Packers fans, does ‘4th and 26’ still haunt you? Here’s what went wrong 21 years ago vs. Eagles
The Green Bay Packers will open the postseason just one week shy of an uncomfortable anniversary, the 10-year mark since an infamous NFC championship game loss to Seattle. They'll open the 2024 playoffs in a different aviary entirely, at the home of the Philadelphia Eagles — site of another unforgettable Packers playoff meltdown.
Green Bay has somewhat exorcised the demons from “4th and 26,” the stomach-sinking moniker given to a disastrous game-altering snap on Jan. 11, 2004, at Lincoln Financial Field. After all, the Packers went back to the scene of the crime in 2010, defeated the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs and went on to win the Super Bowl. But it doesn't completely eradicate the sting of those 2003 playoffs.
And any time the Packers simply have to defend a fourth-and-long to win a game … don't Packers fans think of Freddie Mitchell?
On the cusp of defeating the top-seeded Eagles and advancing to the NFC title game after the 2003 season, Green Bay needed only to stop the Eagles on the dubious down and distance with 1 minute, 12 seconds to go and the Eagles at their own 26-yard line. The Eagles had one timeout left, and the game would have been functionally over without a conversion, but quarterback Donovan McNabb found a leaping Mitchell for 28 yards, moving the chains and preserving the drive.
McNabb then drove the Eagles to the 19-yard line, where David Akers sent a 37-yard field goal through to tie the game in the final seconds. In overtime, Brett Favre threw an interception that perhaps doesn't get remembered the same way as a miscue in the 2007 NFC championship game, but the pick by Brian Dawkins set up the Eagles in Packers territory. Akers later sent through a 31-yarder for the 20-17 win.
Here's what you may have forgotten (or not) from the dark day in Packers history.
Who was exactly to blame for the fourth-and-26 play?
The play itself left several Packers culpable. The Packers set up a four-man deep zone with Al Harris and Mike McKenzie outside and Darren Sharper and Marques Anderson inside. Linebacker Nick Barnett and nickelbacks Michael Hawthorne and Bhawoh Jue were underneath.
"We were in 'quarters' coverage," defensive coordinator Ed Donatell said. "The guy (McNabb) stepped up and needled the seam. Shouldn't happen. We had a defense designed to stop that. Our underneath people can play deeper in that situation and our four-deep guys need to make a play."
Barnett, then a rookie, often gets tagged with the blame, though he wasn't downfield covering Mitchell. Barnett's mistake was abandoning a gap that created a throwing lane for McNabb to drill a pass over the middle.
Instead of dropping back into the middle of the field, Barnett stayed shallow to chase the tight end, who went in motion and then reversed back. While the tight end wasn't a throw to get to the sticks for a first down and would have had to bypass several other tacklers to make it happen, McNabb's throw went right through the seam evacuated by Barnett.
"I just don't like the result," said Donatell, who defended his call. "It's a call I'd like to execute in the future. It's a necessary part of a lot of football games. It's a coverage we count on. We just didn't execute it."
Hawthorne didn't force Mitchell to adjust his route and failed to get enough depth in the coverage so that he could make a play on the ball. Sharper and Anderson both were playing behind the first-down marker so that when the ball was thrown in front of them, they were too late to stop Mitchell from getting a first down. Jue was in his correct position but arrived a hair late to deflect the ball.
"It wasn't like I was unfairly blamed, but there are a lot of other fingers to point," Barnett said a few days after the play. "Me, I'm not going to point fingers at anybody but myself and to say I could have been in a better position. But there are a lot of other things that could have been, should have been and didn't (happen).
"I take credit for that. Hopefully, one day I'll be a leader for this team and as a leader you have to take credit for things like that. That shouldn't have happened."
Barnett said he wished the Packers had called timeout to get everyone on the same page. The Eagles confused the Packers with a three-receiver set instead of four.
The first of three other plays that doomed the Packers: Ahman Green stuffed at the goal line
Packers running back Ahman Green was brilliant, racking up 156 yards in the loss. But with the Packers ahead 14-7 in the final 2 minutes of the first half, Green stumbled into his own lineman, pushed back by the pass rush, and was stuffed on fourth-and-1 at the goal line.
