GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Aaron Rodgers used words like school yard and streetball to describe his last throw of Sunday's NFC divisional-playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys, and now we know why. That's more or less what the Green Bay Packers quarterback reverted to with the game on the line.
Rodgers was running out of time and instead of an actual playcall, he simply told each one of his receivers what to do. It resulted in a 36-yard toe-tapping catch on the left sideline by tight end Jared Cook with three seconds left to set up Mason Crosby's game-winning 51-yard field goal.
A day later, the dramatic nature -- and the importance -- of the play wasn't lost on the Packers, who will now face the Atlanta Falcons in Sunday's NFC Championship Game.
"It's one of the greatest plays that you'll ever see in that final two-minute [drill]; we call it the 'final-eight' [plays] situation for us," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said Monday. "The orchestration and the protection call, the route concept, great, great job with it."
The conductor was Rodgers, who could be seen in the huddle motioning to Cook and receivers Davante Adams, Randall Cobb and Trevor Davis.
"He gave Jared and Davante routes, and then he was running out of time, so he told me and [Davis] just to run out left," Cobb told ESPN on Monday. "It's not the first time it's happened. It's the first time it's happened in that kind of moment."
While Rodgers gave visual instructions, left tackle David Bakhtiari signaled to the quarterback to hurry up because the play clock was running low.
McCarthy said there was some communication with Rodgers before the play, but Cobb wondered if Rodgers could even hear it in his helmet speaker.
"I mean, we're running out of time, he's trying to process a lot of times, hear the playcall, check the clock," Cobb said. "We're yelling at him, telling him the play clock is running down."
In his on-field interview immediate after the game on the Fox TV broadcast, Rodgers referred to the last drive as "kind of school yard at times" and in his postgame news conference he said "we kind of street-balled there for a little bit."
"He orchestrates that drive," McCarthy said. "The ability to change the protection particularly on the last play ... so the protection call, outstanding. The crossing route concept coming from the other side, it's an outstanding selection by him. And with that, the execution is fantastic."