Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer

by Jerry Kramer

  I'll be up against a former University of Idaho ballplayer, Jim Moran. When he was a freshman six or seven years ago I helped coach the team in spring football. He's about 6′5‘' now, about 275 pounds, and I think he's the Giants' best defensive lineman. He's quick and fairly agile.

  A few years ago, when Jim was on the Giant taxi squad, he told me he wished he'd be traded to Green Bay. And Roger Brown, who was traded today by the Lions to the Rams, once told Bart that he wished he could come to Green Bay. A lot of football players do, for the extra money we win, for the organization, for the attitude. Everything here is first-class, now that the grass drills are over.

  SEPTEMBER 8

  Three more men have got to go by Monday, and the situation is tense. It's gotten to the point now where we have to cut real good football players. Claudis James, a flanker from down South, has been looking very good, ever since Coach Lombardi told him that if he dropped one more pass, he was going to send his butt home. Claudis is a colored boy from Mississippi, and he says the one place he doesn't want to go is home. Travis Williams has been holding the ball better, and he may survive. Leon Crenshaw, holding his weight at a trim 278, is in a strong position because of the injury to Lionel. Two veteran defensive backs, Doug Hart and Dave Hathcock, are in danger; they're competing with a rookie, John Rowser, and I know Vince'll keep only two out of the three as reserves. Doug's one of my closest friends, and I'd hate to see him go. Hyland, Flanigan, and Horn look like they've made the club, even though Lombardi's been riding Horn hard lately. He's a night person, likes girls, likes bars, likes moving around a little, and today when he called the wrong play in practice, Lombardi screamed, “Horn, what in the hell you been doing every night?

  Don't you study at all? What in the hell do you do every night?” Coach Lombardi knows exactly what Don Horn's been doing every night. He knows everything that happens in this town.

  If Cichowski makes this team, I'm going to be one of the most surprised men in the world.

  SEPTEMBER 9

  We weren't too high for the game tonight—the Giants didn't exactly inspire us—but there was a noticeable intensity, a sense of concentration. We wanted to do everything right, partly because it was our last exhibition game and partly because we knew the game was going back to New York on television. I heard a few of the guys comment that a lot of New York sportswriters would be watching the game, and we wanted to impress them.

  I wasn't nervous, but during the day, I did a good deal of thinking about the game. I had noticed in the movies that Moran, who's had several knee operations, protects his knees, that when anyone gets around his knees, he stops and backs off a bit. So I decided that if he gave me trouble, if he rushed me too hard, trying to overpower me, I'd throw a cross-body block at his knees. We're friends, but this is a rough game.

  I had also noticed that he puts his head down on a pass rush and butts you and then tries to go to either side. Sometimes he slaps you with one hand, like a right cross to the side of the head, then tries to go the opposite direction. And I'd noticed a couple of occasions in the movies when he brought his right foot up parallel to his left and then, invariably, made an outside move, to his left. I wanted to remember all of this for the game.

  The first or second play we had the ball, Moran and I had a little conversation, which is rare on the field, even among college friends. He just said, “What you doing, Kramer?” And I said, “How you doing?” Then, three or four plays later, someone moved offside and Jim, reacting to the movement, charged in and slammed me in the head with a forearm. I hadn't moved out of my stance, and he got in a pretty good lick. He said, “I'm sorry, Jerry, I didn't mean to hit you that hard. But I had to move.” I said, “That's OK, kid, that's beautiful, I know you had to move.”

  I forgot all about cutting down his knees, and, at half-time, when we passed each other coming from the locker rooms, we chatted about our wives and our families. Still, I played a good game against him. He never got to the passer, and he never got to the ballcarrier until the man had gained at least three or four yards.

