Poor Kevin King paid the price for the Packers’ boneheaded decisions

Even by the standards of an Aaron Rodgers playoff loss, there is a lot of blame to go around here. There are the usual suspects — the coaches, the refs, the offensive line — and a few new actors in the Dom Capers and Mike McCarthy roles. There was some sheer luck involved, too; Tom Brady just made the Super Bowl. Of course there was.

And Rodgers himself deserves some attention. He decided to jam an incompletion under double coverage on 3rd and goal from the 8 instead of at least picking up a few yards for fourth down, if not a touchdown.

But Packers fans will fixate on Kevin King, who gave up a horrendous touchdown to end the first half and then committed an unnecessary penalty to functionally end the game. They should focus on his coaches, whose boneheaded decisions hung him out to dry in the 31-26 loss.

The first coach is Mike Pettine, who entered near-Gregg Williams territory with the coverage he called at the end of the first half. With eight seconds and no timeouts left for the Bucs from 39 yards out, all Tom Brady had available to him was a deep shot at the end zone. Pettine gave it to him, with King in man to man coverage on Scott Miller without a safety behind him. The Bucs went into halftime up 21-10 on a Miller touchdown that was so easy it couldn’t be called a Hail Mary.

Then after Brady did his best to let the Packers pull off a comeback with three second-half picks, LaFleur decided to put the game in Brady’s hands. Down 31-23 and facing fourth and 8 after the Rodgers incompletion, Matt LaFleur kicked a field goal just outside the two-minute warning. The numbers lightly recommended going for it; common sense strongly recommended not giving Tom Brady a chance to put the conference title game away. The Bucs agreed, too. “I couldn’t believe it,” Shaq Barrett said after the game. “I know if they could take that back, they probably wouldn’t do that next time.”

Rodgers seemed to think so as well. “I felt like I had a chance, maybe, to run it” he said about the third-down play.”I thought maybe we were gonna have four chances to go.”

LaFleur almost got away with his cowardice. Brady faced third and long and sailed a pass over the middle that had no chance of being caught, but King was called for pass interference. It was only the fifth penalty of the entire game, and no worse that what went uncalled all day. Yes, King clearly grabbed Tyler Johnson; it never should have come down to that.

There are plenty of other things that Packers fans and Rodgers stans can add to their enormous catalogue of grievances. Equanimeous St. Brown dropped a two-point conversion. Rodgers’ lone interception should have come back. Their best offensive lineman tore his ACL in practice three weeks ago. King himself was comically burned on the Bucs’ first touchdown and was flattened by Leonard Fournette on the second. Usually, all that is just football; it’s always wrong and unfair to reverse-engineer an outcome off a play or two. But with Tom Brady hosting a Super Bowl, we can all loudly join in their complaining this time.