Unless you were a Green Bay Packers fan, you most likely didn’t know who Brandon Bostick was before the NFC Championship Game between the Packers and the Seattle Seahawks.
That all changed in one play.
Bostick became famous for fumbling a critical onside kick late in the fourth quarter of the championship game that the Seahawks recovered. The Packers were up 19-14 at the time of the onside kick. The Seahawks went on to win the game in overtime before losing to the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
Since then, Bostick has been released by the Packers and signed by the Vikings.
However, he admits that the moment where he fumbled away the Packers’ Super Bowl chances still haunts him to this day.
On Thursday, Brandon published a first-person account of his experiences during and after the NFC Championship Game for MMQB. In it, he explains that he was actually assigned to block on the infamous onside kick:
I was supposed to block for Jordy Nelson, who was right behind me. We had practiced this dozens if not hundreds of times before. But when the ball appeared in front of me, just floating in the air, my mind went blank. I forgot everything I was supposed to do. It’s not that CenturyLink Field was too loud, or that I crumbled under the pressure of the situation. Instinct just kicked in. The ball was in front of me and I wanted to grab it. I jumped up, I reached for it … and my life changed forever.
He also wrote on the innumerable death threats that he received after the game.
I knew it was a big deal. I knew it was a key mistake that cost us a trip to the Super Bowl. But, with all due respect, I think the media kind of took it and ran with it. I became the singular scapegoat. Social media didn’t help, either. I don’t know how many death threats I received, but there have been a lot. I still haven’t read most of the messages that people sent me, but I want to so I can deal with the consequences and use it as motivation. But it is physically impossible for me to read every troll’s comment; the volume is simply too much. So their comments sit there, untouched, maybe forever.
Thankfully, Brandon is getting a fresh start in Minnesota and Packers fans can dislike Brandon for playing for a divisional rival which is much more healthy and sane than wishing death on the man.
Image via John W. McDonough/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB
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