In case you were under the illusion that Aaron Rodgers just wanted to get Randall Cobb back to Green Bay in July to prove a point, the Packers’ Week 4 win over the Steelers should dispelled that notion—four of Cobb’s five catches converted third downs and the other was his second of two touchdowns. And if you needed to be further disabused of the idea? Rodgers obliged you on this beautiful Cincinnati Sunday afternoon.
He did it with 2:33 left in overtime, on third-and-16 from the Bengals’ 47, with the knowledge that failing to convert might mean not seeing the ball again. At the snap, Rodgers took a short drop and drifted back to his left with edge rushers Trey Hendrickson and Sam Hubbard closing in.
From there, he snapped his wrist and flicked the ball into the middle of the field, giving a subtle signal to his buddy of nearly 12 years to break toward it.
“I think a lot of that was just it,” coach Matt LaFleur said over the phone later in the night, after getting back to Green Bay. “Because it was within the timing of the play. So I think that was just him having trust in Randall and Randall making a big-time catch. And he’s done that. Even in the limited opportunities he’s had, he has totally produced for us.”
These are the 2021 Packers—different, but in so many ways still the same.
To say it’s been a weird year in Green Bay would be an understatement. The offseason was tumultuous really from start (right after the loss to the Buccaneers) to finish (Rodgers’s reporting for training camp on time, without much notice). And worse, the season itself got off to about as disastrous a start as anyone could’ve imagined, with a blowout loss to a Saints team still in the throes of the Hurricane Ida aftermath playing a “home” game in Jacksonville.
Turns out, that wouldn’t be the demise of the Rodgers era Packers. Or even close.
Instead, the Packers regrouped and stood tall in Cincinnati on Sunday, in about as sideways a game as you could imagine. The Bengals battled back from 16–7 and 22–14 deficits behind their own force-of-nature quarterback, Joe Burrow, and after they tied it at 22, things got really strange. Joe Mixon’s touchdown tied it with 3:32 to go, and from there came a six-possession stretch with five missed field goals and a Burrow pick.
Which is where the Packers’ three most-tenured players took over. First, it was Rodgers with his ridiculous throw to Cobb. Then, it was LaFleur’s green-lighting Mason Crosby, fresh off three consecutive misses, to take a 49-yarder to win the game.
“This guy’s made big kick after big kick, at least while I’ve been here, and I feel like every time that we’ve asked him to come through, he has,” LaFleur continued. “I tried not to think too much about what had happened prior to that last kick, and more or less be like, ”
Crosby figured it out, all right, and now the Packers have won four straight.
Which is to say what happened in the offseason is, at least temporarily, on the backburner. Mostly because this Green Bay team is rounding into becoming what everyone thought it could be all along.
