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

by John Eisenberg

  Most of the players at this first workout were rookies, ordered to report two days earlier than the veterans. (Boyd Dowler and three other first-year players were in Chicago, training with a college all-star team to play the Baltimore Colts in August; the exhibition season always started with a game between the reigning champs and a team of top rookies.) A few veterans also were on hand—quarterbacks McHan, Starr, Parilli, and Francis, and linemen Jim Ringo, Jerry Kramer, Dave Hanner, and Jerry Helluin.

  Kramer and Francis had expected to be on a golf course, not the practice field. They had driven to camp together from out West (Francis lived in Oregon, Kramer in Idaho), planning to enjoy a few days of fun before they got down to work. Scooter McLean and Lisle Blackbourn had allowed the veterans to come in early and play golf, drink, sleep late, and eat for free while the rookies practiced.

  But nothing had gone as Kramer and Francis planned. When they arrived at St. Norbert, they found the doors locked at Sensenbrenner Hall, the three-story L-shaped brick dorm where the players stayed. They drove to the team offices on Washington Street, found Jack Vainisi, and asked him to open the dorm or put them up in a hotel. "I shouldn't have to pay eight bucks a night," Kramer groused. Lombardi walked by and growled, "What's going on?" When Vainisi explained the situation, Lombardi snapped, "Just take care of it, Jack," and walked away. Vainisi let Kramer and Francis into the dorm when the rookies reported. The next morning, before this first practice, they awoke early, grabbed their golf clubs, and headed out. But Lombardi stopped them at the door.

  "Where the hell do you think you're going?" he asked.

  "We're going to play golf," Kramer said.

  "Like hell you are," Lombardi said. "If you sleep in this dorm, you're in this camp for good, and you make all meetings, practices, and curfews, just like everyone else."

  Kramer and Francis stared at him in disbelief.

  "Go get ready for practice," he said.

  Surprised to find themselves on the field, they were, with the rest of the players, even more surprised by the practice itself. A Scooter-like stroll it was not.

  If watching films of the 1958 season had taught Lombardi anything, it was that the Packers needed to be in better shape. Their poor conditioning had been an embarrassment; they were out-scored by a combined 192–86 in the second halves of their games. Lombardi vowed to change that. Nothing irritated him more than players who weren't in shape. They were letting down themselves and their teammates. How could you win with corner-cutting loafers looking for the easy way out?

  His first coaching commandment was that players had to be in shape. At clinics, he lectured that football was a series of brief, violent confrontations, and being in shape enabled players to hit harder for longer and win more of those battles. The Packers would have that edge from now on, he vowed, telling himself he would establish that if anything in this first season. Seeing the out-of-shape Hanner and Helluin at dinner the night before, he warned them, "Just telling you right now, if you don't lose twenty pounds, you're gone."

  It wasn't unusual for players to come to camp needing to drop pounds. Few trained in the off-season. Conditioning wasn't emphasized. Many players smoked cigarettes, not knowing how harmful it was. Lifting weights was frowned upon, believed to add bulk and slow you down. Diets weren't sophisticated; a player just ate less if necessary. And running more than a few miles at a time was considered silly.

  If they worked out at all in the off-season, players mostly just honed their skills, throwing or catching balls. They waited until camp to "play their way into shape" in scrimmages and workouts.

  The easygoing Hanner had spent the off-season at home in West Memphis, Arkansas, working as a soil conservationist and occasionally running on a Mississippi River levee for exercise, but mostly just hunting and fishing. A stout run-stopper who plugged the middle of the defensive line, he had played in Green Bay since 1952 and made All-Pro in 1957, but he feared for his future now. Scooter and Blackbourn had always let him report overweight and play his way into shape, but Lombardi wasn't nearly as forgiving. Hanner, who had a pale complexion and weighed 270 pounds, tended to wilt in the heat. He was breathing hard after the first three laps around the goalposts.

  Then Lombardi called for calisthenics. The players lined up in rows expecting to limber up casually before moving on to football work; Scooter had never asked for more than a few jumping jacks. Lombardi had other ideas. He pushed them through multiple sets of pushups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks, then had them run in place. As the players huffed, he walked up and down the rows making comments.

  Come on, Hanner, you can do better!

