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

by John Eisenberg

  The NFL's other owners wouldn't object to the move. They didn't see the romance of having a team in "little Green Bay." With road teams earning 40 percent of the gate at games, the Packers filled their pockets playing before big crowds on the road, but failed to reciprocate at home. The other owners complained about them not holding up their end of the business arrangement.

  The chances of the Packers leaving Green Bay were slim, though. After realizing, a bit belatedly, that City Stadium was absurdly outdated, the city built the team a new stadium on forty-eight acres of west-side farmland. When the funding was floated as a bond referendum in April 1956, the Bears' George Halas drove up from Chicago and stumped for the Packers, his bitter rivals but also his partners in the football business. The referendum easily passed, and the new City Stadium opened in September 1957 with a capacity of 32,500. A sellout crowd, which included Vice President Richard Nixon and NFL commissioner Bert Bell, attended the inaugural game as the Packers upset the Bears, 21–17. But the Packers didn't win another home game all season.

  Green Bay also had Bell's enduring support. When the commissioner had experienced his own money problems as owner of the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1930s, the Packers helped him out. He never forgot and, upon taking charge of the entire league in 1946, pledged unfailing support. "There'll always be pro football in Green Bay as long as I'm commissioner," he told the Press- Gazette's Art Daley.

  But what kind of pro football? Packer fans had no idea as they watched their team's 1958 season going from bad to worse. They loved rooting for a team that took on rivals from America's urban centers—it made their lives more exciting and put their little city on the map. And the Packers had measured up to the challenge for years, piling up wins and titles. What fun that had been!

  Now, though, it seemed they would never win again.

  3

  THREE DAYS AFTER the 56–0 loss, the Milwaukee Journal's Oliver Kuechle wrote a scathing column suggesting the Packers' biggest problem wasn't the players or coaches, but the executive committee.

  "Green Bay's performance in Baltimore was an insult to all Packer followers and to a million television viewers," Kuechle wrote. "There can be no excuse for such a show of ineptness by men who accept money to play the game. [But] the trouble lies first with the executive committee [and] the jealous zeal of some of its dominating old-timers to be a part of the picture. Actual meddling on the field? Oh, no. That's always the pious 'out' when the committee changes coaches: 'We give our coaches a free hand.' But [there is] meddling nonetheless. There are the weekly reports the executive committee demands at its Monday luncheons, including the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of this and that. There are the friendly 'hints' that Parilli, not Starr, should start. There are the meetings with players, without coaches present, that Lisle Blackbourn experienced. Isn't that a fine way to engender morale? There is the procedure that the GM must discuss important things first with the committee, or a subcommittee.

  "The Packers are in the big leagues, but in a lot of ways, don't show it. They invite a lot of their ills themselves. The day the committee clipped Curly Lambeau of absolute authority in the mid-forties and substituted administration by soviet—that's the day the team's troubles began. There hasn't been a winning season since. An executive committee of new blood, a new framework of administration, is almost a must. That must come first."

  Kuechle was a Lambeau loyalist who had become a steadfast naysayer, as Art Daley pointed out in a rebuttal column—and defense of the executive committee—that ran in the Press-Gazette the next day. Daley, whose publisher was secretary of the executive committee, dismissed Kuechle as a "knife-ist" and wrote: "Why hack the executive committee? They weren't even in Baltimore." Daley suggested Scooter McLean "wouldn't take any guff" from the committee, and printed the names of the thirty-five Packers who played in Baltimore. "They're all guilty," Daley wrote.

  But while it was true the committee hadn't played in the epic loss, many Packer fans agreed with Kuechle—poor playing and coaching obviously were problems, but mismanagement was the biggest issue. After watching the Packers lose for a decade, the fans believed the committee knew less about football than it did about business or politics. Its Monday grillings of the head coach were demeaning, and its hands-on management style was counterproductive. Like many businesses run by committee, it couldn't navigate through a crisis.

