Coin-troversy! Cardinals win in OT after first flip doesn’t flip

It’s perhaps only fitting that in a playoff game that went off the rails, the coin flip for overtime was … a knuckleball?

The Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals flipped the switch on their divisional-round game in the final 10 minutes, trading blows back and forth with a miracle Cardinals deflected touchdown and a Packers Hail Mary score getting us to OT, tied at 20-all.

Who knew that the coin flip would be as bizarre as the rest of the finish?

Referee Clete Blakeman was at midfield with the big, shiny coin and tossed it into the air. It hit the ground and the players started reacting. One problem: It never flipped. Say wha?

Yeah, Blakeman essentially called for a do-over after the coin failed to rotate in the air. It basically hung in the air like a frisbee that didn’t spin. No flip. Here’s another look …

On the second try, which was successful, the flip went the Cardinals’ way. They took the ball — aided by a 75-yard catch-and-run by Larry Fitzgerald on the first play of OT — and scored, winning the game on their first possession.

The Cardinals won the initial flip, but Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said he wasn’t allowed to change his pick for the second flip. Controversial? You decide. Was he really going to change on the second one? Hmm.

“It was confusing,” Rodgers said of the coin redo.

Since when is a coin flip confusing? Since now.

But alas, there would be no discount double check on this flip. We’ve had controversies with coin flips before, most famously the Jerome Bettis-Phil Luckett Thanksgiving classic from 1998. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Bettis clearly called tails, but Luckett misheard him and gave the flip — and the ball — to the Detroit Lions, who went on the win the game.

This one was all on Blakeman. He just didn’t give it the proper thumb torque. Or something.

And the Cardinals got the ball and scored. Weird game. Weird flip.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm