If You Can't Win the Super Bowl, Win the Soap Opera
If You Can't Win the Super Bowl, Win the Soap Opera
The Lions survive the Vikings, the 49ers reach DEFCON 2, the Packers white out their mistakes, and Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson party like it's 2014.
Aaron Rodgers versus Russell Wilson? What year is this, 2015? After watching Sunday Night Football, would you like to watch an episode of Arrow? Take the Ice Bucket Challenge? Debate the likelihood and merits of a Jeb Bush presidency? Discuss this trending “DeflateGate” controversy on Twitter?
Rodgers and Wilson faced off in the 2014 NFC Championship Game. Surely you remember: Packers special teamer Brian Bostick mishandled the onside kick, the Seahawks scored two touchdowns in 30 fourth-quarter seconds, and Wilson threw an overtime touchdown to Jermaine Kearse to lead the Seahawks to the Super Bowl. That was nearly 10 years ago. (The DeflateGate report broke hours later, after the Patriots won the AFC title.)
Remember the Fail Mary? It was over 12 years ago that replacement referees (long story) awarded a last-second touchdown to Golden Tate for getting his fingertips on a tiny swath of the football that Packers defender M.D. Jennings cradled with the rest of his body in the end zone. Seahawks 14, Packers 12. Both Wilson and Rodgers led their teams to the second round of the playoffs that year.
Rodgers and Wilson met again in the 2019 playoffs. Rodgers was in his second peak then, Wilson beginning his decline, and the Packers took a commanding lead that Wilson could not overcome with fourth-quarter sorcery. That was just five years ago. But they were five long years for Rodgers, Wilson and the rest of us.
Rodgers and Wilson were two of the best quarterbacks of the 2010s. They used to play for all the marbles. Then, to varying degrees, they each lost their marbles, as well as their fastballs and a step or two. That’s why their Sunday night showdown was emphatically not an AFC Championship preview. It threatened to be more of a seedy soap opera or some corny horror movie from yesteryear: Count Antivaxula vs. Frankenweenie.