If you went to bed early Saturday night, you missed one of the wildest finishes to an NFL playoff game ever, an instant classic that kept topping itself with outrageous plays.
This Arizona Cardinals' 26-20 overtime win over the Green Bay Packers in Glendale, Ariz., was just crazy.
Who sends a playoff game into overtime on a long Hail Mary on the final play of regulation?
No one ... until the Packers on Saturday night. Yet they still lost early into overtime when Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald added to his already legendary career by becoming the hero in OT."We didn't touch the ball in overtime," Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said after the Cards won it on a Carson Palmer-to-Fitzgerald 5-yard touchdown pass 1:05 into the extra period. "It comes down to a coin flip sometimes after a long hard-fought game, back-and-forth ... bizarre plays made by both teams. Unfortunately, it comes down to that."
Even that overtime coin flip was a bizarre first that'll probably never happen again.
Here's what happened late:
With Arizona trailing 13-10 and driving with under 4 minutes to play in the fourth quarter, Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer threw a pass to Fitzgerald at the 2 that was deflected by a Packers defender and tipped high in the air to Michael Floyd in the middle of the end zone for a touchdown. This wild play included controversy, too, because Arizona got away with obvious offensive pass interference.Following an Arizona field goal that made it a seven-point game, the Packers' final drive included two miracles, first a 61-yard pass from Rodgers to Jeff Janis on a fourth-and-20 from the Green Bay four with 52 seconds remaining. The same combination made NFL history a few plays later when Green Bay had time for one more play from the Arizona 41 with five seconds remaining. Rodgers took the snap, faced a big rush, rolled left and fired a prayer to the end zone while being sacked. With a defender in front of him and behind him, Janis leaped high in the air and pulled it in for a dramatic score. Incredibly, the game went to overtime after the Packers kicked the extra point. "That may be one of the greatest throws ever made ... moving to his left, falling away and launching a perfect throw," NBC's Cris Collingsworth said during the telecast.The overtime started with more controversy ... the coin toss. Referee Clete Blakeman flipped the coin, it landed ... then he picked it up and said the toss didn't count because his flip never flipped. He flipped it again without giving Green Bay an opportunity to decide again on heads or tails. Arizona won the flip and took the ball first. "I've seen pizzas flip more than that," Collinsworth said. "He couldn't do that again if he tried it a hundred times and not have it flip once.After Green Bay kicked off in OT, Arizona got the ball on its 20 and nearly won the game on its first play when Palmer, after avoiding a sack, hit a wide open Fitzgerald at the 35. Fitzgerald took off down the left sideline, cut inside between a pack of defenders, broke a tackle and rambled 75 yards all the way to the Green Bay 5.If Green Bay had held Arizona to a field goal on the first drive of OT, the game would have continued with the Packers getting a chance on offense. Instead, the Cards won it two plays after Fitzgerald's big gainer. Following an incompletion, Palmer and Fitzgerald hooked up again on a shovel pass for the winning score to set off a celebration on the field and in the stands at University of Phoenix Stadium. "It was a roller coaster on the sideline," coach Bruce Arians told reporters. "You've just got to keep all of your emotions in check. Good, bad or ugly, you've got to go to the next play and that's basically what our football team did.
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