Five Signature Moments from Green Bay Packers History
Don't leap to any conclusions about what moment ranks first.
The following countdown of Packers Signature Moments contains no Brett Favre moments.
This was not done as part of some politically-motivated effort to “cancel” Favre from history. Favre produced dozens of unforgettable highlights; so many that they blend together decades later. But the Signature Moments chosen from his era celebrate the accomplishments of other individuals.
Here are some Favre highlights, just so there are no hard feelings.
There are also no pre-Lombardi moments on this list. No Curly Lambeau or Don Huston. No Burning of Rockwood Lodge, tempting as it was to include. This series is about living history and memory. A moment has to have some resonance with us. It can live on as a tale told by our fathers or by old columnists, but not merely as a page in an encyclopedia.
Packers history is unbelievably rich and undeniably complicated, particularly over the past 30 years. I tried my best to encapsulate the true, deep Packers experience.
5. Aaron Rodgers Draws Up a Miracle
Date: January 15th, 2017.
The hindsight of history can make defeat appear inevitable and erase the triumphs that preceded it.
Yes, Aaron Rodgers’ Packers spent most of the 2010s losing in the playoffs, often in heartbreakingly unique ways. But they won many playoff games too, sometimes in spectacular fashion, as when Rodgers rolled left and connected with Jared Cook on the left sideline on third-and-20 with three seconds left in a tied divisional-round game against the Dallas Cowboys, setting up a game-winning field goal.
Whether it was a full play call, half a play call or no call at all, Aaron Rodgers' 36-yard completion to Jared Cook with 3 seconds left in Sunday's playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys doesn't happen every day.
In fact, according to Rodgers, it's never quite happened like that where he essentially made it up as he went along in the huddle.
"That would be a first," Rodgers said Wednesday on ESPN's Dan Le Batard Show.
The way receiver Randall Cobb described it earlier in the week, Rodgers told Cook and Davante Adams which routes to run and told everyone else to just run to the left.
"I said everybody kind of run over to the left, and get open -- not exactly in those words, but that was basically the gist of it," Rodgers said on the show. – Rob Demovsky, ESPN, January 18th, 2017.
Rodgers’ pass to Cook was a spectacular throw at a pivotal moment in a critical game. Rodgers’ Packers career was full of them.
Ah, but you can hear Rodgers the Complicated Fella rumbling in the foreground of the Demovsky feature quoted above. He drew up the play. He called the play. He made sure Dan LeBatard’s audience knew that any contributions from Mike McCarthy were strictly ancillary. Julius Caesar could not have done a better job at making sure that credit was given where he thought it was due.
And we know that the Packers got pummeled by the Falcons in the NFC Championship the next week. Rodgers was rapidly becoming the GOAT at assigning blame.
We’ll get to that side of Rodgers in a moment. But let’s start by celebrating the brilliance that made Rodgers the best pure quarterback of the 2010s and made the Packers appointment television and a compelling story every postseason.
4. Desmond Howard Breaks the Patriots’ Back
Date: January 26th, 1997.
The most spectacular plays by far came from Howard, who came to Green Bay with his Heisman Trophy in need of some good polishing. A castoff from the Washington Redskins, he was criticized there for his lack of energy bursting off the line of scrimmage and a lack of overall toughness -- not to mention his falling asleep in meetings. After he was put on the expansion list by Washington, claimed by Jacksonville and then released, the Packers took a chance on him.
''Obviously, I never quit on myself,'' Howard said after the game, ''or I wouldn't be standing here.''
Sometimes all a player needs is a change of scene -- and a stage.
The biggest play of the game came after the Patriots had cut a 13-point Green Bay lead to 27-21 with 3 minutes 27 seconds left in the third quarter. The Patriots had been kicking to Howard all evening, and Patriots punter Tom Tupa again kicked the ball right down the middle of the field to him. That's a no-no.
The seams opened just at the right time and just in the right places, and at about the 40-yard line, Howard broke loose. He followed Don Beebe up the middle and bolted by Tupa as if Tupa were a planted turnip. Howard then jetted into the end zone.
This time, there was no trash talking because no Patriots were in sight. That made the score 35-21.
''Obviously it was a backbreaker,'' Howard said. ''They had just scored, they had the momentum. Then we have my return, and that was basically the game.''
Of all the pre-game hype, in all of the news conferences, in all of the prognostications, few people expected Howard would be the one to break the hearts of the Patriots.
Or be the one to get a phone call from President Clinton, who had watched on television. He told Howard he would see him in Washington, since the Packers were invited to the White House. Howard has come a long way, from the unemployment line to talking football with the President. – Mike Freeman, New York Times, January 27th, 1997.
Note: Adam Vinatieri, not Tupa, kicked off to Howard and turned into a planted turnip, as Pat Summerall states in his minimalist call of Howard’s touchdown.
The 1990s Packers moved mountains to return to the Promised Land. God told Reggie White to sign with the Packers a few years before Super Bowl XXXI, and who are we to argue? Brett Favre’s Packers lost three straight playoff games to the Cowboys, but the second-year expansion Panthers straightened the playoff path for the 1996 Packers by toppling the Wowboys dynasty before humbling themselves one week later on a typically icy January day in Lambeau.
And then there was Howard, the former Heisman winner and fourth-overall pick. As Freeman notes, the Jaguars plucked him away from Washington in the 1995 expansion draft, then cut him after one year. Howard was an almost-literal stone that the builders rejected. A cornerstone? Not nearly. But a missing piece. The Packers might not have won Super Bowl XXXI without his pull-away touchdown AND the two long early-game punt returns that set up Packers scores.
After 20 years as little more than a shrine to their past greatness, the Packers became innovators again in the mid-1990s. The White signing ushered in the era of free agency. Mike Holmgren was tactically daring, and his Packers kept attacking when leading late in the second half, a strategy that would soon become standard in both the NFL and college football. Farve did the impossible and made spontaneity palatable to stodgy old control-freak coaches.
Depending on your definition of “modern,” the modern NFL truly began when the Packers proved that a team could win a championship with a playground gunslinger and some mercenaries-for-hire. Howard ensured that the message would not be lost. Mysterious ways, indeed.