That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory

by John Eisenberg

Starr had experienced an epiphany of sorts. Some of the possibilities Lombardi had discussed during the week had crystallized right in front of him, the holes and receivers opening up just as Lombardi had said they would. Wow! Starr had been impressed with Lombardi all along, but his appreciation soared even higher. There was no doubt the man’s offense could roll over defenses. That gave Starr confidence, sent an electric charge through his body. If we run the plays right, we’ll move the ball. We will!

Phil Bengston’s unit had played hard, but Unitas was never better than in the final minutes of a close game. He kept the defense guessing with a blend of passes and runs.

The Packers had generated 455 yards of offense, their highest single-game total since October 1956.

Yet the Packers had to practice outside because the Green Bay Bobcats minor-league ice hockey team was using the arena.

Of course, after Lombardi tore you down, he always came around later, flashed that grin, hit you on the shoulder, complimented you, and asked about your kids, and suddenly, instead of being angry, you just wanted to play better.

He would keep the players who exhibited the consistency, concentration, and fire he demanded, and after five straight losses, he wondered how many fit that description.

A thousand tickets were still available Saturday, and the crowd of 31,853 was shy of a sellout.

This was, somewhat incredibly, his first personal win as an NFL starting quarterback. The Packers had gone 3-16-1 in games he had previously started going back to 1956, and Starr had split time with other quarterbacks in the three wins. This was the first win for which he was solely responsible.

The Lions had hosted a Turkey Day game since the early 1930s; the owner had seen his team lagging behind baseball’s Tigers in popularity and thought a holiday game might attract fans. He was right. The game had become a staple, selling out locally and drawing national radio (and now TV) audiences in the millions. Thanksgiving was a popular date for many high school and college teams to play their traditional rivals, and the Lions’ game had become the NFL’s annual holiday event.

The Packers hadn’t finished with a winning record since 1947 or won more than six games in a season since 1944, but now they were 5–5 with two games left, on the road against the Rams and 49ers.

Back in Green Bay, several thousand got in their cars and drove to Austin-Straubel Field to greet the team plane, adjusting holiday plans to show support.

Back in their glory days, the Packers had returned home from important road wins to find enormous, cheering crowds waiting at the train station. When they won their first NFL title in 1929 by beating the Bears in Chicago, they were greeted by ten thousand people. The custom had continued into the 1940s, with raucous station greetings serving as exclamation points to big wins—and preludes to all-night, citywide drinking binges, with the police happily looking the other way at closing time. The tradition had faded along with the Packers in the 1950s, their airport greetings dwindling to a few diehards. But this Thanksgiving victory in Detroit kindled the old spirit. A season sweep of the Lions, who had dominated the NFL in the 1950s, reminded fans of the days when they supported a winner. Millions of TV viewers across the country had watched Lombardi’s improving team. That was exciting. Some three thousand people had gathered by early evening when the charter landed. A light snow fell in the fading light. The fans massed behind a fence and waited as the plane taxied up to the terminal. They cheered and held up signs as the players ducked out of the plane and waved. Lombardi, emerging last, thanked the fans for coming.

They had won just one of eighteen games in California during the 1950s, their average margin of defeat almost three touchdowns.

Instead of staying at a soon-to-be-condemned lodge for senior citizens in Pasadena, the Packers checked into a beach resort in Santa Monica; they ate breakfast on their verandas, surrounded by lush flora and staring out at the Pacific Ocean.

The players began the trip without their coach; the first rounds of the NFL’s college draft took place on Monday in Philadelphia with Lombardi, Phil Bengston, and Jack Vainisi representing the Packers.

The bookmakers had history on their side—the Packers had lost six games in a row to the Rams going back to 1956, and hadn’t won in Los Angeles since 1947—but

The Rams had built a winning tradition in California since moving west from Cleveland in 1946, playing in four NFL championship games and bringing home the title in 1951. Pro football was immensely popular in Los Angeles, the game-going habit so ingrained in so many fans that, even as this miserable season ended, sixty-one thousand spectators came out to see if their Rams could win and maybe save Gillman’s job.

What a brilliant call, Lombardi thought—absolutely a knockout punch. Lombardi was starting to view Starr differently. The quiet southerner could be tough and bold after all. Lombardi had underestimated him.

This was the third game in a row in which the Packers had built a three-touchdown lead.

Starr said he sucked throat lozenges throughout the game because of the chest cold he caught when he went hunting the week before.

The Packers flew up the coast on Monday and checked into Rickey’s Motel in Palo Alto, where they had stayed the year before. Lombardi liked this arrangement: the motel was comfortable and he could practice at nearby Stanford. There would be one change: instead of staying in Palo Alto all week, the team would move to San Francisco for the weekend, spending Saturday and Sunday nights at the Palace Hotel.

The Packers had known for weeks that they wouldn’t make the postseason, but they wouldn’t lack for motivation Sunday. They were having too much fun whipping teams that had toyed with them for years, including the 49ers.

Kneeling to call a play and start the next Packer possession, Starr smiled as he glanced up at his teammates. In previous years, the Packers would have panicked after quickly falling two touchdowns behind, especially on the road. But Starr radiated a calm assuredness. He had no doubt this deficit could be erased. He had faith in Lombardi. The Packers would crunch the 49ers into pieces before this day was over.

After booting the conversion to give the Packers a 23–14 lead, Hornung came to the sideline breathing deeply, tired but immensely satisfied. He had scored two touchdowns, kicked two extra points, caught two passes, and rushed for more than sixty yards—and there were still more than twenty minutes left in the game. As he took a seat on the bench, he couldn’t help thinking how drastically his fortunes had changed. The fans in Green Bay had regularly booed him during his first two seasons, but his third season was ending with a flourish.

A half hour after the game, many players were still wearing their uniforms and sitting on folding chairs in front of their lockers, seemingly in no hurry to shower, dress, and leave football behind, even though a night out in San Francisco loomed. In prior years they had practically counted the hours until their season ended. Now, after winning both games in California for the first time, they wanted to keep going.

ROMAN DENISSEN ORDINARILY didn’t shout. An insurance man with thick black-framed glasses and an accounting degree, Green Bay’s mayor was a pencil pusher elected for his competence more than his personality.

The crowd’s enthusiasm reminded Denissen—a lifelong Packer fan who had attended East High School when the Packers played there in the 1930s—of the team’s heyday.

Sturmer then introduced the players one by one. As they moved individually into the spotlight, they received a green-and-gold Packer blanket from the Association of Commerce, the business men’s group that had put the event together.

The Packers dominated Tuesday’s Press-Gazette. Art Daley had gathered comments about the team’s surprising success from an array of politicians and celebrities, including Vice President Richard Nixon, a football aficionado who had attended the new City Stadium dedication game in 1957.

In January 1959 Lombardi had gone to the league meetings in Philadelphia as part of the Giant delegation and interviewed face-to-face with the Packers for the first time. Now, a year later, in January 1960, he went to the league meetings with the Packer delegation and found himself talking to the Giants about a job. Frustrated by back-to-back losses in the championship game, Jim Lee Howell had told Giants owner Wellington Mara he was ready to step down. Had Howell arrived at that conclusion a year earlier, Mara could have chosen between the two attractive head-coaching candidates on Howell’s staff, Lombardi and Tom Landry. But now Lombardi was in Green Bay, and Landry had recently announced he would be returning to his home state, Texas, to coach the new NFL expansion team in Dallas, leaving Mara without an obvious successor to Howell.

Mara believed that when he originally gave Green Bay permission to talk to Lombardi, who was under contract at the time, he had received the same permission in return, freeing him to talk to Lombardi whenever he wanted about coming back to the Giants. Dominic Olejniczak didn’t recall that coming up in any of their conversations. The head of the Packer executive committee was livid about Mara trying to lure Lombardi away; it was the definition of dirty pool, he said.

Turning down a return to the Giants irrefutably marked Lombardi as a Packer.

A year later, in January 1961, Mara again tried to lure Lombardi back to New York after Howell retired, this time unequivocally, but by then Lombardi’s position in Green Bay had further solidified.