  Helluin, come on, this is just the first morning! It'll be hotter this afternoon!

  Ringo felt his face redden. Hanner began to feel faint. Helluin, a 275-pound defensive lineman who had sat out the entire 1958 season after dislocating a shoulder during a training-camp scrimmage, feared he might get sick.

  The last exercise was Lombardi's favorite. It was known as the grass drill. The players ran in place, lifting their knees high, until Lombardi hollered "Down!" and they flopped on their bellies. When Lombardi hollered "Up!" they scrambled to their feet and ran in place again until the next down command. They went through the cycle of up-downs for two, three, five minutes, sweat pouring off their chins. Lombardi finally blew his whistle, ending his "warm-ups."

  The players knew what to do next, having studied the detailed practice schedule posted in the locker room. They separated into groups and worked with their position coaches for a half hour, the offensive backs with Red Cochran, the offensive linemen with Bill Austin, the linebackers and defensive linemen with Phil Bengston, and the defensive backs with Norb Hecker. Lombardi worked with the quarterbacks and receivers. Each group moved through drills focusing on fundamentals, running, throwing, catching, and blocking.

  After twenty minutes Lombardi went to watch the offensive linemen, the foundation of his run-oriented offense. Seven were lined up in a row in front of an iron blocking sled. Lombardi jumped on the back of the sled, facing the linemen, and shouted for them to get into their stances and explode in unison into the padded dummies hanging from the sled. "Drive! Drive!" he cried as together the blockers hit the sled, pushing it across the grass in jerks. When they were finished, he shouted, "No, that didn't feel good. Do it again." The blockers returned to their stances and hit the sled, moving it as Lombardi held on with both hands.

  "Better, better. That felt good," he said.

  Another seven blockers stepped in front of the sled and hit it.

  "Damn! That's good!" Lombardi exclaimed.

  After ten minutes on the sled, Lombardi blew his whistle. The offensive and defensive units gathered on opposite ends of the field and ran through plays. Lombardi ran the offense while Bengston focused on the defense. They called out different formations and plays and watched the players in "dummy" sequences, without opposition. After a half hour, Lombardi blew the whistle and the units came together and practiced against each other without making contact. Finally, Lombardi called for a series of forty-yard sprints and ended the workout.

  The players were hollow-eyed as they trudged up the hill to the locker room and boarded two yellow buses for the ride back to St. Norbert. Scooter's workouts hadn't been nearly as crisp, organized, or demanding. Back at St. Norbert they spilled out of the buses, went to their rooms, and flopped on their beds, exhausted.

  Soon, lunch was served at the cafeteria, located across a quadrangle from the dorm. The players would eat, return to their rooms to rest, and then reboard the buses and head back to Green Bay for another practice that afternoon. Lombardi planned to hold these "two-a-day" sessions for three weeks, until the team's slate of exhibition games began in mid-August. They would play six such games, one per week, as preparation for the regular season, which began on September 27.

  During lunch, more veterans arrived expecting to enjoy a few days of fun. Norm Masters, the offensive tackle, received his room assignment and saw Bill
Austin, his position coach, as he walked down the hall carrying his bags. "Good to see you, Norm," Austin said, extending a hand. They spoke for several minutes and then Austin said, "OK, the bus leaves for practice at three." Masters replied, "What do you mean 'the bus leaves at three'?" Austin explained that Lombardi expected any player in camp to attend all practices and meetings.

  When Masters told him what had gone on before, Austin suggested Masters speak to Lombardi about it, knowing how that would go. Masters dropped off his bags, found Lombardi's room on the first floor, and knocked. The coach answered, shook hands, and quickly cut off the conversation. He was in charge now, he said, with new rules in place. And that was that. Masters trudged back upstairs to change before going over to eat lunch. He ran into Ringo, still recovering from the morning practice.

  "Better get yourself ready, pal," Ringo said with a wan smile. "We've never had practices like this around here. This guy means business. The conditioning is brutal."

  Masters soon found himself on a bus headed for practice, and a few minutes later, in the midst of his first grass drill, flopping up and down like a fish on a line. The Packers, he realized, would never be the same.

