June 10, 2022 • 16 mins
Wayne Larrivee sits down with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Matt Flynn to reminisce on his first start against Tom Brady (1:42), setting a Packers single-game touchdown record (6:42), and returning to the team to engineer one of the biggest comebacks in franchise history (11:22).
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
For more than a century, the Green Bay Packers have
been a benchmark for football excellence. Thousands of players have
helped pave the way, and we're here to tell you
their stories. I'm Wayne Laravi. This is the Packers alumni.
Spot White. Playing backup quarterback in the NFL behind the
(00:27):
future Hall of Famer is often an obscure, quiet existence.
If all goes well, you don't get much time on
the field. But Matt Flynn is a winner. He led
LSU to the National championship before he arrived in Green Bay,
and winners have a way of making their mark. In
the Super Bowl season twenty ten, Aaron Rodgers suffers a
(00:51):
concussion in Detroit. The Packers lose like a ten to
three games something like that. Your playoff hopes, I mean,
just to make the playoffs kind of hanging by a thread.
And I'll never forget. You're going to go to play
the New England Patriots, who are the best team in
the league and haven't lost in New England since the
Revolutionary War. So so you got that going for you,
(01:14):
which is nice, you know, But that week Mike McCarthy
gets up on Wednesday and says to your team, it
announces that Aaron Rodgers not going to be your quarterback
that week, but doesn't want you guys to divulge that
to the media or any day and says, you know,
kind of said, Matt Flynn will be our quarterback and
we're gonna go to New England, and if we win
(01:36):
the coin toss or if we lose the coin toss,
we're gonna on sidekick, We're gonna get the ball and
we're gonna score. All of that happened with you a quarterback.
Tell me about that night into England. Yeah, so that
was a Sunday night game, by the way, Yeah, Sunday night.
It got flexed and it was yeah, I'll say special.
It's kind of an overusewar, but a very special night
(01:57):
day for myself, just because all the hard work and
preparation that I'd put into, I got to go out
and play. Like you beat your backup to Aaron Rodgers,
you're not going to play. So that's that's the thing.
So I got an opportunity. I was in my third year,
third season, and I was like, well, this is my chance.
It's my opportunity to prove that the Packers have made
(02:19):
the right choice. The last three years. You know, I
was drafted in the seventh round. I won the job
to back Aaron up in my rookie year. You know,
I'd only started one year in college, really full year,
so they had put a lot of faith in me,
a lot of trust to me since the beginning. So
this was my chance to go improve. Now. I always
had confidence that I could play, but if you don't
get the chance to play, nobody else really has the
confidence until you show it improve it. So it was
(02:41):
just a night that I was able to prove to
everybody that hey, I was capable. I could go in
there and step in and we could we could compete
and win games. And it was December nineteenth, which is
my wife's birthday and my dad's birthday, and so it
was a it was just a it was a cool night.
And I remember, you know, you grow up, everyone who
(03:02):
plays quarterback they're a Tom Brady fan. Right. If you're not,
then you're you're just lying, right, or you just have
some sort of weird grudge against Tom Brady or the Patriots.
So it's just this really surreal feeling. It's like, all right,
I'm going to play the Patriots. I've watched him play
for you know, nine to ten years or whenever. And
we're driving there and of course there's a lot of nerves,
(03:23):
a lot of butterflies, you know, floating around, and I'm
bust to the game and this is of course, you know,
gets dark early and it's just pitch black, and I'm like,
where am I. It's kind of like when you hear
when opposing teams come to Lambeau. They're like driving through
a neighborhood and all of a sudden, boom a stadium.
Same thing in Foxborough. I'm just driving around and all
of a sudden, I see the lights and like heart
(03:44):
starts pumping, heart starts race. I'm like, all right, it's
time to go out there, and a lot of eyes
gonna be on this. I'm either gonna play well or
you know, just don't go through it like a pick.
