by Jerry Kramer
We're in a strange position, being in the Central Division. Each of the other three divisions has at least two strong teams in it; each of the other divisions looks like it's going to have some good competition for the championship. In a way, we're lucky that there's nobody powerful to challenge us in our own division, but, at the same time, we're in danger of getting lazy, getting complacent. I can't imagine us getting too lazy, though, as long as Lombardi is around. Even if he lost his voice, even if he couldn't scream at us, he'd manage to scare us. All he's got to do, really, is look at us. His looks can freeze you.
SEPTEMBER 13
The Lions didn't have much fire last year, much zest, but I suspect their new coach, Joe Schmidt, is going to give it to them. Joe was one of the great linebackers in the game, always battling, never quitting, and I think he's instilling this spirit in his team. We watched the films of their last exhibition game today, their 21-7 victory over St. Louis, and they looked tough. Besides, I'm sure they're looking for us. They're always looking for us. We've had some great football games in the past ten years, and some great victories, though I'll probably remember longest the game they beat us 26-14, on Thanksgiving Day, 1962, the only game we lost that year. Schmidt and Alex Karras and Roger Brown and all of them killed us that day. Every time they guessed, they guessed right, and they ripped us apart. They spent half the game in our backfield. After the game, in the bus going to the airport, Fuzzy turned to me and said, “Well, at least it wasn't a total loss. We learned a new block today.” I said, “What the hell do you mean?” And Fuzzy said, “The lookout block. You know, you block, and then you yell, ‘Look out, Bart.' ”
SEPTEMBER 14
Alex Karras is spending a lot of time with me this week. He eats breakfast with me, goes to the john with me, brushes my teeth with me. I'm thinking about him every minute, how difficult he is to cut off on the inside, how he likes the outside on a pass rush, how he just loves to hit the quarterback.
Alex has half a dozen different, effective moves—it took him three or four years as a pro to develop them—and he uses all of them. One of his moves is a little hop and a skip to the outside. He actually hops, and it looks funny, but it works. He charges to the outside maybe 90 percent of the time, but you can't overadjust because he likes to change up and come to the inside with a real strong move, doubly hard to stop because you don't expect it.
I've got one extra weapon against Alex this year. Most teams have only one really good defensive tackle, and if you're up against him, the center can help you out on blocks. But when we were playing the Lions in the past, with Karras at one tackle and Roger Brown at the other, the center just didn't know which way to turn. Now that Detroit's traded Brown, I should be able to get some help. I may need it.
SEPTEMBER 17
Before I left the house this morning for the stadium, my oldest child, Tony, who's nine, asked me who my man'd be in the game. I told him Karras.
“What's his number?” Tony said.
I said, “Seventy-one.”
“I'll watch for him,” Tony said.
“It shouldn't be too tough,” I said. “You'll probably see a lot of him.”
I thought I was just making a little joke, but the joke was on me. I had a bad day. Alex probably figured he had a good day. I don't know yet how many times he got to the passer, how many times he rushed past me, but it seemed like every time I went to the sidelines, Vince screamed at me.
The game started off as though Detroit wasn't going to give us any special trouble. They weren't hitting particularly hard—and that's usually a reliable indication. But then a rookie named Lem Barney intercepted one of Bart's passes, turned a somersault and ran for a touchdown, and, suddenly, they got higher than a kite. They promptly tried a short kickoff, a smart, gambling, aggressive move, and I was the nearest Packer to the ball and I didn't get to it, and they recovered and moved in for a field goal, and I just wanted to quit. I wanted to walk off the field and never play football again.
Alex started beating me to the outside, and one time I knew he had me and I was so frustrated I reached out and grabbed a big handful of his jersey and just pulled him to the ground. Nobody saw it, and Alex got up calling me every name he could think of. I'm sure that he's been held by about 90 percent of the guys he plays against, but he didn't expect it from me. I was desperate.
The first half, Detroit intercepted four of Bart's passes, and at half-time they were whipping us 17-0. In the locker room Ray Wietecha, our line coach, chewed me up and down. Even though Bart starting hitting his targets in the second half, and Elijah Pitts plunged for two touchdowns, and Chandler kicked a field goal, and we managed to get a tie, 17-17, and came within a few seconds of winning the game, I still felt miserable, totally disgusted.
When I came out from the locker room, my insides all torn up, and climbed into my car, my son Tony looked at me and said, “Daddy, do you like Alex Karras? I don't mean as a football player. I mean as a person.”
“Shut up,” I said.
SEPTEMBER 18
My right ankle's extremely sore today, all discolored, black and blue and red, bruised, painful, everything. I guess it's going to be all right, unfortunately. For a while I was kind of hoping it was broken. Then this damned season would be over for me.
SEPTEMBER 19
When I entered the locker room this morning everybody was awfully quiet, awfully subdued. The guys kept looking at me sort of compassionately, sharing my apprehensions about a big ass-chewing in the movies. When we went into the meeting room for the movies, Gale Gillingham came over and sat down beside me, and Kenny Bowman sat directly behind me. We huddled like three lambs about to be slaughtered. It's ridiculous the way supposedly adult individuals cower and hide from one short, fat Italian.
(The other day Bob Skoronski told me that he took his kids to the Dairy Queen for ice cream cones, and just when they started licking their cones, he saw Lombardi coming. So Bob hid his ice cream cone behind his back. “I'm thirty-three years old,” he said, “and I've got a family, and I've got all the responsibilities in the world, and here I am hiding an ice cream cone from the old man.”)
My apprehensions were very well grounded. Vince began his lecture at 9:30, and he chewed my butt like he hadn't for two or three years. All he could talk about was what a great day Karras had and what a lousy day I had. “One man made us look like a bunch of dummies,” he said. “One man tossed us around like a bunch of dolls.”
On and on and on and on he went, and he really got to me. I had several different thoughts during the course of the lecture. I didn't know whether to tell him to stick it in his ear or to hit him in the mouth or to quit or to cry or to just shut up. Lombardi ran the movies over and over, and, actually, Karras got to the passer three or four times maximum. Three of them were my fault. But I got the blame for everything. We threw the ball thirty times, and he got to the passer three or four times, and I'm the lamb, I'm the reason we had such a lousy game. Vince really burned my ass.
“Hell, you didn't have that bad a day,” Fuzzy said to me after the movie. “If Bart hadn't had such a bad day and if everything hadn't gone so wrong, he wouldn't have said so much.”
After the screaming, hollering maniac finished up the films, he had some beautiful comments about outside interests and lack of complete dedication, lack of singleness of purpose. Lombardi began shouting, and I began thinking, I've got to go see Blaine Williams this afternoon about the Kraft deal, and I've got to go cut a few commercials for Elmtree Bakery and RCA-Victor and Pepsi and Citgo, and then I've got to tape my TV show. Maybe Vince is right.
Finally he let us out on the field, and we had our regular Tuesday-morning touch game, the offense against the Big D. I think the D stands for dummies instead of defense; we beat them easily. Then Ray Wietecha delivered a speech about the past performances of the offensive line, what a great job the offensive line had always done, enabling Bart Starr to set all his records, and the implication was clear; Kramer ruined everyt
hing. I hated Wietecha, too.
We went back inside and got a scouting report on the Chicago Bears, our opponents this week, and afterward Donny Chandler and I were sitting in the locker room, looking at a catalogue for shoes, wholesale alligator shoes. The next thing I know, I'm ordering twenty-one pairs of shoes for the guys at about fifty dollars a whack. I don't know why I took the orders; I hope I don't get stuck. I guess I'm everybody's mark this week.
At noon I went home, and my wife was out, so I walked across the street to Henry Jordan's house to have lunch with him. Olive, Henry's wife, is a great lady; Ma Jordan feeds the hungry and shelters the homeless. But Olive started talking to me about Karras.
“How'd the meeting go, Jerry?” she said, with a smile. “Did Coach Lombardi have anything to say?”
I got upset and hollered at her, and told her to get off my back, and, of course, I got her mad at me. She didn't mean anything.
