I'm spent. It's late, I have to get up for work at 4:30am EST, I have bronchitis, and a nasty cold not to mention a blood pressure reading of 235/176 right now. This team better get to church tomorrow because there was a ton of divine intervention in this win because quite frankly for most of the game they didn't play like they wanted to win. In fact, at the end it looked like they were doing their damndest to try to lose.
The Good
A Win-A win is a win and when it's in the playoffs it's even better although it seemed like this team sleepwalked through near 3/4 of it.
Fitz-I told my wife that when the time comes and he's inducted into the Hall of Fame, I will be there one way or the other. Only someone like him could pull off something like this. When this team was seemingly on life support, barely registering a heartbeat, he pulled out his AED(automated external defibrillator) and shocked this team back to life. Big reason why I changed into my Fitz jersey at halftime(I was wearing my Plummer jersey). I vow to only wear this one for the rest of the season.
Luck-And I don't mean Andrew. I can point to several points where we simply got lucky: The Floyd TD that gave us the lead, a big pass play over the outstretched arms of Jake Ryan, Shields dropping a sure pick near the goal line. There are more but those are the big ones and I believe they were on the same drive.
Palmer's First Playoff Win-He can finally put that ghost to rest but it wasn't easy. He was way off his game for most of the game. The team had 76 total yards in the first half and most of those came in one scoring drive.
Overcoming 0-3 When Trailing After 3 Quarters-Saw that graphic and found it interesting. Got that monkey off our backs.
2nd Half Offensive Line-With a few plays aside, they got it together when it counted.
The Bad
1st Half Offensive Line-They seemed like they were asleep as they couldn't keep Palmer clean.
Running Game-Non-existent. Only 40 yards rushing the entire game.
1st Half And First 3rd Of 3rd Quarter- Was it butterflies? I don't know but this wasn't our team during this time.
Defense-They made some big plays which is the reason why this isn't in the ugly category but they were God awful most of tonight. I know it was Aaron Rogers but for God's sake you don't give up big plays like that. How many 3rd and longs? How about 4th and 20 on their own 2 yard line and they convert for 62 yards? And that Hail Mary was ridiculous. They better figure things out because if not both Newton and Wilson will carve them up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey. Damned lucky Fitz pulled the defense's nuts out of the fire but let's not kid ourselves, you can't play like that against anyone and expect to win a championship.
Play Calling-Packers have no timeouts and BA calls a pass play. I get it. It was to Fitz but you don't leave time on the clock for Rogers and look what happened. Instead of giving him maybe a minute tops you give him nearly 2 minutes. You run a running play to run it down to the 2 minute warning. Then run another to take it down to about 1:20 then call timeout and kick the FG. As it stood, all Rogers needed was 4 seconds to tie the game.
The Ugly
Final Drive Defense-I don't think I need to comment any further except to reiterate you simply do not let that happen.
The Officiating-This is becoming a real problem. All game long GB's offensive line was holding to the point where they were getting so brave as to literally start tackling our pass rushers or outright grabbing their jerseys. There were missed calls on both sides but we were getting robbed all game long and to top it all off, they couldn't even flip the damned coin right.
Well, that's it. I'm sick as a dog and just called off sick from work(hate using sick days this early) and really need my rest. G'night all.