The first play of the game, and I knew Mike
was going to be really aggressive. I remember when he
did announce everybody I was gonna play. You know, he
was like he's gonna start and we're gonna go over there,
(04:05):
We're gonna kick there, you know what I mean. The
confidence was there, and you know, that's the job of
a head coach to give everybody confidence. But you know,
I think we just kept building. When I was like,
all right, hey, look this guy back up, first time playing,
he's not, you know, buckling into this pressure like first drive.
They're like, all right, we got this, Like we're good.
Let's let's go out and play a game. Defense played well.
(04:26):
We just you know, unfortunately, it's one of those games
that I'm proud of, but we lost. We ended up losing,
so I like it kind of gives me the cringes
a little bit when I think about it too, because
there was opportunities there to win the game. You were
in control of the game and an offensive lineman on
kind of a squib kick picked it up and ran
like I don't know, eight yards or something. Set up
the Patriots right before halftime at the doorstep radiant easy touchdown. Nonetheless,
(04:50):
you guys didn't wild. I want to ask you about
this because I sensed this on the plane ride home.
You guys lost the game, but you kind of learned
something as a team that hey, we can we can
play with anybody anywhere. And I thought that was significant
because the team you took into the season was vastly
different from the team due to all the injuries you
(05:11):
had that night in New England. Could you confirm or
deny that for me or what what was your you
know what, it's obviously that year was very an incredibly
special team. What we what we ended up doing the run.
We ended up going as the number six seed. Aaron
Rodgers one of, if not the best to ever played
the position. He's really coming into his prime at that point.
(05:32):
His first year of starting was you know, two years
prior to that, and nine he had a really great season.
But ten everyone it started like saying, Okay, this guy's
gonna be a Hall of Famer. He's gonna he's gonna
do some special things. We all knew the team was
good around us. We had lost some games, had some injuries,
but I think it was you know, there's certainly a
(05:52):
confidence booster that comes. It's like, all right, we have
the best quarterback in the league, but we almost we
should have beat the best team quote unquote the best
team in the league, you know, without that guy with
somebody else. So there's just a confidence there that I think.
I think stuff like that happens. The defense, you know,
our safeties and playing incredible like, our defensive line was
(06:15):
really gelling it coming to get Our defense played amazing
that game, and they just kept building and building and building.
You know, the leadership of that defense had with Charles
Woodson and College, you know, all those guys, it was.
It was very special. The following year, twenty eleven, the
Packers had everything clinched at fourteen and one entering the
final week of the regular season. Coach Mike McCarthy emptied
(06:37):
his bench in a game with division rival Detroit, and
Flynn went off that day, setting Lambo Field single game
records with four hundred and eighty passing yards and six
passing touchdowns in a wild forty five forty one victory.
That was a wild, wild day. And it always kind
(06:57):
of think back because we were fifteen and one, and uh,
as much as it like paint as a team guy,
as much as it pains me to say it, it's like,
I'm so glad that Roman Hook Cridell and the Chiefs
beat us in like week thirteen, because we were twelve
or thirteen to oh and if we don't lose that game,
we're not sitting starters to go, you know, to get
sixteen and U so it's like, you know, perfect season
had been awesome, but for me personally, it was you know,
(07:20):
I got the opportunity to play. It was you know,
timing's kind of everything, and it was the last regular
season of my rookie contract, and it was just one
of these things where it was awesome to be able
to go out there. And I knew it might have been,
you know, at that time into my Green Bay career.
So it was just really cool to be able to
go out and play in lambeau Field, start in lambeau Field.
(07:41):
Those places you know, so special and means so much
to me. But that day, you wait, I wake up
and it's a noon game and it was like fifteen
or eighteen degree or something like that in windy. I
remember the tarp going out there and the tarp was
like blowing off because it was so windy. And the
Lions they were coming, they were out there and they
were you know, at shirts off and stuff, acting like
the cold weather. It's like, you know, trying to intimidate.
