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Brandon Bostick befriends someone who understands his mistake

Frank Schwab
·NFL writer

Brandon Bostick shouldn't be the name forever associated with the Green Bay Packers' NFC championship game collapse, but that will probably be the case.

Many, many other mistakes were made (still waiting to hear why Julius Peppers ordered Morgan Burnett to go down, and why Burnett did it, with five minutes to go), but Bostick is the easy target. Instead of blocking for Jordy Nelson on an onside kick, he tried to get the ball and fumbled it away. The Seattle Seahawks recovered and ended up winning in overtime. No one play determines an entire football game, but Bostick was easy to blame.

Earnest Byner knows.

If we're making a list of the most heartbreaking losses in NFL history, the Packers' loss to Seattle goes right alongside the Cleveland Browns' loss in the AFC championship game at the end of the 1987 season. Byner was running in for what would have been the game-tying touchdown with a little more than a minute to go, and he was stripped by Broncos defensive back Jeremiah Castille. The Broncos recovered and went to the Super Bowl. Everyone knew Byner's name.

According to a first-person column in The MMQB, Bostick said out of the blue he got a call from the one man who knew his pain: Earnest Byner.

"Byner called me out of the blue, and now we talk about once or twice a week," Bostick wrote. "His biggest advice: Face your mistake, don’t run from it."

It doesn't help when the Packers put a bit of public blame on him. Bostick was cut earlier this month. Bostick said he was told that the onside kick had something to do with the move but there was no further explanation.

"I feel as if there’s a little more to it than that," Bostick wrote. "With how close we were to reaching the Super Bowl, I think a lot of people in the organization couldn’t live with me being there. I think seeing me would remind them of losing the NFC championship. I think the Packers wanted a new start, so I got one, too."

Bostick ended up with the Vikings. He talked about making a mistake on the onside ("I forgot everything I was supposed to do," he wrote) and how he got death threats on Twitter. Hopefully Bostick can move on from what happened in Seattle, because he's far from the only reason the Packers lost and definitely doesn't deserve to be verbally abused on social media.

Maybe by not hiding Bostick can help change the narrative. Byner has probably told him this fact: After his infamous fumble against the Broncos, he went on to help Washington win Super Bowl XXVI. There's time for Bostick to redeem himself.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!