by Jerry Kramer
When we got to the stadium, the crowd was starting to gather, and as we climbed out of our bus people began yelling at us, things like, “Bubba Smith's gonna eat you up,” and, “You're old,” and, “You stink,” nice things like that. We're not too popular in Chicago.
I went in the dressing room, took a nervous trip to the john, then stopped and chatted with Ray Wietecha, the offensive-line coach, and Hawg Hanner. Hawg played opposite me for seven years in practice, and he knows me better than I know myself. He just reminded me of a few basic things, like keep the man away from you on pass protection, nothing startling, just basic to keep me thinking. I got a B12 shot from Dr. Eugene Brusky, our team doctor, then swallowed a couple of dextrose pills and ate a couple of Hershey bars, anything to try to get a little extra energy, anything short of straight pep pills, benzedrine or dexedrine. There used to be a lot of pep pills all over the locker room—everybody was gulping them—but they disappeared about five, six years ago. I guess the league was afraid somebody might have an accident with pep pills, so they just vanished completely.
Everybody was nervous and sweating. Without saying it out loud, we all knew it would be terribly humiliating to lose to the College All-Stars. I remembered how nervous I was back in 1958, when I was playing for the All-Stars in this game. We were playing Detroit, and we kept telling ourselves that the Lions put their pants on one leg at a time, just like us, and I guess we were dumb enough to believe it. We beat the Lions, and it was a tremendous thrill, a tremendous introduction to professional football. I don't get thrilled so easily anymore, but I still get nervous.
“It seems like I get more nervous every year,” I said to Bart Starr, and he said, “Me, too.” Then I said the same thing to Coach Lombardi, about getting more nervous instead of less, and he said, “The more you've got to lose, the more nervous you are about losing it.”
Coach himself looked nervous as hell. He walked over to Bob Jeter and said, “You ready to go, Herbie?” Willie Wood and I heard him, so I turned to Willie and said, “Well, Bart, let's go, let's have a great night.”
I kept running back and forth between the john and Hanner, asking Hawg the time. I asked him at 7 o'clock and at 7:14 and at 7:18 and at 7:21 and at 7:23 and he gave me the right answer every time. He knows what it's like waiting for a game to start.
Bob Skoronski, the offensive captain, and Willie Davis, the defensive captain, and Coach Lombardi each said a few words—they stressed to the rookies the importance of the special teams—and then we said the Lord's Prayer and went out on the field. On the sidelines, right before the kickoff, I looked up Ray Nitschke and went through my regular ritual with him. He pounded me three times with his fists on my shoulder pads, then smacked me once on the side of the helmet. They weren't just love pats; Ray usually gives me about as vicious a blow as I'll get the whole game. He loosens me up, knocks out some of my butterflies. The rest of the butterflies disappear with the first real contact.
The game got started, and we went three or four plays with the ball, nothing much happening, and I was moving Bubba Smith pretty good. But on the next play, a pass play, he broke through me, to my inside, fast as hell, and got to Bart and threw Bart for a ten-yard loss. I was embarrassed first, and then surprised; I didn't know what I'd done wrong. Bubba was lying on top of Bart and he was saying, “All night, old man, all night long, Big Bubba's gonna be right here on top of you.”
Bubba didn't get through to Bart again. He had a little trouble using his hands, and, once I adjusted to his speed, I handled him all right. His quickness, for such a big man, impressed me more than anything else. We won the game, 27-0, but it's hard to say how good we looked. It wasn't much of a contest. Jim Grabowski was our leading rusher, and I suspect we're not going to miss Jimmy Taylor too much.
At one point during the game I was supposed to block on the All-Stars' middle linebacker, and when I hit him, I was surprised by his strength. I expected to knock him down or at least make him give ground, but he stood firm. I didn't know who he was at the time. I just thought to myself, “That kid's strong. I'll have to come in a little lower, a little stronger next time.” Later Gilly bumped into him, and when we were standing on the sidelines, talking back and forth about plays that we thought would work, Gilly said to me, “Boy, that Flanigan's stronger'n hell, isn't he?”