(08:03):
I was like, all right, your shirts off, that's not
smart at all. But it's like it was not the
optimal conditions for throwing a throwing attack. Um, but I
think combined yardage with me and Matt Stafford, we threw
for exactly a thousand yards because I threw for four
to eighty and he threw for five twenty. He threw
for five touch You know, we had eleven total touchdowns
(08:25):
and it was just one of those games where, uh,
just everything seemed to be working from both sides of
the balling their offense in our offense. And you know
that that year was the receiving corps was incredible. Yeah, everybody,
every you know, you look both ways and you got talent,
you got big guys, you got guys that can score
touchdown anytime they touched the ball. It was fun because, uh,
(08:48):
you know, Aaron. Aaron actually in the first half of
the game called the plays and then Mike took over
in the second half. And that was kind of because
it was you know, you're not playing, Aaron, but let's
keep you. You know, we want you to be engaged
all week and do everything like you would, so we're
gonna have you call to play. It's just and so
you know, it's I'm walking up to the line of
scrimmage and you know, Aaron and I are are close,
(09:11):
and he's like talking telling me a joke or something
in my head or you know, saying something dumb in
my ear, just like and I'm walking up to a
line of scrimmage laughing a lot of the times. So
it was just it was a fun day and a
game that was that was that was one for one
for the books for sure, and eighty yards passing by you,
six touchdowns, forty five forty one win, all right, it was.
(09:33):
It was an incredible game. I'll never forget that game.
It's amazing. I think Aaron had either broken or tied
the touchdown record like a couple of weeks before that
with five yea. And so we're in the fourth quarter
and I threw my fifth touchdown and I come over
to the sideline. He just shakes his hey, he's looking
at me, and then he just laughs and he's like, dude,
if you get a chance, you got to get six.
(09:55):
And I'm like, i'll try, I'll see, I'll see what happens.
And eventually I got it, and he was he was
the first one to happen. Years later, I mean, you reflect,
do you ever think about I mean, I would reflect
on that. You're talking about the Green Bay Packers you're
talking about Bart Starr and Brett Farve and Aaron Rodgers.
Even Lynn Dickie was a great quarterback here. Yet you've
(10:16):
got the single day work right yardage and touchdowns. You know,
it's funny. I think he Aaron ended up tying the yardage. Well,
he has six touchdowns, two in a game, and then
he tied the yardage like on the button. He three
for four to eighty in another game and I texted
him after the game. Wait, you couldn't have done one
less or one more. You had to tie right right
on the button. That's what are the odds of that happening?
(10:40):
For Matt Flynn. Two games at New England in two
thousand and ten and against Detroit on the last day
of the two thousand eleven A regular season set up
a lucrative contract in free agency. In two thousand and twelve,
Seattle signed bat for three years, twenty million with nine
million dollars guaranteed. But that was not the storybook to
(11:02):
start him many expected. You see, the Seahawks drafted Russell
Wilson in the third round that year, and the rest,
as they say, is history. Flynn was traded to the
Raiders the following season, they cut him. He ended up
in Buffalo, where he was cut again in November of
that season. Meanwhile, his old team, the Packers, were struggling
(11:23):
in twenty thirteen with injuries to quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and
backup Seneca Wallace. The Packers brought in Flynn to essentially
save the season and keep Hope alive until Rogers could return.
And that's just what he did. Going two and two
as the starter, he kept the Packers in the hunt.
Along the way, Flynn engineered one of the biggest comebacks
(11:46):
in franchise history on the road in Dallas, trailing twenty
six to three and a half time to the Cowboys
Packers Valley for a thirty seven thirty six victory. I
wish I could remember halftime. I don't players either, remember
everything about every game. I'm not one of those guys
(12:06):
like I get I'm kind of a get in the
zone guy. If I'm in the zone, then I don't.
I don't recall a lot of like the minute minutia
about what happened. I don't remember exactly what was said.
