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Acme Packing Company’s countdown of the Green Bay Packers’ best plays of the 2018 season continues on today with play No. 2, as voted by our writers.
While the play in question fell short of the top spot, it did garner six first-place votes. As little as one changed vote could have pushed it into the No. 1 spot.
The situation
The Packers and Cowboys have traded blows for most of the second half of their rematch of the previous season’s playoff classic. In the most recent lead change, Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott led an impressive fourth-quarter drive that took nearly nine minutes off the clock and ended with him scrambling for an 11-yard touchdown. That score put the Cowboys back in front with a 31-28 lead.
Still, Dallas left Aaron Rodgers with 1:02 on the game clock, nearly twice the amount of time it took him to produce the game-winning drive featuring Acme Packing Company’s No. 1 play of the Packers’ 2016 season. Once again, Rodgers marched Green Bay’s offense down the field and into the red zone.
The play
Technically, the Packers ran the play twice. From the shotgun, Rodgers has three receivers split out right with Davante Adams singled up on the left. The trio on the right runs fly patterns while Adams stutter steps then fades towards the end zone.
On the first attempt, Rodgers throws the ball too far inside, resulting in an incompletion. Recognizing that Adams had rookie cornerback Jourdan Lewis beat, Rodgers audibles back to the play on the very next down. Again, Adams beats Lewis to the outside and Rodgers throws the ball to the wideout’s back shoulder.
The impact
As if the Cowboys hadn’t learned from their heartbreaking defeat to the Packers in the previous season, you cannot leave Rodgers any time on the clock with only a single-possession differential. Rodgers’ connection with Adams came with only 11 seconds remaining in regulation, officially not a walk-off score but the next closest thing. It represents the high point of Rodgers’ season, as he suffered a broken collarbone the following week and appeared in only one more game in 2017.