With the seconds ticking away on Milwaukee's 61-year run as an NFL city, Brett Favre provided one last fantastic finish.
Favre's 9-yard touchdown scramble with 14 seconds and no timeouts left Sunday gave Green Bay a 21-17 victory over the Atlanta Falcons and kept the Packers from kissing their playoff hopes goodbye.Green Bay (8-7) can reach the playoffs by beating Tampa Bay on Christmas Eve.
"The end zone looked farther and farther away as I got closer to it," Favre said.
That's how the playoffs had started to look to the Packers after the Falcons (6-9) took their first lead late in the game.
Backup quarterback Bobby Hebert, playing because Jeff George broke a finger in the first quarter, threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Terance Mathis and a 2-point conversion to Andre Rison for a 17-14 lead with 5:33 left.
With the Packers pulling out of Milwaukee for good after the game, it appeared as though the Packers' farewell would end up in the scrapheap of bad breakups, like the Braves' bitter departure in 1965.
But instead, Favre made sure it would go into the city's storied scrapbook, to be recalled fondly alongside the catches of Don Hutson, the runs of Paul Hornung, the hits of Ray Nitschke and the calls of Vince Lombardi.
"The route was designed to maybe hit the post on the right side to Robert Brooks or a shallow cross underneath to Terry Mickens," Favre said. "I just scrambled around, scrambled around, trying to make something happen. Believe me, I never thought I'd run it in."
The Packers finished with a 107-63-1 record at Milwaukee, including a 27-0 victory over the New York Giants in the 1939 NFL title game.
They had played a portion of their home schedule in Milwaukee every year since 1933. But in a revenue-generating move, they decided to play all their home games at Lambeau Field in Green Bay beginning next year.
They went out in style.
Green Bay fullback Edgar Bennett caught eight passes for a career-high 101 yards and rushed 13 times for 46 more.
When Green Bay coach Mike Holmgren left the field, he climbed a pile of snow near the first-base dugout, pumped his fists into the air and blew kisses to the crowd of 54,885 at County Stadium.