I just remember I remember going up to the offensive
lineman and I said, I said, just believe. I was like,
just believe that we can do Like I said, I
(12:27):
believe that we can do this. We can come back
and win. And it's like you're twenty six three. It's
like everyone's like, okay, like football guy, like football guy
movies stuff. They're like, all right, that's fine, Like whatever,
let's let's just go play. We'll all play. We'll give
it a shot. But odds are stacked pretty highly in
their favor. But that Dallas game is when I think
back on my NFL career, that's one of the things
(12:49):
that I think about the most and that I've always
taken away. Patriots was awesome, the Lions was awesome. Winning
a Super Bowl incredible. But that game, well, first of all,
I grew up in Texas, so a group a cowboy
fan which was I played high school in old old
Texas Stadium. I played high school playoff games and things
like that. Um so that was and so I have
a lot of family and family was there and they're
(13:10):
you know ones that I got some hardcore cowboy fans
and my family, so they're all wearing of course Green
Bay outfits and clothes. But um, it had the road
that the path that I'd been on the previous couple
of years Seattle. Things didn't go my way. Oakland, Yeah,
Oakland had some injuries I was dealing with and things
(13:31):
didn't go my way. There was a lot of doubt
thrown at me, a lot of people, you know, saying
you know, you know, saying a lot of you know
it goes and saying a lot of negative things. But
being able to come back to a place that was
so spent means so much to me and I love
playing for UM in Green Bay. It's uh. And to
be able to kind of go out and have success
(13:52):
and have a game like that and to come back
like that, UM, there was a lot of validation for me,
I guess and as its very it was a very
positive experience. And just being able to know that a
lot of people wrote you off so that you aren't
you know, you had some lucky games or whatever. It was.
To be able to go out there and do that
on a stage like that was cool. Yeah, And especially
(14:14):
that season because I mentioned Seneca Wallace was injured, Scott
Tolzine got banged up. The Packers are really struggling. They're
trying to get to the playoffs. You don't win that
game in Dallas and a couple of others that I
think you were involved in. You don't get to that
final play in Chicago to win the division championship that
everyone talks about every time the Bears game comes up.
(14:35):
That must be really gratifying team. Yeah, incredible, it was.
Remember I was I was in Buffalo and for three
weeks during the season, and I was there because I
think one of their quarterbacks was injured. So I came
out there just to be kind of a body up
there for a couple of weeks. And then I get
caught on a Monday and I'm watching I'm watching Monday
Night football, I think, and Aaron gets hurt. And then
(14:56):
like in two days, I was on a plane to
Green Bay to to come and you know, take the
physical and everything like that. And then the next week
I'm I'm in in the mix of it, and Scott
was starting against Minnesota and then Mike put me in
the second half and we were down, and that's that's
where it kind of started. Then I came in and
I think I started four or five more games after that,
(15:17):
I can't remember, but one time we had we had
a couple of you know, not so great games, but
we ended up we end up tying. I think the
one that I came in, you know that kind of
that that tie helped us in that hate tying, but
you know, it was it was one of those games
that we were down and out and then we came
back and that was just a really it was. It
was a great run and Aaron got to come back.
(15:38):
And the playoffs and exactly the playoff game you know,
really could have gone your way also, But you gotta be,
like I said, gratifying for you that that, hey, the
Packers don't make the playoffs. Un Listen, you do what
you did that year. That's that's tremendous. Yeah, I'd be
able to have, you know, any sort of positive impact
in a franchise and organization and like this, especially when
(16:01):
you're talking about playoffs and you know, in twenty ten
a Super Bowl run and just have whether you whether
you your backup, whether your start or whatever it is,
to have any sort of impact is really special. But
to be though to go and like we played. I
started against the Steelers in lambeau Field at a night
at night when it was snowing. It was like, that's
(16:21):
you don't get Nobody gets that opportunity, and so you
know that, I look at pictures like that, me playing
with snow around like that's what lambo is all about, right,
And it's just it's really cool to be able to
say you're part of the history, part of these really
really great teams and a great time to be a
to be a Packer player, Packer fan, and part of
the organization for a seventh round draft choice. Backup quarterback
(16:45):
Matt Flynn certainly left his mark on Green Bay and
the Packers
For more than a century, the Green Bay Packers have
been a benchmark for football excellence. Thousands of players have
helped pave the way, and we're here to tell you
their stories. I'm Wayne Laravi. This is the Packers alumni.