When I left Henry's, I went over to the barber, and that stupid sonuvabitch didn't have anything to do but talk in my ear about Karras for an hour and a half while he cut my hair. Then I drove downtown to see Blaine, and everywhere I went people kept saying to me, “What did Lombardi say? What happened?” This is one of the beautiful things about a small town. Everybody knows what should have happened, what I should have done; everybody had a few words of friendly advice. They're good people and they mean well, but sometimes they do get on your nerves, they do antagonize you.
Normally, I enjoy being recognized as a pro football player— I'm a little susceptible to hero worship—but sometimes, like today, I just wish I could escape. I used to make up different identities for myself when I was traveling during the off-season. I'd be in a restaurant or in a cocktail lounge, and when some-body'd come up to me and ask if I were a professional football player—I do look the part; I'm not inconspicuous, like a defensive back—I'd tell him that I was a shoe salesman or a cab driver or a construction worker. When Henry Jordan was playing for the Cleveland Browns he did the same thing. He even invented a new name for himself—Buck Johnson—so that he wouldn't get into football conversations. You can pass for a normal human being in a big city like Cleveland; you can't in Green Bay.
To be honest, I've got to admit there was another reason— besides wanting to avoid football talk—that I'd pretend not to be a pro football player. Too many times, a guy'd come up to me and ask the obvious question and I'd say, “Yes, I'm a football player,” and he'd say, “What's your name?” and I'd say, “Jerry Kramer,” and he'd give me a totally blank look and mumble, “Who do you play for?” or he'd confuse me with Ron Kramer and say, “Oh, you're the end from Michigan.” It hurt. But I guess that's the price of playing right guard.
I taped my first TV show of the year tonight, and my two guests were Herb Adderley and Bob Long. I always have two of my teammates on the show, and we look at the highlights of the previous game and we talk about their experiences and their plans. McGee was supposed to be on tonight—I wanted him for the first show because he's always a good talker—but he didn't show, and I had to rush Bob Long over to the studio. Max is utterly undependable. He's Fuzzy's partner in the restaurant business and once, not long after they opened a place in Manitowoc, Max disappeared, just vanished from the face of the earth, for al- most two months. Nobody heard a word from him, and Fuzzy, afraid of foul play, put tracers on him, and, finally, after about seven weeks, some of Max's checks came through to the bank. They had been cashed at the Racquet Club in Miami. Fuzzy put in a call to the Racquet Club and paged McGee, and when Max came to the phone, Fuzzy said, “Max, Max, where the hell you been?” And Max said, “Hold it, Fuzz, I'm in the middle of a set. I'll call you back later.”
On the show, I asked Bob Long how it felt to be substituting for Max, and Bob said that he was used to it, that when he reported to Green Bay, Coach Lombardi told him, “This Max McGee is one of the greatest ends of all time, and I just want you to watch him, and do everything he does.”
“So I watched Max,” Bob said, “and I tried to do everything he did. It wasn't so bad on the field, but those nights killed me.”
We didn't get finished taping the show till 11:30, so I added Max's name to the list of people—Lombardi, Wietecha, Karras, Olive Jordan, my barber—I was going to have killed.
SEPTEMBER 20
All morning today I was in a foul mood. I was thinking of going to Alaska and hunting polar bears, thinking of doing anything except playing football anymore. After a brief meeting, with some more choice comments about the Detroit game, we went out for a blitz drill. They were taking movies from the tower, so we couldn't brother-in-law; we had to hit pretty hard. I was blocking Kostelnik, and I guess I got in a good lick, and Vince yelled, “Way to go, Jerry, way to go. Beautiful. That's the way to go. Attaboy.” He was trying to make up to me. After the drill, he walked over to me and pounded me on the shoulder and said, “That's the way to go, Jerry.” Then he lowered his voice and said, “You know, that just breaks my heart when that guy Karras beats you like that. It breaks my heart.” I stood there a few seconds, thinking, and I said, “Coach, it doesn't make me feel too damned good, either.” He laughed, and now we're back on speaking terms again. I guess I won't have him killed, after all.
