WHERE TO BEGIN?
At approx 4.33am GMT, the Arizona Cardinals secured their place in the NFC Championship Game with a 26-20 overtime win over the Green Bay Packers.
In a tense first half, Carson Palmer and Michael Floyd combined for the game’s first touchdown down, the quarterback’s inch perfect pass matched only by his receiver’s awareness to get both feet down at the back of the endzone.
Both teams struggled offensively for the rest of the first half and the best the Packers could produce was this phenomenal one-handed catch, which, sadly, was not allowed to stand.
Instead, Green Bay had to settle for a pair of field goals to go into half-time 7-6 down.
The offensive struggles continued at the start of the third quarter, both sides opening with interceptions before Green Bay finally found the endzone, thanks in large part to this 61-yard run by Eddie Lacy:
Which was quickly followed by a Jeff Janis touchdown catch from Aaron Rodgers’ pass:
Though Palmer was clearly struggling with an injured finger, the Packers failed to take advantage of another interception, which allowed the quarterback to lead his team on their best drive of the game, even if they did require two questionable ball placements and a missed pick to help them out.
Even on his second touchdown pass of the game, the former Raiders and Bengals quarterback needed a massive slice of luck to see Floyd catch his second score, one which put Arizona up by four with 3.44 left in the game.
The Packers next drive stuttered badly and Rodgers missed his receiver with a fourth down conversion, giving the Cardinals the ball in great field position.
Arizona, however, decided to throw on second down and took very little time off the clock before kicking the three to go 20-13 up and leaving Rodgers with just under two minutes to move the ball 85 yards.
And guess what… it was Hail Mary time again for Rodgers. Not once, but twice.
On fourth and 20, and scrambling around his own endzone, number 12 hit Janis for a 61-yard gain to keep the game alive.
Then with five seconds left, Rodgers needed another Hail Mary and, to nobody’s surprise, he absolutely nailed it, Janis again with the catch to send the game to overtime.
There was even drama at the coin toss in overtime as it had to be repeated because it didn’t actually flip the first time around.
And while it may have felt like all the momentum was with Green Bay, nobody told Larry Fitzgerald who took the very first pass of overtime 75 yards:
Fttingly the game ended with number 11 going into the endzone and so it is the Cardinals that move on to the NFC Championship game after the most dramatic of finishes.
