The Packers trailed the Buccaneers 31-23 with 2:15 left in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game and faced a fourth and goal from the Tampa Bay 8-yard line.

They had chipped away at a deficit that grew as high as 18 points at the start of the third quarter and now had a chance to tie the game with a touchdown and a two-point conversion.

The Green Bay offense had struggled up to that point in the fourth quarter, with its two previous possessions in the final frame resulting in quick three-and-outs following back-to-back Tom Brady interceptions.

Still, the Packers had the likely MVP of the league at quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, Pro Football Focus's highest-graded wide receiver in the league this season in Davante Adams, and a tight end in Robert Tonyan, who had 12 touchdown receptions for the season.

One has to feel good about the chances of scoring with that group on the field. However, Packers’ head coach Matt LaFleur opted to have none of them on the field after Rodgers threw three straight incompletions on the three previous plays.

He instead trotted the kicking team out to attempt a 26-yard field goal. Mason Crosby knocked it between the uprights to cut the Tampa Bay lead to 31-26 with 2:09 remaining.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Buccaneers OLB Shaq Barrett said on the Packers’ decision to kick the field goal rather than go for it. “I know if they could take that back, they probably wouldn’t do that next time.”

The Packers never got the ball back, thanks to a third-down pass interference penalty against Kevin King and a subsequent carry by Chris Godwin four plays later to pick up another first down and run the clock out.

LaFleur’s fourth-down decision was an obvious scapegoat, but he defended the decision.

“Anytime it doesn’t work out, you always regret it, right?” LaFleur said. “It was just the circumstances of having three shots and coming away with no yards and knowing that you not only need the touchdown, but you need the two-point (conversion).

“The way I was looking at it was, we essentially had four timeouts with the 2-minute warning. We knew we needed to get a stop, and I thought we were going to have a stop there at the end but we got called for the P.I. (pass interference) and it didn’t work out.”

LaFleur is right that the Packers’ defense was magnificent in the second half. They had allowed 10 points but seven of those came one play after an Aaron Jones fumble, which set the Buccaneers up at the Green Bay 8-yard line. They also forced Brady to throw three interceptions after he dominated the first half.

By the numbers, though, there was very little incentive to bypass going for it in that situation. According to EdjSports, kicking the field goal decreased the Packers' win probability from 10.8% all the way down to 7.8%.

While a 3% decrease may seem like a trifling amount, consider a baseball analogy. That amount is the difference between a player hitting .270 and a player hitting .300. A .270 batting average is above league average, but hitting .300 is an all-star caliber average.

Ben Baldwin’s fourth-down model additionally shows the risk-reward between going for it and kicking the field goal favored choosing the former.

This separate model predicted that making the field goal gave the Packers just a 9% chance to win, slightly higher than the EdjSports simulation. On the other hand, going for it and failing to score would have dropped the Packers' win probability to 4%. Going for it successfully would have increased their win probability all the way to 24%.

Based on these models, the difference between the risk of going for it and failing did not outweigh the upside of making the field goal enough to discourage going for it.

Where LaFleur’s defense for his decision is flawed is that regardless of whether the Packers failed to convert on fourth down or made the field goal, they still would have needed to score a touchdown and a two-point conversion to have the greatest chance of not losing the game in regulation.

Obviously, with an eight-point deficit, a touchdown and a two-point conversion would have tied the game, but the field goal cut the lead to five points.

Had the Packers stopped the Buccaneers on their next possession, a touchdown still would have been needed to take the lead. One has to also assume the Packers then would have gone for two to try to take a three-point lead and eliminate the possibility of the Buccaneers winning in regulation with a field goal.

Furthermore, even if the Packers had failed to convert, the Buccaneers would have had to begin their drive from their own 8, which would have given the Packers less distance to go if they forced a three-and-out and got the ball back.

Instead, kicking the field goal gave the Buccaneers field position from their own 17 after the kickoff return from Jayden Mickens.

Nine yards doesn’t make a significant difference, but kicking off presented another risk, given that the Packers ranked 10^th worst in the NFL in yards per kickoff return allowed. Mickens also had a 43-yard kickoff return earlier in the game.

Rodgers did not directly say whether or not he agreed with LaFleur’s decision, but he didn’t sound very supportive.

“I didn’t have a decision on that one,” he said. “That wasn’t my decision, but understand the thinking, above two minutes, with all of our timeouts, but yeah, it wasn’t my decision.”

The other puzzling part about kicking the field goal was that the Packers were the most aggressive team in the NFL on fourth down all season. But in the most critical situation of the biggest game of the year, they decided to veer from what they’ve done all year.

The Packers scored a touchdown on an NFL-best 80% of their red-zone trips during the regular season. They failed to score a touchdown earlier in the game from the Buccaneers’ 5 and failed on three consecutive attempts before the fourth-down decision.

On first down, Rodgers threw an incomplete pass in the direction of Allen Lazard, but there seemed to be a miscommunication between the two, as the ball landed in the end zone nowhere near him.

“I thought he was going to keep it maybe a little skinnier and he was kind of crossing face,” Rodgers said. “I don’t blame him for that. It just would have been a reaction that maybe he saw the defender kind of going outside of him and maybe a guy pushing to him. I thought he might keep it a little straighter, but I don’t fault him for that.”

On second down, Rodgers escaped the pocket and fired an off-balance incompletion that was too tall for Adams. On third down, he stepped up and rolled right but threw another incompletion toward Adams, who was tightly covered by two Buccaneers. Rodgers looked like he might have had enough room to run for the touchdown.

“I felt great about the third-down call,” Rodgers said. “We actually ran it earlier in the game. It was the same play that (Davante) caught out of the end zone…I felt like I had a chance maybe to run it, but I felt like there was a guy kind of closing in on me.”

The Packers missed several opportunities earlier in the game that would have made LaFleur’s fourth-down decision irrelevant.

There was the inexcusable 39-yard touchdown pass they allowed to Scotty Miller with one second left in the first half to go down 11. They went three-and-out on two consecutive drives, both after Brady interceptions. Equanimeous St. Brown dropped a pass on a two-point conversion attempt that would have made it 28-25. And of course, there was the pass interference call against King on the Buccaneers’ final possession that caused a first down to pretty much end the game.

The pass interference call on King seemed a bit soft, especially given the physical play the officials had allowed for most of the game. However, it was the correct call, based on the rule.

The desire for consistency is understandable, but LaFleur trusting his defense to be perfect on the most important drive of the game against the greatest quarterback of all time, along with relying on the officials to be consistent at that point in the game, is a lot to ask.

LaFleur’s resume through his first two seasons in Green Bay is impressive. He’s 26-6 in the regular season with two division titles and two appearances in the NFC Championship Game.

But in the game’s biggest moment he chose the conservative route and the Packers’ offense never got the chance to take the field again.

Instead of playing for a Super Bowl in two weeks, the Packers will begin their offseason early after coming up short in the NFC Championship for the second year in a row.

In a league where sustained success is more difficult than in any other league, this one could sting for a long time.

“I think anytime something doesn’t work out,” LaFleur said, “do you regret it? Sure, but we’re always going to be process-driven here and the way our defense was battling, the way our defense was playing, it felt like it was the right decision to do. It just didn’t work out.”