Thirty-seven seconds. That's all Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers needed to pull off a 30-28 road victory over the San Francisco 49ers.
After the San Francisco 49ers took a one-point lead inside the final minute, the reigning NFL MVP needed just 37 seconds, with zero timeouts, to get the Packers 42 yards and into range for Mason Crosby's 51-yard game-winning field goal.
Rodgers found star receiver Davante Adams, who'd been briefly knocked out of the game earlier on a crushing hit, for two chunk gains over the middle. Without a timeout left, the Packers put on a clinic on rushing to the line for spikes to stop the clock.
Rodgers said after the game the first play of the series, a 25-yarder to Adams, was a play the team worked on in practice in Friday "kind of scribbling in the dirt." After Adams came open again over the middle, it set up Crosby.
The kicker drilled the game-winner right down the middle.
"How can you not be romantic about football, man?" Rodgers said after the win, borrowing a line from Brad Pitt in Moneyball.
Rodgers' sideline reaction to the win should shut up any lingering, foolish thought about the quarterback not being invested in this team. The offseason turmoil is over. Rodgers is devoted to getting to a Super Bowl with this team. The future will worry about the future.
"I feel good about our team," Rodgers said, via the Associated Press. "Week 1 was an anomaly. I said that and I believe that. We bounced back Week 2. Played a great team tonight right down to the wire. This plane ride is going to feel incredible."
After a Week 1 stinker, Rodgers is right back into MVP form, tossing darts all over the field with perfect placement. His 12-yard TD to Marquez Valdes-Scantling early in the fourth quarter was picture-perfect, dropping it right over the defender without sailing it too high. There are a handful of people on the planet who can make that throw. If that many.
After the Packers, who punted just three times on 10 drives, kicked a field goal to go up six points just ahead of the two-minute warning, the 49ers responded with an eight-play, 75-yard TD drive to take their first lead of the night. It didn't last long.
Asked after the game how much time he thought he needed to engineer the game-winning drive without any timeouts, Rodgers quipped: "37 (seconds)." Coach Matt LaFleur took the question more literally, suggesting, "Thirty-five seconds... maybe 34."
Rodgers once again showed that leaving any time on the clock for a Hall of Fame QB is folly.
"There's always too much time on the clock if there's ever time on the clock, especially with Aaron Rodgers," Niners tight end George Kittle said. "I think we have a really good defense. I don't really have any worries when our defense is out on the field. But it's Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams over there. They did what they had to do to win."