Spot White. Playing backup quarterback in the NFL behind the
(00:27):
future Hall of Famer is often an obscure, quiet existence.
If all goes well, you don't get much time on
the field. But Matt Flynn is a winner. He led
LSU to the National championship before he arrived in Green Bay,
and winners have a way of making their mark. In
the Super Bowl season twenty ten, Aaron Rodgers suffers a
(00:51):
concussion in Detroit. The Packers lose like a ten to
three games something like that. Your playoff hopes, I mean,
just to make the playoffs kind of hanging by a thread.
And I'll never forget. You're going to go to play
the New England Patriots, who are the best team in
the league and haven't lost in New England since the
Revolutionary War. So so you got that going for you,
(01:14):
which is nice, you know, But that week Mike McCarthy
gets up on Wednesday and says to your team, it
announces that Aaron Rodgers not going to be your quarterback
that week, but doesn't want you guys to divulge that
to the media or any day and says, you know,
kind of said, Matt Flynn will be our quarterback and
we're gonna go to New England, and if we win
(01:36):
the coin toss or if we lose the coin toss,
we're gonna on sidekick, We're gonna get the ball and
we're gonna score. All of that happened with you a quarterback.
Tell me about that night into England. Yeah, so that
was a Sunday night game, by the way, Yeah, Sunday night.
It got flexed and it was yeah, I'll say special.
It's kind of an overusewar, but a very special night
(01:57):
day for myself, just because all the hard work and
preparation that I'd put into, I got to go out
and play. Like you beat your backup to Aaron Rodgers,
you're not going to play. So that's that's the thing.
So I got an opportunity. I was in my third year,
third season, and I was like, well, this is my chance.
It's my opportunity to prove that the Packers have made
(02:19):
the right choice. The last three years. You know, I
was drafted in the seventh round. I won the job
to back Aaron up in my rookie year. You know,
I'd only started one year in college, really full year,
so they had put a lot of faith in me,
a lot of trust to me since the beginning. So
this was my chance to go improve. Now. I always
had confidence that I could play, but if you don't
get the chance to play, nobody else really has the
confidence until you show it improve it. So it was
(02:41):
just a night that I was able to prove to
everybody that hey, I was capable. I could go in
there and step in and we could we could compete
and win games. And it was December nineteenth, which is
my wife's birthday and my dad's birthday, and so it
was a it was just a it was a cool night.
And I remember, you know, you grow up, everyone who
(03:02):
plays quarterback they're a Tom Brady fan. Right. If you're not,
then you're you're just lying, right, or you just have
some sort of weird grudge against Tom Brady or the Patriots.
So it's just this really surreal feeling. It's like, all right,
I'm going to play the Patriots. I've watched him play
for you know, nine to ten years or whenever. And
we're driving there and of course there's a lot of nerves,
(03:23):
a lot of butterflies, you know, floating around, and I'm
bust to the game and this is of course, you know,
gets dark early and it's just pitch black, and I'm like,
where am I. It's kind of like when you hear
when opposing teams come to Lambeau. They're like driving through
a neighborhood and all of a sudden, boom a stadium.
Same thing in Foxborough. I'm just driving around and all
of a sudden, I see the lights and like heart
(03:44):
starts pumping, heart starts race. I'm like, all right, it's
time to go out there, and a lot of eyes
gonna be on this. I'm either gonna play well or
you know, just don't go through it like a pick.
The first play of the game, and I knew Mike
was going to be really aggressive. I remember when he
did announce everybody I was gonna play. You know, he
was like he's gonna start and we're gonna go over there,
(04:05):
We're gonna kick there, you know what I mean. The
confidence was there, and you know, that's the job of
a head coach to give everybody confidence. But you know,
I think we just kept building. When I was like,
all right, hey, look this guy back up, first time playing,
he's not, you know, buckling into this pressure like first drive.
They're like, all right, we got this, Like we're good.
Let's let's go out and play a game. Defense played well.
(04:26):
We just you know, unfortunately, it's one of those games
that I'm proud of, but we lost. We ended up losing,
so I like it kind of gives me the cringes
a little bit when I think about it too, because
there was opportunities there to win the game. You were
in control of the game and an offensive lineman on
kind of a squib kick picked it up and ran
like I don't know, eight yards or something. Set up
the Patriots right before halftime at the doorstep radiant easy touchdown. Nonetheless,
(04:50):
you guys didn't wild. I want to ask you about
this because I sensed this on the plane ride home.
You guys lost the game, but you kind of learned
something as a team that hey, we can we can
play with anybody anywhere. And I thought that was significant
because the team you took into the season was vastly
different from the team due to all the injuries you
(05:11):
had that night in New England. Could you confirm or
deny that for me or what what was your you
know what, it's obviously that year was very an incredibly
special team. What we what we ended up doing the run.
We ended up going as the number six seed. Aaron
Rodgers one of, if not the best to ever played
the position. He's really coming into his prime at that point.
(05:32):
His first year of starting was you know, two years
prior to that, and nine he had a really great season.
But ten everyone it started like saying, Okay, this guy's
gonna be a Hall of Famer. He's gonna he's gonna
do some special things. We all knew the team was
good around us. We had lost some games, had some injuries,
but I think it was you know, there's certainly a
(05:52):
confidence booster that comes. It's like, all right, we have
the best quarterback in the league, but we almost we
should have beat the best team quote unquote the best
team in the league, you know, without that guy with
somebody else. So there's just a confidence there that I think.
I think stuff like that happens. The defense, you know,
our safeties and playing incredible like, our defensive line was
(06:15):
really gelling it coming to get Our defense played amazing
that game, and they just kept building and building and building.
You know, the leadership of that defense had with Charles
Woodson and College, you know, all those guys, it was.
It was very special. The following year, twenty eleven, the
Packers had everything clinched at fourteen and one entering the
final week of the regular season. Coach Mike McCarthy emptied
(06:37):
his bench in a game with division rival Detroit, and
Flynn went off that day, setting Lambo Field single game
records with four hundred and eighty passing yards and six
passing touchdowns in a wild forty five forty one victory.
That was a wild, wild day. And it always kind
(06:57):
of think back because we were fifteen and one, and uh,
as much as it like paint as a team guy,
as much as it pains me to say it, it's like,
I'm so glad that Roman Hook Cridell and the Chiefs
beat us in like week thirteen, because we were twelve
or thirteen to oh and if we don't lose that game,
we're not sitting starters to go, you know, to get
sixteen and U so it's like, you know, perfect season
had been awesome, but for me personally, it was you know,
(07:20):
I got the opportunity to play. It was you know,
timing's kind of everything, and it was the last regular
season of my rookie contract, and it was just one
of these things where it was awesome to be able
to go out there. And I knew it might have been,
you know, at that time into my Green Bay career.
So it was just really cool to be able to
go out and play in lambeau Field, start in lambeau Field.
(07:41):
Those places you know, so special and means so much
to me. But that day, you wait, I wake up
and it's a noon game and it was like fifteen
or eighteen degree or something like that in windy. I
remember the tarp going out there and the tarp was
like blowing off because it was so windy. And the
Lions they were coming, they were out there and they
were you know, at shirts off and stuff, acting like
the cold weather. It's like, you know, trying to intimidate.
