18. Brandon Bostick and the One That Got Away

Years later, Aaron Rodgers confessed that the pain and ­disappointment of the 2014 NFC Championship Game hadn’t gone away. At the time of the conversation, Rodgers’ Packers hadn’t been back to a Super Bowl since the 2010 team won Super Bowl XLV, and Rodgers admitted that gut-wrenching loss to the Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field—in a game the Packers seemingly had sewn up—still stuck with him. “That game will always be frustrating, thinking about how it went down, some of the things that happened,” Rodgers replied in 2017 when asked what he recalled about the Packers’ 28–22 overtime loss. “If we win and then win the Super Bowl, everything is different. There’s something about winning two Super Bowls that separates you from other quarterbacks and organizations and coaches who have coached and played here and played other places. One is fantastic. A lot of people never get to play in the Super Bowl. But you win two and you start to enter some different, revered territory.”

Whether the Packers would have beaten the New England Patriots two weeks later, no one can say for sure. This much is certain: the NFL would have loved to have seen Rodgers and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady dueling on Super Bowl Sunday. Instead, it was the Seahawks and quarterback Russell Wilson who advanced, and the Patriots won the title, when Malcolm Butler picked Wilson off at the goal line to preserve the Patriots’ 28–24 victory and hand the Seahawks their own heartbreaking loss.

In the days leading up to the 2014 NFC Championship Game, Rodgers had been asked what a berth in a second Super Bowl would mean to his, general manager Ted Thompson, and coach Mike McCarthy’s legacies. They were four years removed from the Super Bowl XLV title, and the Packers were going into the game as healthy as they’d ever been so late in a season. Thompson and McCarthy had both signed contract extensions that would run through 2018, and Rodgers was on a contract that tied him to the organization through the 2019 season. Bright days seemed to be ahead. “You’d like to win a couple more because that’s when you really kind of cement your legacy and do something really special,” Rodgers said. “You look at some of the stuff we’ve done this fall—re-signed Ted, re-signing Mike—it’s set up to really do something special with the three of us working the majority of our careers together. It would be great to add a couple more trophies.”

Roughly 48 hours after making that comment—after what still stands as the most demoralizing, devastating loss in the franchise’s more than 100-year existence—one wondered not only if Rodgers, McCarthy, and Thompson would ever add those trophies, but if that trio would ever get that close again. “It’s going to be a missed opportunity that we’ll probably think about for the rest of my career,” Rodgers said immediately following the game. “We were the better team today and we played well enough to win. And we can’t blame anybody but ourselves.”

That much was true. The Packers squandered the biggest halftime lead in NFL history in a conference championship game—16 points. And after essentially dominating the game, they inexplicably stopped playing with the confidence, fearlessness, and temerity that had gotten them the lead in the first place and left Rodgers to not-so-subtly wonder aloud why that had happened.

The biggest mishap occurred with just more than two minutes to play after the Seahawks had pulled to within 19–14. All the Packers had to do was recover the ensuing onside kick, and they were on their way to Super Bowl XLIX. Instead, backup tight end Brandon Bostick decided to try to field an onside kick, even though his job was to block on the play. Instead of Jordy Nelson recovering the kick, the ball bounced off Bostick’s hands and helmet and into Seattle’s Chris Matthews’ arms, setting up the Seahawks’ go-ahead touchdown. “I just reacted and tried to make a play on it. Obviously, I didn’t,” a tearful Bostick said after the game. “I let my team down. I just feel like if I was able to do my job—my assignment was to block—Jordy would’ve caught the ball, and the game would’ve been over.”

But Bostick’s blunder was just one of many that allowed the Packers to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. “We gave it away,” wide receiver Randall Cobb said.

Wilson’s 35-yard touchdown pass to Jermaine Kearse with three minutes, 19 seconds elapsed in overtime was the knockout punch. But things had begun falling apart long before that. The Packers were in position to salt the game away up 19–7 and with the ball, following Morgan Burnett’s interception with just more than five minutes to play. It was then that it appeared the Packers stopped playing to win and began playing not to lose.

Before Bostick mishandled the Seahawks’ onside kick, the Packers’ special teams units had another crucial gaffe, getting caught napping on a fake field goal that went for Seattle’s first touchdown midway through the third quarter. “The special teams gave up seven points on the fake field goal. The onside kick was a huge momentum swing at a critical moment,” lamented McCarthy, whose playoff record at the time fell to 7–6. “There were two minutes and five seconds left. You get the football there, and we’re having a different press conference.”

Then came Burnett curling up in the fetal position after his interception instead of returning it with so much time remaining in the game. And there were Rodgers’ two interceptions, including one earlier in the game on which Rodgers was certain Seattle defensive end Michael Bennett had been offsides. Replays seemed to indicate he was right and that his interception to Richard Sherman on what he thought was a free play should have been wiped out.

“We had some chances early, had some chances late to do some things, and didn’t do it,” Rodgers said after finishing with 178 yards and a 55.8 passer rating for the game. “When you go back and think about it, at times we weren’t playing as aggressive as we usually are.”

Rodgers was referring to the Packers’ approach after getting the ball back with 6:53 left to play in regulation and holding that 19–7 lead. On the ensuing three plays from their own 13-yard line, the Packers gained one yard on a James Starks run and then five more on another Starks run. On third and 4 from the 19, Rodgers’ pass to tight end Andrew Quarless was broken up by linebacker K.J. Wright, and the Packers punted.

