NOTE: Unfortunately, I didn’t publish this before the debacle of the NFC championship. I will try to write this from the standpoint of the day of the event, but I apologize in advance if post championship cynicism comes through.
I tried to sleep late Saturday but just couldn’t manage to go past 7:30am. I ate free breakfast at the hotel (sausage and biscuits) and headed to Wal-Mart to get 2 liter sodas for Jonathan and I. I then headed for the Fractured Prune. This was a doughnut shop that was recommended online located in the Westgate shopping area close to the stadium. They have all sorts of doughnuts and you can get all sort of combinations. When you come in, you fill out a form of what combination of ingredients you want on your doughnut. They have recommended combinations as well. I got triple chocolate, cookies and cream, strawberry shortcake and orange. They fry up your doughnuts in front of you and then dip them in the flavors you want. They are really good especially when fresh. They are a bit pricey (1.89 a doughnut) and they are more like a cake doughnut (I’m a yeast doughnut guy myself). In case you are wondering, the doughnuts don’t contain prunes. The shop is named after a lady called Prunella who kept hurting herself entering men’s sporting events.
After we ate, Jonathan and I walked past the stadium to head to a park to run. There is a park called Grand Canal Linear Park that runs next to a canal (makes sense). It has a six mile round trip that was perfect for us to run. After we were done, Jonathan walked to a nearby Nike Outlet Store. We met up at the Westgate center to get lunch. I got a sampler from Shane’s Rib Shack and Jonathan got his standard wing order from B-Dubs. We settled in to our hotel room to watch UK play Auburn. They looked totally flat but I felt better when they got a twelve point second half lead. Lo and behold, they managed to blow all of that and lose by five. When the game ended, it was time to walk over to the stadium for the game.
I was really pumped. I’d never been to Arizona’s home stadium plus it was a playoff game. We got in with no trouble. Their stadium is very nice and with a dome, the conditions were perfect. We found that between ¼ to 1/3 of the fans were for Green Bay. The game finally started. After a bit of back and forth, the Cardinals punched in a touchdown to take the lead. Green Bay drove down the field. Then, Patrick Peterson intercepted Aaron Rogers and took it back 100 yards for an apparent touchdown. However, there was a convenient penalty on the Cardinals that negated it. The Cardinals held the Packers to a field goal. Even though the Cardinal offense was totally pathetic in the first half, they were 7-6 at halftime. The teams traded interceptions to start the 2nd half and then Green Bay scored to take the lead 13-7. The Cardinals got a field goal to make it 13-10. They then drove down the field looking to tie or take the lead. Carson Palmer then threw a totally hideous interception in the end zone to stop the drive. The Cardinals drove down the field again. Palmer again made a bad throw that hit off of Larry Fitzgerald’s hands but very luckily bounced into the hands of Michael Floyd to give the Cardinals the lead. The Cardinals held the Packers on 4th down deep in their territory. Packer fans were streaming for the exits. The Cardinals looked to run out the clock. For some reason, they threw a pass on 2nd down which was incomplete. They didn’t get a first down but kicked a field goal to go up 7 with only 1:55 left. The Cardinals had the Packers at a 4th and 20 from their own five and then incredibly let them complete a long pass for a first down. With five seconds and 41 yards from the end zone, Aaron Rodgers fired a pass into the end zone. As we saw right in front of us, the receiver incredibly came down with the ball for a touchdown and with the extra point, the game headed to overtime. I honestly thought the Cardinals would never recover.
The referee went to flip the coin to start overtime and there was confusion and he had to reflip. Turned out the coin never flipped on the first attempt. Fortunately, the Cardinals won the toss each time. On the Cardinals first play, Carson Palmer was flushed from the pocket. He threw all the way across the field to a totally wide open Larry Fitzgerald. Larry ran the ball all the way down to the five yard line. A couple of plays later, Larry caught a shovel pass for a TD to win the game! It was so incredibly exciting, the stadium was shaking. We walked back to the hotel and it took me a bit to wind down to go to sleep.
Our trip wasn’t over yet. We did some things on Sunday – which I’ll talk about in my next post.
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