Читать книгу The First America's Team - Bob Berghaus - Страница 8

Entering the 1962 season the Green Bay Packers were the toast of the National Football League, a remarkable feat considering that four years earlier they stumbled through the twelve-game schedule winning just one game while having another end in a tie.

The Packers closed out the 1961 season with six wins in their final seven games, including a 37–0 annihilation of the New York Giants in the league championship game, a win that brought the NFL title back to Green Bay for the first time since 1944.

Newspaper and magazine writers from across the country were dispatched to tiny Green Bay to report on the magic that was happening in this little town, whose population of 63,000 wouldn’t have filled some of the stadiums in the National Football League. The focus of most of the coverage was coach Vince Lombardi, who arrived after the pitiful 1958 season and turned the franchise around immediately. In just a few years he had turned from obscure assistant into the best coach in the game.

There was little doubt that the 1962 version of the Packers could be special. Seventeen of the twenty-two starters were twenty-nine or younger. While Lombardi preached “team,” there was immense individual talent on the roster as ten of the players would eventually wind up in the Hall of Fame.

“We thought we were pretty good; in fact, we were convinced we were pretty good,” said flanker Boyd Dowler, who caught a touchdown pass in the shutout win over the Giants in the 1961 championship game. Coming off the championship game the year before, we certainly had our share of confidence.

“We weren’t scared of anything, weren’t scared of going on the road. In fact, it was pretty fun. Lombardi would tell us we’re going to show everybody that they’re looking at quite an offense line, that they’re looking at the greatest offensive line in football and the best defense in football. He’d say people are going to watch the best pass rushers in the National Football League.”

Lombardi knew exactly when to use that kind of motivation to get his team ready for battle. The Packers were coming off a 45–7 win against the Baltimore Colts, their third-straight victory after being upset in the opener in Milwaukee against Detroit.

“We went to Cleveland to play the Browns at Municipal Stadium right when we really knew we were good,” Dowler said. “We practiced that Saturday before the game and (Lombardi) huddled us up after our little runaround and said, ‘Let me tell you this. Tomorrow there will be 80,000 people who will all be Cleveland Browns fans. Don’t let them intimidate you.’ Ron Kramer said, ‘Coach, I played in front of 100,000 people when I was eighteen years old at Michigan. Let’s just go out there and kick their butts.’”

Dowler chuckled at the memory. “Everybody laughed. We went out there, and it was one of the first big whippings we put on a good football team. They had Bobby Mitchell and Jim Brown, but we ran around like we were playing a high school team.”

The Packers won that game 49–17 as Jim Taylor rushed for 158 yards and 4 scores. The Green Bay defense limited the great Jim Brown—who would go on to win the rushing title with 1,408 yards—to 72 yards.

That kind of domination was expected to be commonplace in 1962 because the Packers had talent and they had Lombardi, who was not going to let his team get big-headed after winning one world championship.

The Packers reported to camp in mid-July, earlier than most teams. As the reigning champion, they would open the season on national TV against the college all-stars at Soldier’s Field in Chicago. The tradition of the NFL champion playing a team of college all-stars from the previous season began in 1934. Following the game, most of the all-stars would leave Chicago and report to teams in either the NFL or the American Football League.

Fullback Earl Gros and guard Ed Blaine, both drafted by the Packers, played with the collegians, whose quarterbacks included future Hall of Famers Roman Gabriel and John Hadl. The game was close through three quarters before the Packers outscored the all-stars 21–20 to put the finishing touches on a 42–20 win. Starr threw 5 touchdown passes, an all-star game record—two each to Dowler and Max McGee and one to Ron Kramer.

“He’s a great passer, one of the most underrated in the league,” said Otto Graham, who was a pretty fair slinger in his day.

The all-stars came into the game shorthanded at running back. Ronnie Bull, who would play with the Bears, had a high fever and missed the game. Also absent was another player who was watching the game from a hospital room in Cleveland. Ernie Davis, a running back from Syracuse who after the 1961 season became the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy, had been practicing with the all-stars when he started having problems physically. He was hospitalized and later moved to a hospital in Cleveland. He was eventually diagnosed with leukemia.

He had been drafted by the Washington Redskins but was soon traded to the Cleveland Browns, who signed him to a three-year, $200,000 contract. He watched the game with several Browns players, including All-Pro fullback Jim Brown, who also played at Syracuse.