  Dominic Olejniczak, known as Ole, took the brunt of the criticism. Fans sent him caustic letters, complained about him on the radio, and fired off angry missives to the Press-Gazette. Short and round, the butt of Polish jokes whispered around town, Ole was an easy target.

  His career in politics had prepared him to handle criticism, but on his worst day as mayor he hadn't been subjected to the kind of savagery directed at him now, as president of the executive committee. By the end of the 1958 season he would see himself hung in effigy from a light pole outside the Packer offices.

  But Ole was not without canny leadership skills, and as he watched the Packers stumble through the 1958 season, he found himself agreeing with his critics. There were too many committees and too much bureaucracy. The executive committee was too involved. A for-profit company would never operate with so many bosses.

  In typical Packer fashion, he convened a subcommittee to study the situation and suggest a management overhaul. The subcommittee included executive committee stalwarts Dick Bourguignon and Jerry Atkinson, but Ole was most interested to hear from Tony Canadeo, the former Packer halfback and newest executive-committee member, who sold steel for a living now. He had forgotten more football than most of the other committee members knew.

  The press didn't report that a reorganization of the front office was in the works; Ole kept it quiet, not wanting to give his critics another reason to crucify him as he groped for a solution to the team's woes. He wished the rest of the 1958 season also could take place privately. A week after the Baltimore game, the Packers lost to the Bears in Chicago, 24–10, dropping their record to 1-5-1. They played better than in the dismal matchup with the Colts, scoring first, trailing by just four points at halftime, and opening up several scoring chances that could have made the game close if they hadn't blown them. But the offense faltered, Parilli and Starr combining to complete just eleven of twenty-five passes. Hornung got off the bench when starting fullback Howie Ferguson was injured, but the Golden Boy gained just eleven yards on six carries. Jim Taylor also got into the game late and scored the Packers' touchdown, their first in eight quarters.

  After the game, Scooter kept reporters out of the locker room until the players had showered and left. "I wanted to let the guys relax," he said. "There were thirty-five boys out there trying. I was satisfied with their effort."

  The next week the Packers failed to sell out new City Stadium for the first time, and a crowd of 28,051 grumbled as the Rams won, 20–7, on a chilly, misty afternoon. Parilli threw four interceptions, Hornung missed two field goal attempts, and Scooter lamented, "We just can't come up with the big play, can we?" Normally the players dined out after home games, but now that meant confronting fans who had lost patience. On this Sunday, the wives brought food into the locker room and set up a buffet. The players arranged chairs around portable tables and ate with the only people in town who wouldn't give them a hard time—each other.

  The season became a blur. A 33–12 loss to the 49ers, in front of just 19,786 fans in Milwaukee, was followed by a 24–14 loss in Detroit on Thanksgiving. The players became fatalistic, expecting the team to make the mistakes that lost games. Art Daley came down harder and harder in the Press-Gazette, pointing out poor efforts and gently chiding Scooter for the lack of discipline. (The players were taking advantage of a good guy, Daley wrote.) He continued to exclude Olejniczak and the executive committee from the calculus of failure.

  Meanwhile, Ole's subcommittee on management restructuring quietly proposed a plan, much of it suggested by Canadeo. The executive committee would shrink from thirteen people to seven. A real G
M—a football expert, not a bean counter—would take over the on-field operation. The position of chairman of the board would be eliminated. The executive committee would no longer grill the coach on Mondays during the season.

  Ole presented the plan to the forty-five-member board, expecting to encounter resistance, but it passed easily; something obviously needed to be done. Ole would announce it after the season. He also met with Scooter before the team's season-ending trip to California and told him that a new coach would be hired. As a thank-you for eight years of service, Scooter was offered the chance to finish the season and resign, as opposed to being fired. Good soldier that he was, McLean took the deal and left for California.

  The Packers always concluded their schedule with road games against the 49ers and Rams; they played at home earlier in the fall, when the weather in Wisconsin was milder, and traveled to the warmer climate once winter arrived in December. The players always enjoyed the trip, treating it as a season-ending party with a little football attached. They had won just one of sixteen games in California since 1950.