On the very next play, Wilson threw across the middle for Kearse, and the ball caromed to Burnett for an interception with 5:04 left. “With five minutes left in the game, there was nobody on our sideline that thought we could possibly lose that game,” veteran guard T.J. Lang said. “[It] just hurts that we know we had a chance to go move on and shot ourselves in the foot too many times. This one is going to hurt for a while.”

On first and 10 from the Packers’ 43-yard line, the Packers came out with Eddie Lacy and John Kuhn in the backfield, tight ends Quarless and Richard Rodgers at each end of the line of scrimmage, and Nelson as the only wide receiver split out, and the Seahawks countered with nine defenders in the box. At the snap Bennett knifed in between left tackle and left guard, went right past Kuhn, and tackled Lacy for a four-yard loss, and the Seahawks called their first timeout with 4:57 left.

On the ensuing second and 14, the Packers went to their favorite personnel group—three receivers, a tight end, and Lacy—and ran it again. Again, Bennett led the way and collapsed the left side of the Packers’ line, and Lacy was thrown for another two-yard loss. Seattle called timeout again with 4:50 to go.

Facing third and 16 at their own 37, the Packers gave it to Lacy again. When defensive end Cliff Avril beat Richard Rodgers off the snap, Lacy was swarmed after a two-yard gain, and the Packers had to punt. When Brett Goode’s snap flew back to punter Tim Masthay, four minutes remained, meaning the Packers had run only 64 seconds off the clock. The same offense that had impressively closed out one-score games against the Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons, Patriots, Minnesota Vikings, and the New York Jets with their so-called four-minute offense could not do it with a Super Bowl berth on the line.

In their victories against the Cowboys, Patriots, and Jets, Rodgers had to complete a critical third-down pass to run out the clock. Against the Seahawks, the Packers didn’t take that chance. “We’ve finished off games before in four-minute,” Rodgers said, parsing his words. “We had a chance to do some things, didn’t do it…You can’t let them complete a pass for a touchdown on a fake field goal, you can’t give up an onside kick, and you can’t not get any first downs in the fourth quarter and expect to win. And that’s on top of [the offense] being really poor in the red zone in the first half. Put all of that together, that’s how you lose games. This was a great opportunity. We were right on the cusp.”

Asked about his play-calling on those two late drives, McCarthy replied: “Hey, if you want to question my play-calling…I’m not questioning it. I came in here to run the ball. The one statistic I had as far as a target to hit was 20 rushing attempts in the second half. I felt [that] would be a very important target to hit for our offense.”

Lacy, who’d run 13 times for 57 yards in the first half, ran eight times for 16 yards in the second. No. 2 running back James Starks, who didn’t have a carry in the first half, ran five times for 44 yards, including a 32-yarder, in the second. The Seahawks defense knew the Packers would run the ball. “It’s always a tough situation, but it’s something we’ve thrived in throughout the year,” Lang said. “We had opportunities in that game—throughout the whole game—to really start to pull away. Just with a couple wasted possessions there in the fourth quarter, we let them hang around. And against a team like that, they’re going to cash in on those. It’s tough to deal with, especially late in the game when the most important thing is finishing, and we didn’t get it done.”

Things fell apart thereafter against a Packers defense that had been dominant up to that point. It took Wilson just 1:43 to pull the Seahawks to within 19–14 on his one-yard run after big completions to Doug Baldwin (30 yards) and Marshawn Lynch (26 yards). Then four plays after Bostick botched the onside kick, Lynch broke loose for a 24-yard touchdown run to give Seattle the lead with 1:25 to go.

And, as if that weren’t enough, with Julius Peppers, Sam Barrington, and Nick Perry chasing Wilson all over God’s green earth on the two-point conversion, Wilson launched a prayer into the end zone that rookie safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix failed to make a play on, allowing tight end Luke Willson to catch it for a three-point lead. That meant Rodgers’ speedy 1:11 drive and Mason Crosby’s clutch 48-yard field goal with 14 seconds left merely forced overtime, instead of winning the game, which the kick would have done had the Packers managed to stop the two-point conversion attempt. “We had a good drive there, and Mason made a great kick to put us into overtime,” Rodgers said. “You lose the toss, and the next thing you know, you’re out of it.”

Said McCarthy: “I have no regrets. I don’t regret anything. Hell, I expected to win the game, we were in position to win the game, and that’s football. We had opportunities to get that thing done and we came up a little short. This is an excellent football team I had the privilege of coaching this year, and that ain’t going to change. Hell, that’ll never change. Hey, we had our chance.”

McCarthy, Rodgers, and the 2014 team weren’t the first ones to lose a life-changing game. Mike Sherman, once the Packers coach and GM, lost the infamous fourth-and-26 game in the 2003 NFC Divisional Playoffs and was out of a job two years later. Quarterback Brett Favre threw an interception in overtime of the 2007 NFC Championship Game at home and never played another down for the team he’d come to embody.

By 2019 Rodgers was the only one left. Thompson had been forced out of his GM position in January of 2018. McCarthy was fired as coach in December of 2018 with four games left in the season. “Everything that happened along the way,” Rodgers said in 2018, “getting six points in two possessions inside the 5-yard line…and then obviously how well our defense played and us not being able to finish that game off there in the fourth quarter…and giving them a chance to come back…the sting’s probably never going to go away from that one.”