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There wasn’t a lot of memorable NFL action in Week 8, but one game was set to fix all that. The Rams and Packers put together a heavyweight battle of explosive offenses in Sunday’s featured game, pitting a two-time MVP still in his prime against the NFL’s last undefeated team.
When Greg Zuerlein’s 34-yard field goal parted the uprights to give Los Angeles a 29-27 lead, he also gave Aaron Rodgers another opportunity to prove himself as the league’s most clutch quarterback with a game-winning two-minute drill — this time against one of the league’s most disruptive defenses and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Aaron Donald.
Or so it seemed.
Zuerlein booted the ball back to Green Bay with 2:04 remaining, launching his kick two yards into the Packers end zone. Returner Ty Montgomery was supposed to have taken a knee to give his team the ball at its 25-yard line with one timeout and one play to burn before the two-minute warning. Instead, he opted to run back the kick — and fumbled away Green Bay’s comeback hopes in the process.
Montgomery’s return made it to his 19-yard line before crashing into Ramik Wilson, who punched the ball out and made the recovery a split-second later. Instead of 124 seconds to find three points, Rodgers and the Packers now had to hope for three stops and the opportunity to get the ball back with around 15 seconds on the clock and no timeouts. Any optimism among a green-and-gold heavy LA crowd sailed away when Todd Gurley broke free for 17 yards on third-and-10 to seal the game for the home team.
And while that was great for the Rams, it was absolutely brutal for anyone else watching.
Montgomery’s fumble robbed the Rams of their biggest test of the year
Rodgers, the league’s MVP in 2011 and 2014, remains one of the league’s most dangerous quarterbacks with the game on the line. He proved that with epic comebacks against the Bears and 49ers in his team’s 3-2-1 start. For one fleeting moment, he looked like he’d have the chance to reinforce the notion against the league’s No. 4 scoring defense.
The Rams’ ascension to the top of the NFC has been the result of an impressive balancing act. Los Angeles boasts one of the game’s most explosive offenses behind third-year quarterback Jared Goff and a litany of weapons, including do-it-all tailback Todd Gurley. But a stellar defense — led by Donald and a pocket-collapsing front seven — was the counterpunch that had pushed the club to 7-0 and an average 15-point margin of victory to start the season.
Rodgers struggled in stretches against a fearsome pass rush, even though he’d protected the ball in a 286-yard performance. Donald had sacked him twice — including a vital third-down tackle for loss to end the drive prior to Zuerlein’s lead-taking kick. He’d also been part of a unit that had forced the veteran QB to skip throws to open receivers downfield. They’d also limited the historically elusive Rodgers to just 5 rushing yards on a single scramble.
But Rodgers had also just led his team back from a 23-13 deficit behind a handful of big plays. The headliner was a 40-yard touchdown strike to Marquez Valdes-Scantling that gave the Pack a 27-26 lead with 8:50 to play:
There were also four other passes of 14+ yards that proved he could strike with cobra-like efficiency when presented with even the smallest of opportunities.
And Rams coach Sean McVay was welcoming him to come challenge his defense
McVay didn’t blink at the chance to shut Rodgers down at his best. The longtime Packers QB has led 21 game-winning drives in his NFL career, and the league’s youngest coach was confident he wouldn’t get a 22nd in Los Angeles. His Rams trailed 27-26 with 3:38 to play when they faced second-and-20 at the Green Bay 23.
Rather than take aim at the end zone in an earnest attempt to put Rodgers and the Packers down by a touchdown, McVay chose two safe runs with Gurley instead. This was the strategic equivalent of waving a red cloth in front of a bull. He put himself in a position where Rodgers would have two minutes to drive ~40 yards to set up a game-winning field goal.
He was willing to take the low-risk, low-reward points and bet on his defense to stop him because all he’s seen from his defense in 2018 has been an encyclopedia of ass kicking. When the Packers could have iced the game with a fresh set of downs, 6:49 to play, and a one-point lead, that unit forced Rodgers into a three-and-out where the only thing resembling a successful play was a hard-earned 4-yard run.