(08:03):
I was like, all right, your shirts off, that's not
smart at all. But it's like it was not the
optimal conditions for throwing a throwing attack. Um, but I
think combined yardage with me and Matt Stafford, we threw
for exactly a thousand yards because I threw for four
to eighty and he threw for five twenty. He threw
for five touch You know, we had eleven total touchdowns
(08:25):
and it was just one of those games where, uh,
just everything seemed to be working from both sides of
the balling their offense in our offense. And you know
that that year was the receiving corps was incredible. Yeah, everybody,
every you know, you look both ways and you got talent,
you got big guys, you got guys that can score
touchdown anytime they touched the ball. It was fun because, uh,
(08:48):
you know, Aaron. Aaron actually in the first half of
the game called the plays and then Mike took over
in the second half. And that was kind of because
it was you know, you're not playing, Aaron, but let's
keep you. You know, we want you to be engaged
all week and do everything like you would, so we're
gonna have you call to play. It's just and so
you know, it's I'm walking up to the line of
scrimmage and you know, Aaron and I are are close,
(09:11):
and he's like talking telling me a joke or something
in my head or you know, saying something dumb in
my ear, just like and I'm walking up to a
line of scrimmage laughing a lot of the times. So
it was just it was a fun day and a
game that was that was that was one for one
for the books for sure, and eighty yards passing by you,
six touchdowns, forty five forty one win, all right, it was.
(09:33):
It was an incredible game. I'll never forget that game.
It's amazing. I think Aaron had either broken or tied
the touchdown record like a couple of weeks before that
with five yea. And so we're in the fourth quarter
and I threw my fifth touchdown and I come over
to the sideline. He just shakes his hey, he's looking
at me, and then he just laughs and he's like, dude,
if you get a chance, you got to get six.
(09:55):
And I'm like, i'll try, I'll see, I'll see what happens.
And eventually I got it, and he was he was
the first one to happen. Years later, I mean, you reflect,
do you ever think about I mean, I would reflect
on that. You're talking about the Green Bay Packers you're
talking about Bart Starr and Brett Farve and Aaron Rodgers.
Even Lynn Dickie was a great quarterback here. Yet you've
(10:16):
got the single day work right yardage and touchdowns. You know,
it's funny. I think he Aaron ended up tying the yardage. Well,
he has six touchdowns, two in a game, and then
he tied the yardage like on the button. He three
for four to eighty in another game and I texted
him after the game. Wait, you couldn't have done one
less or one more. You had to tie right right
on the button. That's what are the odds of that happening?
(10:40):
For Matt Flynn. Two games at New England in two
thousand and ten and against Detroit on the last day
of the two thousand eleven A regular season set up
a lucrative contract in free agency. In two thousand and twelve,
Seattle signed bat for three years, twenty million with nine
million dollars guaranteed. But that was not the storybook to
(11:02):
start him many expected. You see, the Seahawks drafted Russell
Wilson in the third round that year, and the rest,
as they say, is history. Flynn was traded to the
Raiders the following season, they cut him. He ended up
in Buffalo, where he was cut again in November of
that season. Meanwhile, his old team, the Packers, were struggling
(11:23):
in twenty thirteen with injuries to quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and
backup Seneca Wallace. The Packers brought in Flynn to essentially
save the season and keep Hope alive until Rogers could return.
And that's just what he did. Going two and two
as the starter, he kept the Packers in the hunt.
Along the way, Flynn engineered one of the biggest comebacks
(11:46):
in franchise history on the road in Dallas, trailing twenty
six to three and a half time to the Cowboys
Packers Valley for a thirty seven thirty six victory. I
wish I could remember halftime. I don't players either, remember
everything about every game. I'm not one of those guys
(12:06):
like I get I'm kind of a get in the
zone guy. If I'm in the zone, then I don't.
I don't recall a lot of like the minute minutia
about what happened. I don't remember exactly what was said.