“That our kid playing middle linebacker?” I said. I didn't realize the middle linebacker was Jim Flanigan, our rookie from Pittsburgh.
“Yeah,” Gilly said. “He's strong.”
We had a couple of pretty good collisions during the game. Ben Wilson, our new fullback, got hit hard one time, and he got up kind of wobbly-legged and weak-kneed and wandered back to the huddle, and somebody said, “You all right, Ben?” He said, “Yep,” turned around and promptly fell on his back. Passed out. He didn't know where he was or anything, but he was all right later. Another time, Max McGee got hit on the side of his head by a young linebacker, and he staggered over to me and hung on to my jersey for dear life. He laid his head on my shoulder, looked up at me and kept saying, “I knock out, I knock out.” His bell had been rung, as we say, so we ushered him off the field. Other than that, we escaped with just minor cuts, scrapes and bruises. I had a little blood running down my forehead, just so I wouldn't forget Bubba.
After the game, we went back to the hotel, picked up our two kids from the All-Star squad, Flanigan and Bob Hyland, and had our buffet dinner, which is a Lombardi tradition after exhibition games. We loosened up, and most of us drank a few beers. Tommy Joe Crutcher called over a waitress and said to her, real slow, “Ma'am, I sure would like to have a pitcher a' ol' buttermilk.” It took him about eight minutes to get out the whole sentence. You should have seen that big, tough linebacker sipping his buttermilk.
AUGUST 6
We got back from Chicago yesterday afternoon, all tired out, then had today off. Max and Zeke and Donny and I played golf again, and I started thinking again about our team, about what holds us all together. You could hardly find two guys more different than Zeke and Max. Max is wild, flip, irreverent, uninhibited, always talking about broads, a care-free bachelor. And Zeke is sort of serious, very polite, friendly, hard-working, a real family man. Of course, Zeke has a sense of humor, too, and I suppose there's another side to Max, though he hides it well. Yet they get along perfectly.
Chandler and I are different types, too. Donny's generally quiet, conservative, a brooder sometimes. He keeps an awful lot tied up inside himself. On the other hand, I like to make a little noise. I like to take a chance. I'm more outgoing. I hate to think there might be a party going on somewhere and I'm not at it. Still, we get along fine. There's a sort of mutual respect agreement on the team. Everybody's allowed to have his own feelings, his own preferences, his own way of life, and everybody accepts everybody else's way. Nobody judges anybody else.
I'm not so sure it's a good idea, though, to have Max and Zeke rooming together. They got into our knickers again today, took away a little more of our cash.
AUGUST 7
We started today with a general team meeting, and Lombardi wasn't in too bad a mood. He told us that the College All-Star team was the strongest one he'd ever seen and that some of our offensive linemen looked a little surprised by the strength of the All-Stars. I think he was staring at me.
Then—standard operating procedure—we broke into separate units, the offense and the defense, to watch the films of the All-Star game. Phil Bengtson presided over the defensive meeting, and Vince ran the offensive meeting. The advantages of splitting up are pretty obvious. The defense watches films only of the other team with the ball—either the team we've just played or the team we're about to play The offense watches films only of us with the ball—or of the defensive team we're about to play Even when we're not watching movies, we split up into separate groups—usually after a brief general meeting—because the offense and the defense have to discuss different interests, different problems, different strategy.
W
e spend a large part of our professional lives studying movies, and you can't overemphasize the importance of the movies, or their complexity. In the offensive meeting, for instance, Coach Lombardi will run a play over and over, maybe twenty times, examining each man, explaining what went right, what went wrong, what we might have done instead in the same situation. Usually, we work with sideline movies, but sometimes we see end-zone movies, too. We've also got special reels—one reel showing nothing but goal-line plays, another showing nothing but sweeps, a third showing nothing but off-tackle plays.
