GREEN BAY, Wis. _ This should not be Christian McCaffrey's burden to bear.
But that's how the Carolina Panthers' superstar running back will likely take it.
At least, that's how McCaffrey handled things the last time he came up two yards short of a game-winning touchdown. Against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 2, the last game Cam Newton played this season, the Panthers were two yards away from scoring what would have been a game-tying touchdown. Instead, down 20-14, they used Newton as a decoy and direct-snapped the ball to McCaffrey, who sprinted to the left sideline but was ruled short of the end zone.
So excuse any feelings of deja vu from Carolina's 24-16 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. Again the Panthers trailed; again they needed two yards; again there were mere seconds left on the clock; again McCaffrey got the handoff ...
And again he was stopped just shy of the goal line.
"Came up two yards short, again, for the second time this year," tight end Greg Olsen said. "That's tough."
The fact that McCaffrey was even in that situation again was a testament to Carolina's resilience at all.
After quarterback Kyle Allen fumbled and threw an interception midway through Sunday's contest, the Panthers still got the ball back on their own 11-yard line with almost two and a half minutes to play. From that point though, with snow falling heavily at Lambeau Field and obscuring the grass, Allen turned surgical. He connected with DJ Moore and Greg Olsen a number of times to promptly march down the field with time dwindling. On a critical fourth-and-10 with less than a minute remaining, he somehow mustered the arm strength to throw cross-field to Moore for a 12-yard gain and the first down.
"I thought (Kyle) fought his ass off the whole game and I think he did a heck of a job managing us," McCaffrey said. "A couple things here and there, but he didn't let it faze him. Made a couple of huge throws on third down, huge throws on fourth down. Kept us in the game."
But even with three timeouts at their disposal, the Panthers could only slow the clock so long. And eventually, they came to the dreaded situation, with four seconds left, needing their best offensive play to get into the end zone. It still would've taken a successful two-point conversion and some luck in overtime to win the game, but the first order of business was scoring.
So the Panthers, as they did in Tampa, turned to their best offensive player.
McCaffrey took the handoff from Allen and ran toward the left side of the offensive line, behind guard Greg Van Roten. But as he did, Green Bay linebacker Kyle Fackrell burst through the gap between Van Roten and Matt Paradis with one fluid dive.
He made contact with McCaffrey, clogging an otherwise clear rushing lane, and slowed the MVP candidate just enough to throw him off kilter.
As McCaffrey spun, Van Roten _ who himself turned around after his missed block _ saw McCaffrey falling and tried pulling him across the goal line by himself. But as McCaffrey churned his legs and Van Roten pulled on his medsection, they fell into a scrum of bodies struggling to get into the end zone.
"My guy went inside, and I hit him, and I turned around and I tried to grab Christian and pull him across the line," Van Roten said. "It's just hard to tell with all the snow on the ground where the line actually is.
"It's pretty brutal. Despite the turnovers and stuff, we had a chance to score at the end and then have an opportunity to tie it. You just feel like you got your heart ripped out."
Like was the case in Week 2, the play was quickly reviewed. Van Roten said he couldn't make out where the ball was even after the replay, but Olsen said he thought it was difficult to say McCaffrey had gotten in.
As for what McCaffrey saw?
"I don't know. It's tough to see when my head's not facing straight, but just gotta get in in those situations," McCaffrey said. "We gave ourselves a shot and didn't get it."
McCaffrey getting the ball in that situation should come as no surprise.
The Packers' run defense is among the NFL's worst; they allow 127.7 rushing yards per game. And McCaffrey to that point had taken advantage, rushing 19 times for 107 yards and a touchdown. Even without the sort of breakaway, highlight-reel run Panthers fans have become accustomed to this season, McCaffrey effectively gained yards in increasingly poor conditions.
The problem is, it was apparent to everyone that McCaffrey would likely get the ball in that situation, including Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur and defensive coordinator Mike Pettine.
"I knew that anything was possible. There were four seconds left; it was the last play of the game," LaFleur said. "I said something to (Mike), 'They are going to pick their best football play.' So that did not surprise me."
Meanwhile, coach Ron Rivera would not elaborate on the play call postgame.
"Unfortunately, the play was close. It was a game of inches," Rivera said. "I'm not going to talk about strategy."
This one moment does not break McCaffrey's MVP-caliber season. He still finished with 141 scrimmage yards, pushing his season total to a league-high 1,244. His 14 total touchdowns are tied with Green Bay's Aaron Jones for the most in the NFL.
He'll have to continue along his incredible trajectory to actually win the award over high-flying quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Lamar Jackson, but Sunday's performance doesn't truly hurt his candidacy. Not that he's worried about it, anyway.
The reality is McCaffrey _ as a leader of this team and as a professional _ will take much more of the blame than he deserves. There will be outsiders who, nonsensically, say that the Panthers would be 7-2 instead of 5-4 if only McCaffrey had picked up two sets of two yards.
But as anyone in the Panthers locker room will attest to, that couldn't be further from the truth.
"Guy is incredible. He's in the MVP conversation, so just keep it up," Van Roten said. "We're going to keep blocking for him, keep opening holes. And you know, we're going to get the ball to go our way sometimes.
"So we've just gotta stay the course."