Green carried the ball 33 yards down to the 4-yard line, but an incomplete pass and two short Najeh Davenport runs left the Packers facing fourth down.
The Packers went into halftime ahead 14-7. It was part of a five-drive stretch in which the Packers did not score.
The second of three other plays that doomed the Packers: Not going for it on fourth-and-1
Then came a call that stuck with coach Mike Sherman for a while: He decided to punt on fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter from the Eagles' 41-yard line.
The actual snap came from the 46 after the Packers lined up to go for it, a bluff intended to draw the Eagles offsides. When that failed, they accepted the delay-of-game penalty, and Josh Bidwill punted into the end zone for a touchback, gaining the Packers a mere 21 yards of field position. The Eagles got that back, though they first wound up facing fourth-and-26.
Players said Sherman had vowed at halftime after the goal-line stop that he'd go for it again if given the chance in the same situation.
"He pretty much was gung-ho'ing us," linebacker Na'il Diggs recalled years later. "It got us excited. We were poised to go out and do it."
Initially, Sherman did call a play; Green remembered offensive coordinator Tom Rossley wanted to run the ball.
"If you said to me right now, Mike, do you want to take fourth-and-26 or risk going for it on fourth-and-1, I probably would take the fourth-and-26," Sherman said a few days later. "I looked at it a thousand times. I came in here at 1:30 this morning and had to see the tape again.
"I couldn't sleep and just analyzed it over and over again. The feeling from that game leaving the field was you got kicked in the gut and it hasn't gone away."
Sherman had elected to go for it on two fourth-and-1 calls against Seattle in the playoff game a week earlier, both conversions, though it took some effort from Green.
"To give them the ball at that point of the field where they wouldn't have to drive the ball too far to kick the field goal to tie," Sherman said, "that concerned me a little bit, particularly with the defense that they were employing at that time."
Of course, they wound up tying the game anyway.
The Packers had run for 210 yards — 156 by Green — at that point. For the season, the Packers had converted six of 10 fourth downs, and two of three in the playoffs.
"When you have a chance to score a touchdown, score a touchdown," Green recalled a decade later. "Especially in a playoff situation. We wanted it. We knew we would have gotten it. I could've fell for a yard. We knew we could close the game as an offense."
How did the Eagles get to fourth-and-26?
After an incomplete pass, Jue sacked McNabb for a 16-yard loss. Referees ruled the play dead when Jue stopped McNabb's progress, although the quarterback still was able to unload the ball and was frustrated that the play wasn't allowed to continue.
McNabb then threw incomplete on third down, just out of reach of tight end Chad Lewis, and McNabb believed it was pass interference, to no avail.
That set up the fateful fourth.
The third other play that doomed the Packers: Brett Favre's interception
In overtime, the Packers got only one snap, and it ended badly. After the Packers defense forced a swift three-and-out, Brett Favre took a snap from the Green Bay 17, faced some pressure, and threw up a prayer downfield in the direction of Javon Walker.
It was easily intercepted by Dawkins and returned 35 yards. The Eagles collected one more first down and set up Akers for a chip shot at the 13.
"They had a blitz on," Favre said later. "I knew we couldn't pick it up and Javon, I had thrown one earlier to him in the game and he went up in traffic and caught it. As did Jake Delhomme the following week, he throws one up to Muhsin Muhammad. When it works, everyone says way to go. I knew I had to get rid of it. That's a split-second decision. I felt like if I gave Javon Walker a pass that was somewhat catchable, that at worst it falls incomplete."
"The options are a sack and possible fumble or you try to throw it out of bounds or you try to make a play," said backup quarterback Doug Pederson — who, coincidentally, would later become Eagles coach and lead Philadelphia to the Super Bowl title that would elude the Eagles that year. "(Dawkins) saw Brett throw it up and made a play. (Favre) didn't say a word. He just came over to the sidelines. He just couldn't believe it."