  They flew to San Francisco but, in typical Packer fashion, saved money by staying in Palo Alto, outside the city. They practiced at Stanford during the day, had evening team meetings, and either went out or played poker at night. Scooter didn't enforce curfew. Ray Nitschke, the rookie linebacker, had a few too many drinks one night and, while flirting with a young woman, bumped the pinball table she was playing at so hard the tilt switch engaged, shutting down the game. As she complained, Tom Bettis hustled the young player out of the bar.

  It was not a harmonious week. The locker room was splitting down the middle as the losing season neared an end. The defense blamed the offense, which had ground to a halt, scoring just forty-three points in the past five games. But the offense didn't believe the defense should be absolved of blame. Their dispute went public when several players complained to Art Daley, who wrote about it in the Press-Gazette. The defense was especially upset with receivers Howton and McGee, Daley wrote.

  Scooter heard about the article from a board member back home. At a team meeting that night, McGee raised his hand as the coach was discussing a formation.

  "Wait, I've got a problem," McGee said.

  Scooter looked hard at the receiver and said, "Max, you're just going to have to handle that problem yourself. Scooter has enough problems of his own."

  That was readily apparent on Sunday at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. The Packers played their worst game since the Baltimore fiasco. Starr's first two passes were intercepted, and the 49ers turned both mistakes into touchdowns. Scooter subbed in Parilli, whose first pass also was intercepted. The score was 27–0 after a quarter, 34–7 at halftime, and 48–7 early in the third quarter. As the 49ers eased up, Joe Francis led the Packer offense to two late scores that made the final score almost respectable at 48–21.

  Amid the wreckage, there was one bright spot: Jim Taylor. Finally given a chance to run the ball, he hammered away between the tackles, bowled over defenders, and gained 137 yards on twenty-two carries—by far the best performance of the season by a Packer runner. The five-feet-eleven, 205-pound youngster was all smiles after the game, saying he knew all along he could do that if given a chance. "He could be a great one, no doubt. He's as strong as an ox," Parilli commented.

  The next morning, the Packers flew to Los Angeles for a week of practice before their season finale against the Rams. They checked into the Green Hotel in Pasadena, where they always stayed. Opened in the 1880s as an exclusive resort, it had fallen on hard times and now housed retirees as full-time residents. It would be condemned a few years later.

  The Packers trained at a nearby public park and went out at night. Scooter's departure hadn't been announced, but given the team's dismal season and the fact that he had signed a one-year contract, rumors about his demise swirled. A board member spoke to Curly Lambeau, who lived in California but still had many friends in Green Bay, and that led to a rumor that Lambeau would return as GM and hire a big-name college coach. Lambeau, with typical drama, denied it at first but then told Daley he might be interested.

  One evening a group of Packers including Jerry Kramer, Hornung, Taylor, and McGee ran into Lambeau while dining at the Ram's Horn, a restaurant owned by a retired Rams defensive back. Lambeau came and sat at their table, told stories from the glory days, and said he wanted to come back and revive the Packers. The awestruck players came away thinking the charismatic legend was the obvious choice to replace Scooter. They were excited.

  Meanwhile, some veterans sent a telegram to Ole, accepting blame for the season and absolving their coach. "A lot of us feel real bad about Scooter," Dave Hanner told Daley. "Some guys just let him down."

  Scooter, still on the job, surprisingly suspended defensive end Len Ford for Sunday's game after Ford stayed out too late one night. Scooter's belated attempt at discipline was laughable; he had ignored such offenses all season. But he was angry at Ford, who was at the end of an eleven-year career (that would result in a Hall of Fame selection) and, in Scooter's opinion, among those simply going through the motions.

