Jermichael Finley thought he was in trouble with the head coach. Big trouble.
About a month ago, following the New Orleans game in Week 4, Finley was pulled out of a meeting and sent to Green Bay Packers Head Coach Mike McCarthy’s office with a message that the coach had a surprise for him.
“I thought, ‘What’s going on?’ When I go up there, it ain’t good,” Finley said with a laugh.
It turned out McCarthy just wanted to show him some film. Namely, the highlights from the 2009 NFC Wild Card playoff game in Arizona, when Jermichael practically took over the contest, beginning with a 44-yard catch just after the two-minute warning in the first half.
He added gains of 33 and 38 yards in the second half on his way to six catches for 159 yards, a whopping 26.5-yard average, all in the final 32 minutes of regulation as the Packers rallied from a 21-point deficit to force overtime.
He broke the Green Bay Packers playoff record for receiving yards in a game, and he nearly reached the league playoff mark for tight ends (Kellen Winslow, 166 yards, 1981 AFC Divisional). It was a performance McCarthy referred to on Friday as one of the most dominant he’d ever seen from a tight end.
“He said, ‘Look at this. Finley the beast,’” Finley recalled, before describing what was going through his mind as he watched.
“I thought it was pretty sweet he called me up, first of all. But what goes through is just like, (shoot), what happened? Where did it go? I’m the same person. I don’t know where it went.”