Ten months after former Packers tight end Brandon Bostick became a household name for deviating from his assignment on an infamous onside kick, current Green Bay tight end Richard Rodgers is poised to become a household name for deviating from his own assignment on Thursday's "Hail Mary" touchdown.
"I'm supposed to be boxing out and Davante (Adams) is supposed to be the jumper," Rodgers admitted after the game. "But once I saw it in the air I realized I could get it. So I just went for it."
A former basketball player, Rodgers decided to adjust his assignment as soon as the 61-yard pass left Aaron Rodgers' hands.
"We were practicing it a little bit before the game," the second-year tight end explained. "He was throwing them really high in the air, so when I saw it in the air I knew I had a chance to catch it."
Although Rodgers conceded that the magnitude of the catch "hasn't really settled in yet," it's a good bet that he and his father will soon be comparing notes on folklore football plays.
Richard Rodgers Sr., assistant defensive backs coach with the undefeated Carolina Panthers, was involved in the epic 1982 Cal win over Stanford in which Cal's kickoff returner skated through the Stanford band for the game-winning touchdown as time expired.
"A lot of people from Stanford have a lot of stuff to say about it, but it stands in the record books with Cal as a win and my dad was a part of it," Rodgers said. "It's a really special moment for him and I was kind of thinking on the play before, when Aaron got the facemask, I was kind of thinking we would do something like that. Obviously it turned out differently."
After putting the Packers' season back on track with a career-high 162 receiving yards and the play of the year, Rodgers acknowledged that he "might be a little more famous" than his father.
That's certainly the case in Wisconsin, where the Rodgers-to-Rodgers heroics will go down in history as one of the most memorable moments of a storied NFL franchise.