  On Sunday, Scooter started Francis at quarterback and Taylor at halfback; they had given the offense some life. Francis, scrambling madly, ran for 87 yards and threw for 84 even though he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing. Taylor hammered up the middle and gained 106 yards on twenty-two carries. The Packers took an early lead on a Francis touchdown before 51,684 spectators at the Coliseum, and after a defensive collapse, still trailed by just seven late in the third quarter. They wound up losing, 34–20. Their final record of one win, ten defeats, and a tie was the worst in Packer history.

  The team flew back to Green Bay on Monday, and Scooter re-signed the next day. Before the week was over, he had a job as an assistant with the Detroit Lions. He made plans to move in January, but before he left, his friends gave him a hearty farewell. The West Side Social Club held a party for him at the Riviera Club. There was a gathering at the Spot, a popular nightclub. At 3 A.M. on New Year's Eve, Scooter was in Art Daley's kitchen, cooking eggs for friends and toasting his time in Green Bay. No one had given Lambeau, Ronzani, and Blackbourn parties when they left, but Scooter was such a nice guy.

  4

  THE PACKERS' SEARCH for a new coach did not travel in a straight line directly to Scooter McLean's successor. It meandered through twists and turns, tantalizing fans with possibilities through December and January. Would Curly Lambeau really come back? Would Forest Evashevski, the hottest coach in the Big Ten, really take on the Packers? Those questions dominated speculation in the media and among fans.

  No one outside the team's Washington Street offices had any idea that a little-known assistant coach with the New York Giants was also a candidate.

  The search actually began earlier, after team president Dominic Olejniczak gave Scooter the bad news in late November. Ole then asked the executive committee to give him a list of possible successors, and requested that Jack Vainisi, the Packers' personnel director, check on any current NFL coaches who might be suitable.

  Vainisi was an invaluable member of the front office. Just thirty-one years old, he was a keen football observer who had led the Packers' scouting efforts and overseen their college draft selections since 1951. Most NFL teams cared little about scouting; some just consulted Street & Smith's College Football guide before making picks. But Vainisi was consumed by the process, to the Packers' benefit.

  Rotund and outgoing, Vainisi had grown up in Chicago in the shadow of the Bears; players shopped at his father's deli and occasionally ate at his house. Vainisi earned a football scholarship to Notre Dame, but a stint in the Army and a serious heart ailment ended his playing career. He found another niche in the sport after graduation when Ronzani, one of the Bears who had patronized the deli, hired him as a Green Bay scout. It was immediately apparent he was a natural. Ceaselessly working the phones, he built a nationwide network of insiders who scoured their areas for potential players. He trav
eled extensively, even carving out time on his honeymoon to check out prospects. His hard work paid off; as inept as the Packers were on the field, they were known as shrewd drafters, having scored with Howton, Dillon, Hanner, Forester, Bettis, and Ron Kramer—all players other teams would take.

  When Ole asked him to suggest candidates, Vainisi went to work. You had to dig around to find out about NFL assistants, who were unknown commodities, receiving little publicity or acclaim. Vainisi tapped his many contacts in the league, speaking to Bert Bell, George Halas, and Cleveland's Paul Brown, among others. One name kept coming up—Vince Lombardi, the Giants' top offensive assistant. Everyone spoke highly of his character, organizational abilities, football knowledge, and forceful personality. His offense was one of the NFL's best.

  The Giants' top defensive assistant, Tom Landry, was also a prospect. A young, forward-thinking former cornerback, he had pioneered a popular new alignment. Most defenses had previously featured five or six linemen and two or three linebackers, but Landry invented the "4–3," built around a "middle" linebacker who roamed the field making plays as the two tackles in front of him occupied blockers and four defensive backs protected against the pass. Led by Sam Huff, a tough and agile middle linebacker, the Giants had a formidable defense.

  The Giants had won an NFL title in 1956 and consistently contended for the Eastern Division title with Landry and Lombardi in charge of their units. The head coach, Jim Lee Howell, joked that with such sharp assistants, "All I have to do around here is pump up the balls."