GREEN BAY — Davante Adams apparently didn't see a sign from Aaron Rodgers on the fake-spike play that helped the Green Bay Packers beat the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
The rookie wide receiver may have thought he saw a signal from his quarterback, but Rodgers said Tuesday that he never did anything to let Adams know that he was throwing him the ball.
Rodgers said Tuesday on his weekly radio show on 540 ESPN and ESPNWisconsin.com that he never let any of his teammates know that he was planning to fake a clock-stopping spike and improvised the play on the fly. While he made eye contact with wide receiver Randall Cobb before the play — and Cobb consequently ran a pass pattern — it wasn't until after he'd gotten the snap that he and Adams connected.
"I yelled 'Clock!' which means spike, and I didn't spike it and threw it to Davante. Anything that anybody else has said about it, my apologies to those people, but it is probably slightly exaggerated," Rodgers said. "That's really what happened."
Asked after the game about the signal Rodgers gave him about the fake-spike play, Adams said, "It's real subtle, because he's doing it so other people are going to be able to pick up on it. He's doing his job, and I've got to make sure I see it because it's on me if I don't do it right."
Said Rodgers Tuesday: "I don't know what he's talking about, and that's the truth."
Whatever happened, it worked. Adams caught the pass, taking advantage of the large cushion cornerback Cortland Finnegan was giving him to get 12 yards before getting out of bounds with 6 seconds left at the Dolphins 4-yard line.
"The last thing I did [before the snap] was make sure we had a legal formation," Rodgers said. "So I looked out to the right and made sure we had a legal formation and as I did, I noticed that the corner was way off of Davante. Knowing that we had second-and-6ish from outside of the 10, I thought we might be able to get some cheap yards. And all that is happening in a very short amount of time, and you've got to make a quick decision.
"[If] you spike it, you have two plays. You fake spike it and get out of bounds, he got 12 yards. Obviously there's a big difference between two plays from the 16 and two plays from the 4-yard line."
On the next play, tight end Andrew Quarless caught the game-winning touchdown.
"I was glad Davante was looking at him," Packers coach Mike McCarthy said of the non-spike. "Because I've known Aaron, when he does the fake spike in practice, when they don't look at him, it's not a good thing."
Jason Wilde wrote: