The First America's Team. Bob Berghaus
feel it in your bones. The Giants were the best today I’ve ever seen ’em. I thought we were a lot better today too than we have been.”
McGee, the team clown said, “That was the hardest-hitting game I ever saw, and I watched most of it. I didn’t know a human body could get that cold. And still survive.”
The Giants felt the disappointment of coming up short in another championship game, although their performance was significantly better than the one a year earlier.
“We knew it was going to be a hard-hitting game and that’s what football was,” cornerback Dick Lynch said. “It was a great game just as far as making tackles and just whacking guys. I’m sorry we lost. It was horrible.”
“It was a great game,” the Giants’ Gifford said. “We’re still the better team.”
That statement was hard for Gifford to defend. The weather had affected both teams, and regardless of the conditions, the Giants had failed to score a touchdown in two championship games against the Packers, who, including the postseason, concluded a two-year stretch with a 26–4 record. In fact, going back to a midseason game in 1961 won by the Packers, 20–17, the Giants offense had not scored in ten quarters against the Green Bay team that truly now was the face of the NFL. The 1962 championship-game victory made Lombardi and his players that much more recognizable throughout the country.
In the end the only words that mattered were spoken by the coach of the winning team.
“I think it was about as fine a football game as I’ve ever seen,” Lombardi said. “I think we saw football as it should be played.”
CHAPTER 2
Going for a Repeat
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