It was a risky bet, but it made sense. Donald started the season slowly before returning to his 2017 level of play and then exceeding it. His sack the drive prior gave him 10 in his last five games and served as proof the Packers’ couldn’t contain him with a single blocker.
It was also a prime opportunity to prove his defense could stand up to the kind of offense Los Angeles could see this postseason. 2018 hasn’t really given McVay much in the way of crunch-time tests; before Sunday, the Rams had only trailed for 8:55 of a possible 105 fourth-quarter minutes.
So the stage was set: Aaron Rodgers’ unstoppable force vs. Aaron Donald’s immoveable object. And then Montgomery, who’d averaged 23 yards per kick return at that point, decided he was going to go against Mike McCarthy’s plan and do his damndest to give Rodgers a little extra field position, and everything went to hell.
What’s worse, it may prevent us from seeing this matchup again in the playoffs
One fumble cheated us of the talking point Week 8 desperately needed — and would have erased the Geneva Convention-defying experience of having to watch 49ers-Cardinals from our memories. And it could be the difference between the Packers’ return to the postseason and another disappointing year in Green Bay.
The Packers had already suffered through a weird season in their 3-2-1 start. Week 2 saw the world’s worst roughing the passer call turn a win over the Vikings into a tie. Week 5 bore witness to typically reliable kicker Mason Crosby collapsing in upon himself like a dying star. But bookending those regrettable outcomes were two memorable Rodgers’ comebacks that left Green Bay half a game behind the Vikings in the NFC North race.
Sunday’s loss drops the club to 3-3-1 — from a projected wild card spot to the outside looking in. The final nine games of the Packers’ schedule include games at New England, at Minnesota, and at Chicago against a team they barely beat at home in Week 1. Week 8’s defeat against an undefeated Rams team on the road proved Green Bay can still hang with anyone. That’s could be a moot point if that two-point loss winds up taking away the wiggle room the team needs to overcome the next game where DeShone Kizer has to play meaningful snaps, or two of the team’s starting wide receivers miss the game due to injury, or Matthews gets a game-changing personal foul for looking too meanly at a quarterback, or Crosby’s leg flies off his body while attempting a 33-yard kick.
Meanwhile, the Rams are barreling toward a future where they enter the postseason as Super Bowl betting favorites. They overcame some early adversity when they faced their biggest deficit this season, down 10-0 early. Los Angeles adjusted to the Packers’ pressure, directing more and more passes into the flat and taking advantage of Gurley’s pass-catching skills to fill the voids left by Green Bay’s blitzing linebackers.
That helped the team come back from its first scoreless quarter of the year — and proved quarterback Goff is flexible enough to adapt to a changing game plan and work little-used players into his rotation. He nearly doubled Josh Reynolds’ receiving output for the year in a three-catch, two-touchdown performance Sunday.
There are still questions about the Rams defense
The defense showed it could handle Rodgers in stretches, but was deprived of the opportunity to stand up against one of the game’s most clutch players when it mattered most. This would have been huge for a unit that allowed Case Keenum to throw for 91 fourth-quarter yards in a three-point win in Week 6, but that also sacked Russell Wilson twice and held up to a 1 for 4 performance as the Rams turned a 31-24 deficit into a 33-31 win in Week 5.
Which is all to say that, yeah, the Los Angeles defense looks pretty legit. That doesn’t mean it still doesn’t have questions to answer, however. Shutting down Rodgers’ comeback attempt would have been a statement, but that’s a showdown we didn’t get to see.
That’s OK for the Rams. They still got an important win to improve to 8-0, and they found answers to many of the strategies Green Bay used to challenge them — a dialed-up pass rush foremost among them — along the way. Second-half games against the Saints, Chiefs, and Eagles will give the LA defense plenty of chances to prove themselves against elite, play-extending quarterbacks.
But it sucks for anyone waiting to see if Rodgers could crack one of the league’s toughest defenses with his third game-winning drive of the season. And it definitely sucks for the Packers, who are now witnesses to the weirdest 3-3-1 start in NFL history.
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