  We won the game 31-14, without any sweat, and we had one really beautiful play, a 46-power play that was just gorgeous. Elijah Pitts was carrying the ball through the six hole, between the left end and the left tackle. Jim Grabowski, at fullback, was supposed to take the outside linebacker out; our tight end, Marv Fleming, and our left tackle, Bob Skoronski, were supposed to double-team the end (which is why we call it a “power” play); Gilly was supposed to take the left tackle inside; and I was supposed to pull out and either help Grabo with the outside linebacker or cut up through the hole and get the middle linebacker. When I came over, Grabo had erased the outside linebacker and somebody else had wiped out the middle linebacker, so I went straight up the hole and took out the safety. Elijah sprinted ten yards to the end zone without even being touched.

  One little incident demonstrated the importance of studying the movies carefully. On pure passing situations—on third down with ten yards to go, for instance—the Giants often use what we call a tackle-end twist. The end, instead of rushing his normal way, will cut inside the tackle's rush, and the tackle, of course, will come outside. They reverse positions, trying to confuse the offensive line. About four years ago, Forrest Gregg noticed that whenever the Giants did this, Jim Katcavage, their left end, would put his right hand down on the ground, instead of his left hand. For at least four years, Katcavage has had this absurd habit, and, apparently, no one on the Giant coaching staff has ever warned him about it.

  On a second-and-nine situation in the first half tonight I came up to the line of scrimmage and looked over and, sure enough, the Kat had his right hand down. Forrest, playing next to me, didn't notice it. I said, “Forrest, be awake, baby.” Then Forrest looked up and saw what I meant. We stopped the Kat and Moran without much trouble, but maybe Katcavage caught my little comment. In the second half, they used a tackle-end twist again, and the Kat had his left hand down. I wasn't in the game then, but Forrest told me about it.

  One other beautiful thing: I was on the kickoff return team tonight, for the first time this year, and when the Giants kicked off to start the second half, I was supposed to block No. 83, the man just to the right of the kicker. I dropped back to block him toward the sidelines, and he came at me, then hesitated. I squared away, ready to hit him, and moved up within four yards of him. Suddenly, he leaped up in the air, about four feet off the ground, and screamed, “EEYOW!” Then he kind of drop-kicked me. His cleats tore my jersey and brushed my helmet.

  “What in the hell is this?” I asked myself. Lombardi had been teasing during the week about a Giant defensive tackle named Moto or something, saying that he was a Sumo wrestler. I said to myself, “That's got to be this guy.” I was going to get him on the next kickoff, but he eased up and didn't jump. I felt a little frustrated. I was in the perfect mood to hit somebody.

  SEPTEMBER 10

  I never got to sleep last night. As soon as the game ended and we had the usual buffet dinner, Doug Hart and I climbed into my Continental and I drove about 225 miles due north to go bear hunting. We were going after black bear, with bows and arrows.

  I was all hopped up, the adrenalin flowing the way it always does for several hours after a game, and along the way, almost automatically, I began thinking about Alex Karras, the defensive left tackle of the Detroit Lions. As far as I'm concerned, the two toughest tackles in the league are Karras and Merlin Olsen of the Rams, and I never, never say that either one is better than the other, because I don't want to get either of them angry. Playing against Karras is like playing a chess game. If you try to pop him, he'll beat you like a stepchild. You've got to be thinking all the time. You've got to be thinking about the move he beat you with two years ago. You've got to remember that everything with him is a countermove. I thought about him for 100 miles.

  Obviously, I spend a lot of time thinking about defensive tackles. Football is a team game, but especially for the linemen and the receivers,
there's a dramatic, and important, individual game within the game. To help your team succeed as a team, you have to succeed as an individual; you have to win your own match-ups. In my position, sooner or later I've got to block almost every man on the opposing team—every lineman and every back. But 75 percent of the time I've got to block the defensive left tackle. Naturally, he dominates my thoughts and consumes most of my energy.

  Professional defensive tackles can be divided into the strong ones and the quick ones. This simple division works as long as you remember one thing: The quick ones are strong, too. If there's a weakling playing on the defensive line in the National Football League I haven't had the pleasure of meeting him. They all weigh upwards of 250 pounds, some considerably upwards, and even though several of them have paunches that you'd notice in the dressing room, they've all got muscles that you notice on the field. They can all hurt you.

  When I analyze a tackle I'm facing and my first thought is of his strength, and my second thought is also of his strength, then, in a real sense, I'm criticizing him. I'm telling myself that he isn't fast. This doesn't mean that he can't give you trouble. Anybody's going to beat you at least two or three times in a game—even if he doesn't have great quickness—and if he happens to beat you at critical moments, you've wasted the whole game. (And you almost never know in advance when a critical play's coming up.) The strong guys pound, pound, pound. They're ramming their helmets into you all the time, and if they catch you the slightest off-balance, they'll knock you right on your can—and they'll run over you. Normally, they won't cause too much damage because no matter how strong a tackle is he just uses up too much time running over an offensive guard. The crucial first two or three seconds of a play have passed, and if the play is perfectly executed he's too late to stop it. Unhappily, from my point of view, the perfectly executed play is rare, rarer than you'd think, considering all the planning and practice that goes into every play.

  By now, of course, my thought process before each play is automatic, almost subconscious. First I think about my spacing, how far I should be from the center. I'll vary the distance. If the center has to cut my man off, I'll line up closer to him to make his job easier. But if I'm going to pull to my left, I'll make certain that I don't edge closer to the center because I don't want to tip the direction I'm going. Then I think about my stance. I don't want to vary my stance at all; I don't want to give the tackle any hint of the direction or nature of the play On rushing plays, my blocking is aggressive. I've got an assignment and I get off the ball as fast as I can and try to carry out my assignment. It's relatively simple. Pass blocking is a stiffer test. You seldom lash out on a pass block; you receive the blow. It's mainly a negative block; it's a countermove. The tackle moves, you move. It's dangerous to commit yourself.

  Suppose I'm up against the typical defensive tackle, which means, in our league, that he's a pretty good tackle. Usually, his first move will be to hit you with his helmet—boom! He's got his forearms moving and he's reaching up with his hands to try to throw you, probably by the shoulder pads. It's sort of a one-two punch-hit you low and throw you high—without any real time lag between the two moves. You have to meet him with your head or give him a little jab with your left hand or with both hands—it's illegal, but you do it a lot—and sometimes you'll go down fast and cut out his legs. If you cut him down, you're gambling. He's liable to get up quickly and if the pass play isn't exactly on rhythm—one, two, three, throw—he'll be in the quarterback's face before the pass is released. You use the cutoff mostly as a change of pace, and once you and your man both hit the ground, you try to keep scrambling on all fours, try to keep your body under his feet so that he can't get up. Logically, you don't want to do the same thing every time. Occasionally—almost never against a Karras or an Olsen—on a pass block, I'll come off the ball real quick and pop the guy and take the initiative away from him. Or, if I want to be real cute and risky, I'll take sort of a half step to the outside, fake the man that way, then stand up and try to shield him.

  Against the great tackles you can't relax for a second. They beat you with their quickness and their intelligence. They won't go directly at you more than one time out of twenty. They go around you. They go inside. They go outside. Then it's a matter of agility against agility, knowledge against knowledge. To an extent, quickness is learned; it's partly natural, but it also comes with experience and understanding. There's nobody quicker than Alex Karras, but the year after he was suspended from pro football for a season—for betting on his own team—he wasn't quite so quick. He had to get his timing back.

  By the time we got to the hunting camp in Upper Wisconsin this morning, I had stopped thinking about tackles. We ate a big breakfast about 4:30 A.M., picked up our guides and our dogs, then set off into the woods.

  We hunted for more than four hours, and we didn't even see a bear. Maybe it was just as well. Before we left, Max warned us not to go. “Don't forget,” he said, “the score so far this year is: Bears 3, People 0.”

  SEPTEMBER 11

  Tom Cichowski was sitting in the dressing room this morning, in his sweat clothes, all ready to go out on the practice field, and somebody walked over and told him he had been cut. The kid had to get out of his sweat clothes, change back into his street clothes, pack up his gear and go tell his wife, who had just arrived in town last week, that he had been cut. I really felt sorry for him. I never expected him to make the team, but I had to feel sorry for him.

  Leon Crenshaw got the bad news, too, which surprised me. I imagine he'll be back in camp with us next year. He's planning to play in the Continental League this season and he wants to go through all our punishment again next year.

  We lost one veteran. Lombardi traded Dave Hathcock to the New York Giants for a future draft choice. The survivors breathed deeply for the first time in weeks. Travis Williams was more relaxed than I'd ever seen him, laughing, feeling good. Claudis James had a big smile on his face, showing his gold teeth. We've got seven rookies on the roster: Williams, James, Hyland, Horn, Flanigan, Rowser, and Dick Capp, who can play either tight end or linebacker.

  We've also got two rookies on the taxi squad: Jay Bachman, a boy from Cincinnati who can play both center and guard, and Dave Dunaway, whose big, no-cut contract frightened away all the other teams. When Lionel Aldridge, who was running today, and Bob Long return to active duty, the men they replace will probably join the cab team.

  We watched the movies of the Giant game, and on the opening kickoff Tom Cichowski slipped past his blocker and really hit the ballcarrier. “Way to go, Cichowski,” Lombardi yelled. “Way to go. Attaboy.” Nobody said a word, and Lombardi suddenly realized that Cichowski was no longer around to hear his praise.

  Personally, I found the movie thoroughly enjoyable. I had my best game of the exhibition season. I didn't make one mental error, and my man did no damage. I really had a beautiful game.

  “Gentlemen,” said Lombardi, after the movie, “we have our team now. We have the men we're going with, the men who have a chance to bring Green Bay a third consecutive world championship. Gentlemen, no team in the history of the National Football League has ever won three straight world championships. If you succeed, you will never forget this year for the rest of your lives. Gentlemen, this is the beginning of the big push.”

  Training camp is closed. We're human beings again.

  THE GREEN BAY PACKERS' NFL SCHEDULE

  DATE OPPONENT SITE

  September 17 Detroit Lions Green Bay

  September 24 Chicago Bears Green Bay

  October 1 Atlanta Falcons Milwaukee

  October 8 Detroit Lions Detroit

  October 15 Minnesota Vikings Milwaukee

  October 22 New York Giants New York

  October 30 St. Louis Cardinals St. Louis

  November 5 Baltimore Colts Baltimore

  November 12 Cleveland Browns Milwaukee

  November 19 San Francisco 49ers Green Bay

  November 26 Chicago Bears Chic
ago

  December 3 Minnesota Vikings Minneapolis

  December 9 Los Angeles Rams Los Angeles

  December 17 Pittsburgh Steelers Green Bay

  SEPTEMBER 12

  For the first time in history, the National Football League this year is divided into four divisions, Central, Coastal, Century, and Capitol. We're in the Central Division, along with Minnesota, Detroit and Chicago, three teams that suffered through losing seasons in 1966. Chicago and Detroit are rebuilding this year; Minnesota has traded its star quarterback, Fran Tarkenton, to New York. We should have no trouble winning our division.

  The whole setup's kind of confusing, but the way our schedule works, we play two games against each of the teams in our division, one game against each of the teams in the Coastal Division (Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) and one game against each of the teams in the Century Division (Cleveland, St. Louis, New York, and Pittsburgh). At the end of the sea- son, the Coastal winner plays the Central winner for the Western Conference championship, and the Century winner plays the Capitol winner for the Eastern Conference championship. Then, as usual, the East plays the West for the NFL title, and the NFL champion plays the American Football League champion in the Super Bowl. Last year, we collected $9,813 a man for winning the NFL championship game and $15,000 a man for winning the Super Bowl. We're sort of counting on that extra $25,000 a man again this year.