It takes years to learn exactly what to watch for in the movies—how to look for your own weaknesses, how to look for your opponent's weaknesses. The rookies and the second- and third-year men have to depend a great deal upon the coaches' comments and upon advice from veterans; their eyes aren't trained to follow the fast action on the screen. It took me four or five years before I felt that I really knew what I was seeing, before I felt confident enough to suggest alternate plays and alternate blocking patterns.
Lombardi spotted one thing in the movies today that he didn't like at all. “I must be a lousy teacher,” he said. “For nine years, I've been trying to teach you guys to block with your face, with your forehead, not to put your head down and block with your shoulder. For nine years, I've been telling you that there's no place in this league for a shoulder block. But every year you guys have to learn it for yourselves. I must be a lousy teacher.”
AUGUST 8
Before we worked out today, Coach had a few more comments about the All-Star game, and he wasn't in such a good mood. First, he said that the halfbacks were absolutely useless. Then he said that the blocking by our flankers was an absolute disgrace. In fact, he said, the blocking by everybody was a disgrace. Usually, we get graded for our blocking, and Vince reads the grades out loud at a meeting. Today he said he was so embarrassed by our blocking grades that he couldn't even read them out loud. Instead, he wrote them down on little slips of paper and folded up the slips, put our names on them and handed them out.
I got a 54 for blocks on running plays and a 67 for blocks on passing plays. A passing grade is supposed to be 65 percent on runs and 85 percent on passes, so obviously Vince thought my blocking was miserable. But I checked around and I found out that my grades were about average for the game.
The coaches can make the grades come out to almost anything they want. The grading has to be pretty subjective, but even though we all know that the grades aren't very accurate, they do accomplish their purpose. For instance, if Gillingham gets 75 percent on the runs and 90 percent on the passes, and I get 65 percent on the runs and 80 percent on the passes, my pride's going to be hurt, and I'm going to block a lot harder the next week.
Actually, it's the coaches' comments that have more effect than the grades themselves. Every time you're in a game, an exhibition or a regular-season game, you're aware of Tuesday afternoon at the movies. You know that camera is up there taking down every move you make, every single mistake, and if you miss a block, even in the middle of an important game, your first thought normally is, “How's that going to look in the movies?”
AUGUST 9
Coach Lombardi gave us one of his periodic lectures today on life and football. “Winning is not a sometime thing here,” he said. “It is an all-the-time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.
“There is no room for second place here. There's only one place here, and that's first place. I've finished second twice in my time here, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There's a second-place bowl game, and it's a hinky-dinky football game, held in a hinky-dinky town, played by hinky-dinky football players. That's all second-place is: Hinky-dinky.”
Vince has got to be the only person I've ever met who could use a word like “hinky-dinky,” talking to football players, and get away with it.
He reminded us, for maybe the hundredth time, that professional football is not a nice game. “Some of our offensive linemen,” he said, “are too nice sometimes. This is a violent sport. That's why the crowds love it, that's why people love it, because it's a violent sport, a body-contact sport. We're a little too nice. We've got to get a little meaner.”
Then he made his regular speech about outside interests. “I want every minute of your day to be devoted to football,” he said. “This is the only thing you're here for.” He looked straight at me, with my bow-and-arrow factory and my diving business, and straight at Fuzzy, with his restaurants, and he was dying to say something. But he can't be as strict as he used to about outside interests, now that he's got so many of them himself.
After dinner, Coach was still steaming, and when a few guys got up to leave, he said, “What the hell is going on here? Sit down. Let's have some singing.” Everybody was kind of down, kind of beat. Then a couple of us veterans got up and sang, and then we had the rookies sing, and then all the veterans, and then just the veterans over thirty, and Max got up and said, “How 'bout the veterans over thirty-five?”
So Max and Zeke sang by themselves, and then all the coaches sang, and then the trainers, and finally we all sang together, making a horrible racket, and the whole atmosphere changed, the whole mood of depression lifted. We were a team again.