I got home after lunch, just starting to feel a little better, and I saw the story in the newspaper: The Associated Press had named Alex Karras the NFL's Defensive Player of the Week for his outstanding performance against Green Bay. Beautiful! I'm tempted to say some things about Karras, but we're always the good guys, always the people who don't say bad things about anybody, always the nice guys. I'm tired of that nice-guy stuff, but I guess I really shouldn't say anything about that nearsighted hippopotamus.
SEPTEMBER 21
When Vince chewed me out Tuesday, one of the things he said was that I ought to give Bart my whole pay check this week for the way I got him beat up Sunday. Today was our first payday and I'd sort of forgotten what Vince said, and when I went into the locker room Bart was standing by my locker.
“Where is it?” he said.
“Where's what?” I said.
“Your pay check,” he said. “I've been looking for the check all week long.”
We had a big giggle, and I relaxed a little for the first time all week. Kenny Bowman's wife had a little boy yesterday, and Kenny, who's a law student during the off-season, was walking around the locker room, handing out 25-cent cigars to everybody. My first few years at Green Bay, whenever anyone had a baby they'd hand out cigars, but they'd be the two-for-a-nickel or, at best, the two-for-a-dime kind. But Kenny had real good cigars, and he's a lineman, an interior offensive lineman, naturally not one of the highest paid men of the club. Our standards of living have certainly gone up.
Hawg Hanner's wife had a baby Sunday, and Herb Adderley's wife is pregnant, and so is Travis Williams' and a few of the other wives. It's a good sign. As long as we've got pregnant wives, and all those Cadillacs and Continentals sitting in the parking lot, we're going to be a hungry football team.
SEPTEMBER 22
We've settled into our regular-season schedule, the schedule we'll follow all year: Game on Sunday, off on Monday, loosen up and hear a scouting report from head scout Wally Cruice on Tuesday, heavy workouts with pads on Wednesday and Thursday, medium workout without pads on Friday, loosen up on Saturday, meetings and movies every day from Tuesday through Friday. Today we had a goal-line drill, practicing the plays we use near the goal line. Vince was cheerful and smiling again, and he asked a few of us whether he should climb up in the tower and watch practice from there, the way he does each Friday.
Lombardi's superstitious, just like everybody else connected with our team, and he likes to do everything exactly the same when we're doing well and he likes to change his pattern when we're going badly. We looked terrible last Sunday, so he was reluctant to go back up in the tower.
“We haven't lost yet, Coach,” Zeke said.
“Yeah,” said Vince, “we haven't lost. I gues
s I'll go up.” He did. He's superstitious second, and a perfectionist first.
My ankle's pretty sore. It was feeling better Tuesday and Wednesday, but now it's hurting again. I guess it'll be all right for the game.
My wife and I spent the evening tonight at the Jordans'— Olive isn't mad at me anymore—and we had a long discussion of Edgar Cayce and some of his beliefs on reincarnation. We had a relaxing evening, and it even gave me a little hope. Maybe in the next life I'll be the coach and Vince'll be playing for me.
SEPTEMBER 23
Vince gave out a few awards for the first game today, certificates for players who did something special. Forrest Gregg and Boyd Dowler got the only blocking awards, and Gravel Pitts and Donny Anderson got runs-over-20-yards awards, Tom Brown got a fumble-recovery award, and Lee Roy Caffey got a blocked-field-goal award. Then Fuzzy stood up and said, “How 'bout giving Willie Davis an award for attempting to get close to the passer?”
In his pregame speech last Sunday, Willie had said, “You got to wont that game. You got to wont it more than they do. You got to wont that ball. I myself, I wont Bradshaw. I WONT HIM. I wont to put something on him.” Charlie Bradshaw was playing offensive tackle for the Lions, opposite Willie, and he gave Willie a terrible time. Willie didn't get close to Milt Plum, the Lion quarterback, all day.
At the award meeting, after Fuzzy's suggestion, somebody yelled, “Well, you got that Bradshaw, Willie. Maybe next time you can get Plum.” And then everybody began shouting, mimicking Willie's voice. “I wont that Bradshaw. I wont that guy. I WONT HIM. I WONT HIM.” And we all broke up laughing and went out for our final light workout before the Bear game.