Davis was optimistic he’d make a return to the football field.

“I hope I don’t waste too much time,” he said in a wire service story that appeared around the country the day after the game between the Packers and collegians. “I’m studying every day. That’s all I can do.”

In Chicago the Packers surprised Graham by giving him the game ball so he could present it to Davis.

“I always have had a lot of respect for the Packer organization and more so tonight,” he told reporters. “That’s being professional.”

Davis never played a game for the Browns, although he suited up for an exhibition game and was introduced before the game at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. He died the following spring at the age of twenty-three.

Two days before the Packers left for Chicago, Don Hutson, considered at the time the greatest Packer of all time, spent a day with his old team. Hutson played for the Packers from 1935 to 1945 and was the first great pass receiver in the NFL. He led the team in scoring five times and in receiving for eight of the eleven years he played. In 1963 he was a member of the first class in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Coach Vince Lombardi runs the projector as he and his coaches review films in their offices at new City Stadium in May 1962. From left are assistants Bill Austin, Red Cochran, Norb Hecker, Phil Bengtson, and Tom Fears.

As he watched practice he said he was impressed with Starr’s accuracy and said the present Packers team had much more overall talent than the best squads in his day.

“We only had twelve or thirteen real good football players, but this team has thirty-six,” he said in a story that appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Lombardi rode the Packers hard in training camp and offered little praise during preseason wins, calling a performance against Dallas “listless.” Never mind that the Pack won all six of their preseason games, extending their streak to nineteen consecutive wins in exhibition contests. He stayed on them because he didn’t want his players getting soft.

“He was already thinking about winning three straight championships,” Paul Hornung recalled.

Defensive end Willie Davis remembered one of Lombardi’s pet phrases as he looked back almost fifty years on that 1962 season. “Once you win a championship you have a target on your back,” Davis said. “He’d say it’s harder to attain than to maintain.”

A Golden Day

Packers 34, Vikings 7

September 16, 1962, City Stadium

Paul Hornung knew how to light up a scoreboard.

In 1960 he ran and kicked his way to 176 points during a twelve-game season, establishing a record that stood until San Diego running back LaDainian Tomlinson scored 31 touchdowns for a 186-point season in 2006.

The following year the schedule was expanded to fourteen games and Hornung again was the league’s top scorer despite missing two games because of military obligations. He scored 146 points and was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. He earned another MVP award in the championship, scoring a playoff-record 19 points on 1 touchdown, 4 extra points, and 3 field goals in the Packers’ 37–0 win over the Giants.

That was the game Hornung didn’t expect to play. He was serving a tour stateside in the Army and a week before the game called Lombardi, telling him he didn’t think he’d get a weekend pass to be able to play. Lombardi called in a favor to the one man who could get his left halfback back to Green Bay in time for the game. The coach had struck up a friendship with John F. Kennedy, who was in his first year as the country’s thirty-fifth president. Kennedy was a huge football fan and an admirer of Lombardi. At one point he had given the coach his private number, telling him to call if he ever needed anything.

There are varying accounts of what happened for Hornung to leave Fort Riley to play in the game, but enough proof exists to suggest that the young president did have a hand in making that happen.

In the book When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, author David Maraniss writes about a letter from Lombardi to Kenneth O’Donnell, a special assistant to Kennedy. He states that Lombardi expressed his gratitude: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your help in obtaining leave for Paul Hornung so he could participate in the Championship game.”

Before Lombardi arrived, it seemed as if Hornung would never live up to the big-game reputation he earned at Notre Dame, enabling him to win the Heisman Trophy in 1956 and to be the overall first pick in the 1957 NFL draft. During his first two seasons with the Packers, he showed flashes of brilliance but earned a reputation as a player who cared more about what he accomplished off the field rather than on it. He gained a total 629 yards in his first twenty-four games.

“I was ready to quit after fifty-eight and do something else,” Hornung said. “I hated losing.”

Lombardi came in and made Hornung his left halfback, telling the Golden Boy he was going to be used in the same fashion Frank Gifford was used in New York when Lombardi was offensive coordinator for the Giants.

Hornung wound up rushing for 681 yards and scoring 94 points, but some of Lombardi’s assistants weren’t convinced his heart was dedicated to football. During a five-game losing streak in 1959, Lombardi asked his assistants for honest appraisal of every player on the roster. The notes given to Lombardi were later used in a book compiled by Len Wagner from reports provided by Phil Bengston’s son, Jay, titled, Launching the Glory Years: The 1959 Packers, What They Didn’t Tell Us.”