AUGUST 10
Hawg Hanner put on his usual show this morning waking everyone up. He's the regular 7 o'clock wake-up man. He is one of the strongest people I've ever seen—he once played a full game twelve days after he had an appendectomy—just a big Arkansas farm boy. He's used to getting up early in the morning, and he's always jovial. When I get up, I'm in a world of trouble. It takes me about five minutes before I walk properly. I look like a mechanical man. My ankles creak and crack and I walk kind of stiff-legged.
Hawg came through the dorm today full of cheer. “Up, Stumpy,” he yelled to Fuzzy Thurston, who does resemble a stump. “Come on, Stumpy, get yourself up.” Then he hollered to Doug Hart, “Douglas, get yourself up, boy, lift yourself up out of that bed.” And he snuck right up to the side of my bed and stage-whispered, “Santa Claus is coming, Jerry, hurry up now, out of bed, Santa Claus is coming.” He had a big chaw of tobacco in his cheek, and a big smile on his face, and I couldn't hardly get mad at him.
But I was dead tired all day long, and we had a big workout. We're missing Bob Long, who hurt his knee Monday and had to have an operation today. Bob Hyland, the big rookie from Boston College, is working out at offensive tackle, but Coach has told the press that he can play any offensive line position, so I suppose I'll have to keep an eye on him.
We're playing Pittsburgh Saturday night, and tonight, for the third time this week, we looked at movies of last year's exhibition game against the Steelers. I came into the meeting room worn out, and headed straight for the one big easy chair in the back of the room. It's always mine, if I want it; when I don't use it, Jim Grabowski takes it.
Coach Wietecha was running the projector, and as soon as he started the film, I was so tired I fell asleep. Chandler poked me a few times, but I kept dozing off. Finally, Wietecha turned off the projector, and Bob Schnelker, the end coach, got up to the blackboard and began diagramming some special goal-line moves for the receivers, which had nothing to do with me, and I fell back to sleep.
I don't sleep very often during the movies. Whenever there's something I feel I don't know, I'm very attentive. I study the man I'm going to be playing opposite. I study his feet, his hands, everything about him, looking for any weakness or any signal that'll tell me what he's going to do. But I had already seen this movie twice before, and, besides, the Steeler I was going to be facing, a 280-pound tackle named Ken Kortas, wasn't even playing in the movie. He was just a substitute last year.
So I couldn't stay awake. And I suppose the fact that Coach Lombardi wasn't in the meeting room made it a little easier for me to get my beauty rest.
AUGUST 11
We cut three rookies this week, and now we're down to fifty-four men, f
ourteen more than we can carry during the season. It's always a bad scene, when a man gets cut. Pat Peppler, our personnel manager, usually has to do the dirty work. He'll tell a guy to come see him and to bring along his play book. When you're told to bring along your play book, you're in trouble. You can forget it. Once in a while, the guys kid a little, “Go see the old man and bring along your play book,” but we don't joke too much about it. Getting cut from the Packers is a very serious, and expensive, thing.
When you cut a man, you ask waivers on him, and if no other National Football League team claims him, you can put the man on your taxi squad. Members of the taxi squad don't count on the official roster and they can't play in games, but they practice with you. If you put a man on waivers and another NFL team claims him, you can withdraw him from the waiver list. But you can only withdraw him once. The second time a man is claimed, he's gone.
We're in a strange situation. We have a lot of excellent prospects, and there are many we'd like to put on waivers and pass through and keep on our taxi squad. But we put nine or ten men on the waiver list the other day, and everyone was claimed. We pulled all of them off except three. The next time we put those guys on the list and they get claimed, we lose them. We'll probably end up with just four or five on the taxi squad.
We traded Kent Nix to Pittsburgh last week for a future draft choice. Kent's a quarterback from Texas Christian University, a fine boy who played on our taxi squad last year. This year, with Bart and Zeke backed up by Don Horn, our rookie quarterback, Kent just became expendable. I saw Lombardi saying good-bye to him. He went up and shook Kent's hand and wished him well, and then, after Kent took off, Vince sort of hung his head for a while. It bothers him to lose one of his boys.