Aaron Rodgers threw for 249 yards and two touchdowns while Jayrone Elliott made two key defensive plays in the fourth quarter as the Green Bay Packers beat the Seattle Seahawks, 27-17, on Sunday night.
Packers vs. Seahawks 2015 final score: 3 things we learned from Green Bay’s 27-17 win
Aaron Rodgers threw two touchdowns to lead a fourth-quarter comeback.
The Packers entered the fourth quarter trailing, 17-16, but Rodgers put together an 80-yard drive in which Green Bay never faced a single third down. He hit Richard Rodgers for a 5-yard touchdown, then teamed up with Rodgers again on the two-point conversion to make it 24-17.
Seattle’s ensuing drive got to its 42 before Elliott made a one-handed interception to give the ball back to Rodgers with 6:50 to play. The Packers ran the clock down to the two-minute warning, and kicked a field goal for the 10-point lead. Elliott then ended Seattle’s last hopes by forcing a fumble in the final minute.
Rodgers went 9 of 9 for 91 yards and a touchdown in the fourth quarter, as the Packers improved to 2-0. Seattle drops to a surprising 0-2, having allowed 61 points, more than it gave up in any back-to-back games last season.
Green Bay took the opening kickoff and drove 80 yards in 10 plays, with Rodgers hitting James Jones for a 29-yard touchdown. It was Jones' third touchdown of the season after being signed as a last-minute replacement thanks to preseason injuries to Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb.
After Seattle went three-and-out, the Packers added a 54-yard field goal, and it was 10-0 before NBC could even introduce the Green Bay defense.
It looked like the rout might be on, but Russell Wilson started moving around in the pocket and got Seattle moving. The Seahawks got a field goal and then made a key defensive stand at the end of the first half. After a long pass interference penalty put the Packers into scoring position, Cobb was pulled down at the 1-yard line with 35 seconds to play.
Green Bay was out of timeouts, and the clock had run down to 13 seconds before the officials stopped the clock to review whether Cobb had made it into the end zone. He hadn’t, and an apparent touchdown catch by Jones was overturned when another replay showed that his butt had landed out of bounds milliseconds before he caught the pass.
The Packers were forced to kick a field goal, making it 13-3 at the half, and the Seahawks scored touchdowns on their first two drives of the third quarter to go ahead 17-13. Green Bay added another field goal to pull within one point going into the fourth quarter, and Rodgers went to work.
Three things we’ve learned
1) The NFL is learning from the NBA when it comes to slowing games to a crawl
When the officials stopped the Packers to review Cobb’s lunge for the end zone, it was 9:57 p.m. ET. After that review, a Seattle timeout was apparently called just so that Pete Carroll could yell at Gene Steratore. After the Jones catch and subsequent review, another Seahawks timeout, an incomplete pass to Richard Rodgers and Mason Crosby’s 18-yard field goal, the half mercifully ended at 10:09.
Twelve minutes to play 13 seconds. If the NFL ever managed to maintain that pace for an entire Sunday night game, it would end around 4:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, causing several hours of The Voice to be postponed.
2) Richard Rodgers is still winning on Emmy night
In 1962, as Vince Lombardi was building what is generally considered his greatest Packers team, American composing legend Richard Rodgers won an Emmy for his score of a Winston Churchill documentary. That made Rodgers the first person to win an EGOT: a complete set of an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy.
Fifty-three years later, as the Emmys were being given out in Los Angeles, his namesake caught a fourth-quarter touchdown pass from Aaron Rodgers, giving the Packers a 22-17 lead, and then caught a two-point conversion pass to make it a seven-point game.
3) Gene Steratore is a conservative man when he’s on television
Between his careers as an official in both the NFL and college basketball, Steratore has heard every profanity known from a lot of angry coaches. As the brother of another NFL official and the son of a college basketball and football official, Steratore has been trained for his entire life to use proper language when he’s making calls.
That’s why, when everyone watching in Lambeau Field and on televisions and computers around the world saw that Jones’ butt had landed out of bounds at the end of the first half, Steratore used more delicate language.
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