Early in the second quarter, controversy brewed between the referees and the teams.
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It was enough time for a final heave to the end zone, where Janis outjumped All-Pro cornerback Peterson and safety Rashad Johnson to bring the ball down as the Packers fans went insane and the Cardinals faithful fell silent.
With the production of those two players, it’ll be interesting to see just how the Packers address the wide receiver position in the offseason.
For 60 minutes, the Green Bay Packers’ defense did the job against the Arizona Cardinals’ high-powered offense. Two penalties were on the Cardinals, as they had 12 men on the field and linebacker Markus Golden was called for an illegal use of hands. At halftime, it was 7-6 Cardinals. When the Cardinals drove to the Packers’ 7 on the next possession, the defense stiffened and held them to a field goal.
However, Carson Palmer hasn’t played his best football down the stretch, and he struggled at times with some bad throws against Green Bay. But if they fail to score or only score a field goal, the other team has a chance to win it.
Packers wide receiver Jeff Janis somehow hauled in a 41-yard Hail Mary as time expired, tying the Packers and Cardinals at 20 after the extra point. The Cardinals simply couldn’t stop him and Janis as the Packers drove 96 yards in just a few plays to tie the game up and send it into overtime. “He was showing heads, so I called tails, and it didn’t flip”.
Click on the video above to watch coin flip gate. Aaron Rodgers was also having a sub-par game, and he didn’t get a chance to make things better in overtime. Playing for overtime gave the Cardinals more opportunities to demonstrate their superiority, which they did.
Fitzgerald turned a short pass into a 75-yard gain on the first play of overtime to set up his 5-yard shovel pass reception for the winning score as the crowd chanted “Larry!”
Call it Arizona’s “Hail Larry”. Palmer would then try to find Fitzgerald in the corner of the end zone, but failed to do so as the pass soared just out of his reach.
There were some insane stats associated with this game.
Fitzgerald caught eight passes for 176 yards. While Jones caught 50 passes during the regular season, Abbrederis and Janis had both combined to catch just 11 balls for 190 yards heading into the playoffs.
After spending the last two weeks recovering from knee and back injuries, Gronkowski had touchdown catches from 8 and 16 yards.
Brady matched 1970s Oakland star Kenny Stabler as the only quarterbacks in National Football League history to take their teams to five consecutive conference championship games.
He was seeing extensive action because Davante Adams was out because of a knee injury and Cobb was knocked out of the game because of a chest injury sustained on a spectacular one-handed grab of Rodgers’ 51-yard pass in the first quarter, a play that was negated by offsetting penalties.
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He had a number of big plays throughout the game, including three catches of 20-plus yards to keep the chains moving.
