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Greatest Packers Games, Installment 7: Packers v. Giants, Jan. 20, 2008

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That would be before and after the game, respectively.

This was definitely one of their most exciting games of all time, but most of us Cheeseheads would not consider it one of the greatest since the outcome was not what we wanted. But for those of you who remember my last (and first) installment in this series, I have a slightly different vision for it.Clint Eastwood is big out here in the Bay Area of California, where I now reside, and I have always loved his films (and his restaurant, jazz store…).

My favourite Clint film is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. My first installment was The Good, in which I proposed to my wife on the scoreboard at Candlestick in a thrilling victory over her 49ers.

Thus, it is time for the bad.

In my case the bad started over four hours before game time. It was almost 11am PST, and we were just walking out of church in Oakland to find our front passenger side tire was flat. I went to a station to get it pumped up, but kept an eye and ear out for trouble in case it had a major hole since I knew I had to travel across the Bay Bridge back home to San Francisco.

It did not make it. By the time we crossed Treasure Island, it was smoking and I was driving about half my normal speed. I took the first exit and prepared to change the tire. “Just call Triple-A,” my wife suggested, but I told her by the time AAA got to me I would have the tire changed. There was a Patriots-Chargers game on and a Packers NFC Championship Game to prepare for!

Unfortunately for us, the jack was worth jack. The crank broke, and to make a long story short, the jack slipped out from under the car while I was trying to put the new tire on. Perhaps I would have been okay if it had been a doughnut spare tire, but it was an actual full-sized tire: the fender caught my right hand between it and the tire before I could pull it out, and I nearly lost the tip of my pinky.

I screamed for my wife to call 911 and ran across the street to the doughnut shop to clean up. Their bathroom was closed. As I was bleeding all over their store, I strongly suggested they let me get at some sink…let’s just say they found it in their best business interests to oblige.

A homeless guy (who managed to successfully solicit my wife and I for change despite my emergency!) helped get me paper towels as I ran cold water over what was left of my finger. They could scarcely slow the bleeding, and there was no way to get the tire grease off my hand in the condition it was in.

By the time the paramedics arrived, I was back at the car and in shock. I was so bad that they offered me morphine for the pain and I turned it down! (It was like hearing someone else’s voice speaking for me.) I did manage to tell my wife to make sure she got the bad tire and the jack into the car so I could point out their defectiveness to the appropriate businesses, however.

As I arrived at the hospital, I warned them that they had three hours to take care of me and get me out the door–I had a game to watch. The funny thing is that I wish they had not.

If I had known that Mike McCarthy was going to abandon the run and leave the game in the hands of Brett Favre when he was not having his best day, I would have been worried. If I had known that the defense was going to fail to recover four–count’em, four–fumbles, I would have been petrified.

Once the ball was sitting between a defender’s legs on our goal line. If he is aware of the ball, they do not get that seven points and the Packers win in regulation.

One was near the sideline, and instead of being picked up was clumsily knocked out of bounds. If someone has soft hands, the Packers stop the drive and get the ball in great field position. If they even get three points, they win in regulation.

Twice they have the opportunity to get the ball but instead are insistent on trying to make the Sportscenter highlights by picking it up and running it back for a touchdown. In the case late in the game, they would not have even needed a first down to be in field goal range.

It is the most basic of premises that for some reason too many athletes do not understand: if you just fall on a ball, your offense gets it; if you insist on trying to run it back, you often allow the other team to recover it instead. If they recover even one of those two, they again stop drives and give themselves better oppotunities to score.

I spent the next two weeks avoiding anything that might even mention the game, discovering how much of my time I fill with ESPN. I did not let my wife turn to the Superbowl until there was less than a minute and a half to go, just before the Giants went for it on fourth and one. I saw the David Tyree catch and the masterful elusiveness of Eli Manning and said, “that should have been us!”

My finger still stings when struck, is forever misshapen, and has less than complete nerve function. But it still has healed more than my heart has.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 10:37 pm and is filed under greatest Packer games, Cold Weather, Mike McCarthy, NFC Championship, Brett Favre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.