I just remember I remember going up to the offensive
lineman and I said, I said, just believe. I was like,
just believe that we can do Like I said, I
(12:27):
believe that we can do this. We can come back
and win. And it's like you're twenty six three. It's
like everyone's like, okay, like football guy, like football guy
movies stuff. They're like, all right, that's fine, Like whatever,
let's let's just go play. We'll all play. We'll give
it a shot. But odds are stacked pretty highly in
their favor. But that Dallas game is when I think
back on my NFL career, that's one of the things
(12:49):
that I think about the most and that I've always
taken away. Patriots was awesome, the Lions was awesome. Winning
a Super Bowl incredible. But that game, well, first of all,
I grew up in Texas, so a group a cowboy
fan which was I played high school in old old
Texas Stadium. I played high school playoff games and things
like that. Um so that was and so I have
a lot of family and family was there and they're
(13:10):
you know ones that I got some hardcore cowboy fans
and my family, so they're all wearing of course Green
Bay outfits and clothes. But um, it had the road
that the path that I'd been on the previous couple
of years Seattle. Things didn't go my way. Oakland, Yeah,
Oakland had some injuries I was dealing with and things
(13:31):
didn't go my way. There was a lot of doubt
thrown at me, a lot of people, you know, saying
you know, you know, saying a lot of you know
it goes and saying a lot of negative things. But
being able to come back to a place that was
so spent means so much to me and I love
playing for UM in Green Bay. It's uh. And to
be able to kind of go out and have success
(13:52):
and have a game like that and to come back
like that, UM, there was a lot of validation for me,
I guess and as its very it was a very
positive experience. And just being able to know that a
lot of people wrote you off so that you aren't
you know, you had some lucky games or whatever. It was.
To be able to go out there and do that
on a stage like that was cool. Yeah, And especially
(14:14):
that season because I mentioned Seneca Wallace was injured, Scott
Tolzine got banged up. The Packers are really struggling. They're
trying to get to the playoffs. You don't win that
game in Dallas and a couple of others that I
think you were involved in. You don't get to that
final play in Chicago to win the division championship that
everyone talks about every time the Bears game comes up.
(14:35):
That must be really gratifying team. Yeah, incredible, it was.
Remember I was I was in Buffalo and for three
weeks during the season, and I was there because I
think one of their quarterbacks was injured. So I came
out there just to be kind of a body up
there for a couple of weeks. And then I get
caught on a Monday and I'm watching I'm watching Monday
Night football, I think, and Aaron gets hurt. And then
(14:56):
like in two days, I was on a plane to
Green Bay to to come and you know, take the
physical and everything like that. And then the next week
I'm I'm in in the mix of it, and Scott
was starting against Minnesota and then Mike put me in
the second half and we were down, and that's that's
where it kind of started. Then I came in and
I think I started four or five more games after that,
(15:17):
I can't remember, but one time we had we had
a couple of you know, not so great games, but
we ended up we end up tying. I think the
one that I came in, you know that kind of
that that tie helped us in that hate tying, but
you know, it was it was one of those games
that we were down and out and then we came
back and that was just a really it was. It
was a great run and Aaron got to come back.
(15:38):
And the playoffs and exactly the playoff game you know,
really could have gone your way also, But you gotta be,
like I said, gratifying for you that that, hey, the
Packers don't make the playoffs. Un Listen, you do what
you did that year. That's that's tremendous. Yeah, I'd be
able to have, you know, any sort of positive impact
in a franchise and organization and like this, especially when
(16:01):
you're talking about playoffs and you know, in twenty ten
a Super Bowl run and just have whether you whether
you your backup, whether your start or whatever it is,
to have any sort of impact is really special. But
to be though to go and like we played. I
started against the Steelers in lambeau Field at a night
at night when it was snowing. It was like, that's
(16:21):
you don't get Nobody gets that opportunity, and so you
know that, I look at pictures like that, me playing
with snow around like that's what lambo is all about, right,
And it's just it's really cool to be able to
say you're part of the history, part of these really
really great teams and a great time to be a
to be a Packer player, Packer fan, and part of
the organization for a seventh round draft choice. Backup quarterback
(16:45):
Matt Flynn certainly left his mark on Green Bay and
the Packers
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