One assistant was highly critical of Hornung: “Not a team player. Has ability to do many things but is very lax. Not a good blocker. Does not make the big play when called upon to do so…I question his value as a top flight football player.”

Another assistant added: “Paul is a fair receiver, poor blocker. Could be a great ball player but lacks drive. He has pride. He gets by putting out just enough to do the job. He is a problem as far as training and social life and I don’t think he is going to change. If we could get a top pro player and a kicker somewhere, I would be in favor of trading him. I think it would do the team more good.”

Lombardi didn’t listen. He knew Hornung could be special, and the former Heisman Trophy winner showed signs during the final four games of that season by scoring 6 touchdowns after reaching the end zone just once in the first eight games.

He also threw touchdown passes and was instrumental in helping turn a 3–5 team into one that finished 7–5 and showed signs of becoming special. Hornung was a playboy, and he never did change his lifestyle. He partied hard during the week but was ready on Sunday. He was well liked by his teammates and had a lot to do with the strong camaraderie on the team. As time wore on, he became Lombardi’s favorite player. Lombardi famously said Hornung was ordinary between the 20-yard lines but had a nose for the goal line once the Packers crossed the opponent’s 20.

There were some games when he was truly spectacular, as he was in the first regular-season game of 1962. The Packers opened up a new season at City Stadium against the second-year Minnesota Vikings with Hornung leading the way. The former Heisman Trophy winner from Notre Dame scored 3 touchdowns on runs of 6, 7, and 37 yards. He also booted 4 extra points and a pair of field goals for a 28-point day.

Hornung rushed 10 times for 67 yards and also completed a 41-yard pass to Boyd Dowler on a halfback option. Packers fullback Jim Taylor rushed for a team-high 75 yards on 17 tries but failed to get into the end zone. He gained 14 yards on the Packers’ first offensive play of the season, picking up most of the yardage after a key block by Dowler.

Hornung scored his first 2 touchdowns in the opening period to stake Green Bay to a 14–0 lead. The Packers had a second-quarter drive stall on the 3, and Lombardi elected to let Hornung boot a 10-yard field goal for a 17–0 halftime lead. Remember, those were the days when goalposts in the NFL were on the goal line.

Hornung displayed a strong leg with a 45-yard field goal in the third quarter. Bart Starr, who had an average passing day (7 completions in 14 attempts for 108 yards) hooked up with tight end Ron Kramer on an 18-yard scoring strike later in the quarter. Hornung’s 37-yard run early in the fourth quarter gave the Pack a 34–0 lead.

Meanwhile the Green Bay defense did a great job in containing Fran Tarkenton, the Vikings’ scrambling quarterback, who had rushed for 308 yards and 5 scores during his rookie season a year earlier.

The Packers line, led by end Willie Davis and tackle Henry Jordan, sacked Scramblin’ Fran six times for 52 yards in losses. The secondary also had a big day picking off 5 passes, 2 each by Willie Wood and Herb Adderley and 1 by Hank Gremminger. The Packers also forced the Vikings into 2 fumbles for a total of 7 turnovers.

A day after watching film of the easy win, Lombardi said the Packers offense lacked consistency and that the tackling was “bad.”

A few days after the game the Green Bay Press-Gazette ran a story about the rival American Football League, which, in its third season, was luring talented players away from the NFL with contracts significantly larger than most of the players in the more established league were playing for.

Dowler, who began his career with the Packers in 1959, admitted that the lure of money would have been tempting had the AFL been in existence when he came out of college.

“I would have very seriously considered the other league,” he said. “The idea of a new frontier and the chance to get in at the ground floor plus the chance for more money may have swung me over.”

Defense steps up again

Packers 17, Cardinals 0, Milwaukee County Stadium

September 23, 1962

Remarkably, the Packers left the field at halftime leading just 3–0 against a Cardinals team that would finish the season with a 4–9–1 record.

Playing at Milwaukee County Stadium, the Packers’ part-time home, the team from Missouri caught the Packers by surprise with a strong defensive effort through the first two quarters, holding the Packers to a 13-yard field goal by Hornung. The Packers drove to the 30 or closer three other times, but Starr had 2 passes intercepted and also lost a fumble.