It was one of the ugliest throws of Favre's career, and yet it faded somewhat under the weight of a bigger misfire.
A poll published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel a few days later asked fans where they laid the blame of the loss, and 52.8% chose the fourth-and-26 play, with 29.2% blaming the choice to punt on fourth-and-1 and 9.4% blaming the failure to score on fourth-and-goal in the second quarter. Only 8.6% blamed Favre's overtime interception.
Odds and ends worth remembering
- Mitchell was given 28 yards on the fourth-and-26 play, but it was a wildly generous spot. Really, he caught the ball in the air just before the sticks, and his momentum carried him forward to the yard marker before Sharper and Anderson closed in for the hit. He got the first down, but barely.
- Mitchell famously performed a championship-belt celebration after a big play, including after the fourth-and-26 reception. Though it's a gesture still associated with Mitchell, it shot to a new level when Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers began using it, and it became the centerpiece of an ad campaign for State Farm Insurance.
- Donatell was fired days after the fourth-and-26 play, as was tight ends coach Jeff Jagodzinski, a native of West Allis.
- "I've played in games where it felt a lot worse at the end," Green said after the game. "It was one of those games that really could have gone either way. It hurts, but then again it doesn't, because we gave all our effort. I've played a lot of football so I've experienced a lot of bitter losses, so this one doesn't rank very high."
- Wide receiver Robert Ferguson said he wouldn't watch a minute of additional football on TV because he can't stomach the Eagles playing the Panthers. "The fourth-and-goal," said Ferguson, referring to the second-quarter play. "I just kept saying if he didn't trip, I knew he was going to get in."
- "That's going to be the worst NFC championship game," center Mike Flanagan said. "I mean, (expletive), Carolina's got a defense. Their front four, they are legit. They are the best in football. But other than that, they're nothing." Carolina beat Philadelphia the following week 14-3, then the Panthers lost in the Super Bowl to New England 32-29.
- The Packers sacked McNabb eight times, though he ran 11 times for 107 yards and threw for 248 yards and two touchdowns.
- McKenzie had a remarkable game, breaking up six passes, forcing two fumbles and getting a sack. Green Bay converted on 10 of 19 third-down conversions, didn't fumble and gave up just one sack.
- In the regular-season game between the two teams in 2003, the outcome also was left in the hands of the defense and it failed. The Eagles went 65 yards in eight plays for a last-minute touchdown to win 17-14.
One more thing that went wrong for the Packers
Akers hit the field goal to win the game with ease, but you can see some Packers players relaxing before the snap. Green Bay had tried to call timeout, and players heard a whistle — though the Packers shouldn't have been granted a timeout because they had just called one and couldn't call one again before another snap.
"It came down to the last field goal," Hawthorne said. "A timeout was being called. It was never explained that you can or cannot call two timeouts in a row. Plus, the whistle had blown. Everybody heard a whistle blown. The back judge also went to the ref and told him, and the ref didn't want to hear anything. It was game over. They were in Philly, hostile territory, so you live and you learn."
It probably wouldn't have mattered, but it bears mentioning that Akers had missed a 33-yard field goal earlier in the game. The winning kick was 31 yards.
The craziest four-week stretch in Packers history?
It's difficult to match the absurd four-game stretch that ended with “4th and 26.”
On Dec. 22, one day after Favre's father, Irv, had died, the Packers quarterback delivered his magnum opus in an unforgettable 41-7 win over the Raiders in Oakland.
On Dec. 28, the Packers dominated Denver 31-3, but the story of the day happened in Arizona, when Nate Poole's unreal 28-yard catch against the Minnesota Vikings as time expired gave the Cardinals an 18-17 win and knocked the Vikings out of a playoff spot. Poole was given the key to the city in Green Bay and invited to the team's playoff opener; without the catch, the Packers wouldn't have made the playoffs at all.
In the playoff opener against Seattle at Lambeau Field, Al Harris picked off former Packers quarterback Matt Hasselbeck in overtime and returned it for a touchdown, propelling the Packers into the game with Philadelphia.