Of all the mistakes the Packers made in their late-game collapse against the Seahawks on Sunday that cost them a spot in the Super Bowl, Morgan Burnett going down after his 4th-quarter interception was one of the worst.
Video from the “All 22” view was released Tuesday, and it shows that Burnett had plenty of room to run after picking off Russell Wilson with 5:04 left in the NFC Championshpi Game. The Packers were up 19-7 at the time. The thinking was that the interception iced the game. Julius Peppers could even be seen instructing his teammate to go down and not risk a fumble because he thought the game was over.
But then we saw what happened.
The Packers ran Eddie Lacy three times and lost yardage, punted, and gave it back to the Seahawks who quickly scored, recovered the onside kick, scored again, made the 2-point conversion and won in overtime.
Burnett said Monday that he did not regret going down.
“I don’t take anything back that I did,” Burnett said via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It’s easy to sit here after and say ‘we should have did this, we should have did that.’ If the outcome was different, we wouldn’t even be talking about it.
“I was just trying to secure the catch, I got the ball in my hand and the main thing was just gaining possession of the ball. And I got the ‘no mas’ signal, which means ‘no more, no return, get down’ and secure possession of the ball, give our offense the ball.”
He also said Peppers signaling to him to go down influenced him:
Blame Brandon Bostick for botching the onside kick all you want, but the fact remains that there were multiple egregious mistakes by the Packers that led to their choke job.
Photo via Rob Demovsky
