time had
a way of becoming an unstoppable force, and by the time the Cowboys realized
what was happening to them, they were the ones in desperation mode. And
inevitably, despite putting up big numbers and playing error-free ball for 57
minutes, Romo’s poor judgment under pressure could be counted upon. After the
game, coach Mike McCarthy was visibly emotional at the team’s refusal to roll
over and play dead; one actually believes McCarthy when he says that this team
plays to win every game no matter if the stakes are small or large.
For Flynn, he can be assured that he has a place in Packer
history no matter what happens from here, playing in two of the most memorable
games in the franchise history. In my lifetime, this game and his 480-yard,
6-TD performance against the Lions rank with the 1983 Monday Night game against
the Redskins, and the 1992 game against Cincinnati that began the legend of Brett
Favre.
No comments:
Post a Comment