“Their defense upset us in the beginning,” Lombardi told reporters after the game. “We had a helluva time trying to find them. They did a lot of stunting in there. We knew they would be tough defensively. It was new to us. We hadn’t seen it before this year.”

The new defensive look came from the Cardinals’ new coach, someone familiar to those around the Milwaukee area. Wally Lemm was a standout running back at Carroll College, a small school located in Waukesha, twenty-five miles west of Milwaukee. After graduating from college he joined the service and began his coaching career as an assistant at Notre Dame in 1945.

Following one season in South Bend, he returned to Carroll as an assistant for two years and then coached for one season at Waukesha High, which played in the Milwaukee Suburban Conference. He left for the college ranks again and eventually landed in the NFL as an assistant with the Chicago Cardinals in 1956. Lemm later coached the Houston Oilers to the AFL title in 1961 and then returned to the Cardinals, this time as a head coach.

Lemm’s defense kept the Packers out of the end zone for a half, but it wasn’t strong enough to do it for an entire game.

Lemm actually thought the Cardinals had a chance at upsetting the reigning champs. He didn’t think the Packers looked sharp when the teams played during the preseason, and he saw some things while watching film of the Packers-Vikings game that told him Green Bay was vulnerable.

“We all thought the champions were ripe for the taking,” he said.

As it turned out, Lemm was wrong, and he was impressed with the Packers.

“They’re tough to beat because they have the best balanced team in football,” Lemm told reporters. “Great runners in Taylor and Hornung, excellent passing, at least five dangerous receivers, tremendous defense, outstanding kicking. All that plus experience. What else can you have in this game?”

Taylor eventually found openings in the St. Louis line and finished the day with 122 yards in 23 attempts, although he didn’t reach the end zone for the second straight game.

Hornung scored on a 3-yard run halfway into the third quarter, and Starr tossed a 17-yard touchdown pass to Max McGee midway through the final quarter for Green Bay’s final score.

Henry Jordan (74) collars St. Louis quarterback Sam Etcheverry (14) with help from Bill Forester (71) during the Packers’ 17–0 victory over the Cardinals on September 23. Bill Quinlan (83) closes in at left.

The Green Bay defense was stellar, limiting the Cardinals to 16 yards rushing and sacking quarterback Sam Etcheverry five times.

The Packers forced 5 turnovers, 3 fumbles, and 2 interceptions, giving them 12 after just two games.

Lemm singled out defensive tackle Henry Jordan, who was on his way to becoming a consensus All-Pro.

“That Jordan is everywhere and he does everything,” Lemm said.

“Willie Davis was hitting ’em before I got to ’em,” Jordan said after the game.

That season the Cardinals signed a rookie from the University of Wisconsin named Jim Bakken, who had been a quarterback with the Badgers. Bakken, who had been drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, also was an accomplished kicker and would go on to a seventeen-year career with the Cardinals. He was twice named All-Pro and played in the Pro Bowl four times. He was the first player in NFL history to kick 7 field goals in one game.

After Bakken was cut, the Packers contacted him and wanted to sign him. But since the Packers were the champion team, they had to wait to see if other teams put a claim on him. The Cardinals did and signed the native of Madison.

Recalling that Jerry Kramer booted 3 field goals in the 1962 title game, Bakken said, “That could have been me. I know if I would have been signed by the Packers I would have been their kicker when Hornung got hurt. It’s something I don’t dwell on, but it certainly crossed my mind.”

He very well could have been their kicker for three other championship teams and in the Super Bowl wins over Kansas City and Oakland had the Packers signed him in 1962. Green Bay eventually signed Don Chandler as their full-time kicker and punter in 1965.

“A sleepless night”

Packers 49, Bears 0

City Stadium

September 30

Lombardi had an inordinate amount of respect for Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas, not only for his contributions to the NFL but also because of what “Papa Bear” did when the Packers were searching for a coach following the 1958 season

It was Halas who strongly recommended to Packers President Dominic Olejniczak that he hire Lombardi, the Giants’ forty-five-year-old offensive coordinator.

Halas hated losing, especially to the Packers, but he respected Lombardi for how he turned around the Packers. Green Bay being relevant again helped the National Football League, which was important to Halas, who with others had helped create the league.

During the spring of 1962, he made the two-hundred-mile trip from Chicago to Green Bay to help roast Lombardi, who was being honored by the Green Bay Elks Club.

“We’re delighted to be part of this richly deserved tribute to Vince Lombardi,” Halas said that night. “Although my role is out of character. In the past when we have come to Green Bay it was not to praise Caesar. It was to bury him. But due to our notable lack of success in arranging the football demise of Vince Lombardi and the Packers, we know that his record will continue for quite some time.”

Lombardi was touched, and in his mind nothing could have been finer than to have Halas be part of his special night.

Almost six months later the Bears came to Green Bay for the first of two regular-season games with their most hated rivals with a 2–0 record and a banged-up team.

“Lombardi loved Halas for what he meant to the National Football League, but he also loved beating the Bears,” Hornung said. “I loved Halas, too.”

Chicago came into the game without linebacker Bill George, who was sidelined with a back injury. Halfback Willie Galimore was also injured and unavailable. Fullback Rick Casares, whom Hornung referred to as “one of the toughest sons of bitches I know,” was bothered with a heel injury. Defensive back J.C. Caroline was also hobbling. Had the Bears been at full strength they would have had trouble beating the Packers that day. Without several key players, they were defenseless.

After a scoreless first period the Packers rolled to a 49–0 win. The Green Bay defense was relentless, holding the Bears to 217 yards while recovering 1 fumble and intercepting 5 passes, the last returned 50 yards for a touchdown by Herb Adderley.

The offense was at the top of its game as well, totaling 21 first downs and 409 yards. Taylor needed just 17 attempts to rush for 126 yards. He scored on runs of 1, 2, and 11 yards. Elijah Pitts had his best game as a pro, scoring on a 26-yard run and finishing with 64 yards on 9 carries.

Bart Starr completed 9 of 12 passes, one a 54-yard scoring pass to tight end Ron Kramer. Starr also rushed for a touchdown.

Pitts played the entire second half after both Hornung and his backup, Tom Moore, were injured.

“When I came to the stadium today I figured I’d only be playing on platoons,” said Pitts, a second-year player, who was an alumnus of little Philander T. Smith College. “I had trouble hitting the holes in the first half. Then, all of a sudden, I was hitting them pretty well.”

In the end it was one of the worst defeats in Bears history.

“They were just too good for us,” Halas told reporters following the game. “That’s about all you can say. The Packers were just a great team out there today.”

A week earlier, when asked by a Los Angeles writer about his rivals to the north, Halas said, “The Packers do not yet walk upon water.”

Following the game he wouldn’t take the bait when asked how this Green Bay team stacked up against others in the history of the league.

“I never compare teams,” he said.

Lombardi was gracious in victory and careful not to say anything that would appear to demean Halas and the Bears.

“We’ve played good ball games before but everything seemed to work today,” he said. “Everything we tried worked.”

The only story that wasn’t related to the Packers-Bears game on the front of the Press-Gazette the next day was a story about the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, who were preparing to start a best-of-three series to decide the National League pennant. The Giants went on to win the pennant but lose the World Series to the New York Yankees, losing Game seven 1–0. Before he began his professional football career as a player-coach, Halas appeared to be a promising baseball player. He was promoted to the New York Yankees and played right field for twelve games before suffering an injury. A popular myth is that Babe Ruth replaced him in the lineup, but that’s not true. Ruth actually replaced Sammy Vick.

Lombardi was working with author W.C. Heinz on Run to Daylight, the classic book chronicling the 1962 season. The book came out in 1963, and in it Lombardi wrote that several hours after the game against the Bears, he woke up in the middle of the night, bothered by the whipping his team had inflicted on Halas’s club.

All week long there builds up inside of you a competitive animosity toward that other man, that counterpart across the field. All week long he is the symbol, the epitome, of what you must defeat and then, when it is over, when you have looked up to that man for as long as I have looked up to George Halas, you cannot help but be disturbed by a score like this. You know he brought a team in here hurt by key injuries and that this was just one of those days, but you can’t apologize. You can’t apologize for a score. It is up there on that board, and nothing can change it now. I can just hope, lying here awake in the middle of the night, that after all those years he has had in this league—and he had forty-two of them—these things no longer affect him as they still affect me. I can just hope that I am making more of this than he is, and now I see myself, unable to find him in the crowd and walking up that ramp and into our dressing room, now searching instead for something that will bring my own team back to earth.”