  After lunch Hanner rested in his room, unsure whether he would survive the afternoon practice. He received a phone call from Forrest Gregg, who was in Milwaukee, one hundred miles from St. Norbert. Gregg had driven up from Texas and didn't have to report for another thirty hours.

  "Hey, what's going on, Dave?" Gregg asked.

  Hanner said, simply, "Wow."

  "What?" Gregg asked.

  "This guy is ... working our asses off," Hanner said.

  Gregg said he planned to wait until the veteran deadline to report.

  "If I were you, Forrest, I would get your ass up here immediately," Hanner said.

  Gregg drove up that afternoon and met Lombardi at breakfast the next morning.

  "I'm glad you're here. Good move, son. You're smart to come in early," Lombardi said.

  Gregg found Hanner and thanked him for the advice, but Hanner was preoccupied with his own situation. That morning he became lightheaded during the grass drill and vomited. All this running and jumping had pushed him to the brink of what he could handle so early in camp. There was no water on the field—its presence would soften players, the thinking went—but a trainer gave him a handful of the ice kept on hand to limit swelling on bruises and sprains. Hanner sucked on the ice but kept vomiting, his body temperature soaring. Lombardi told him to go sit under a tree. Hanner did but couldn't stop throwing up. Finally, he left practice with a trainer and was driven to St. Vincent Hospital, where he was given fluids in the emergency room. He stabilized during an overnight stay and was at practice the next afternoon.

  Lombardi didn't back off. Hanner made a return visit to the emergency room a few days later, and was back again for a third time shortly after that, wondering if he might die before Lombardi got him in shape. His teammates started joking that he had two rooms in camp this year, one at St. Norbert and one at St. Vincent.

  Max McGee and Howie Ferguson also arrived early thinking they didn't have to practice. They ate dinner with the team, disappeared, and came home drunk after curfew. The next morning Lombardi told them they would be practicing with the rookies that day. The carefree McGee didn't complain, but Ferguson blew up.

  "I don't have to be on the field until tomorrow!" he shouted.

  "As far as I'm concerned, mister, when you ate a meal here, you became part of this camp," Lombardi replied. "Therefore, you abide by all of my rules."

  They argued until Ferguson huffed out, not knowing his role as the number one fullback was already tenuous because of what Jim Taylor had shown Lombardi on film.

  Ferguson, who had been with the Packers for six seasons, grumbled but went to practice. Four days later, Lombardi traded him to Pittsburgh.

  The NFL draft lasted thirty rounds, enabling each of the twelve teams to pick up far more players than they needed. Every summer, hordes of rookies descended on training camps, scurried around for a week, got cut, and went home to anonymity, dreams dashed.

  The rookies at Lombardi's first camp included many soon to be forgotten—Jim Hurd, Sam Tuccio, Leroy Hardee, Ken Higginbotham, Jerry Epps, Ken Kerr, Tom Secules, Ben Lawyer, and more. Vainisi had seen enough in each of them to want to take a look at them, but Lombardi started making decisions after just a few days of camp.

  Not good enough.

  Too slow.

  Bad hands.

  Sorry, we have to let you go.

  Tim Brown, a running back from Ball State, in Muncie, Indiana, didn't figure to last long. His small-time school had never produced an NFL player. He had been the 312th player selected overall out of 360 league-wide. He wasn't physically formidable at five feet eleven and 190 pounds.

  When he arrived at St. Norbert, he picked up a Press-Gazette and read that he was one of many players who shouldn't even bother to unpack his bags.

  That annoyed him.

  Brown, an African American, had overcome enormous hardships to make it this far. His father, an Army cook, didn't believe in education and tried to pull him from school. His divorced parents lacked the money to raise him, so Brown entered the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home, near Knightstown, Indiana, at age twelve. But he thrived in the strict environment, excelling in the classroom and starring on the football field as a darting, speedy ball carrier. Moving on to Ball State, he continued as a game-breaking runner while working six hours a day to pay for his tuition. He had graduated just before he came to Green Bay for camp, taking his first plane flight.

  Brown didn't expect to last long in camp. He knew he could play football, but other guys could, too. If it didn't work out, he would just go on to something else, he figured. He wasn't a typical jock. He had a terrific singing voice, could take over a dance floor, and after years in mostly all-white settings, had developed a strong inner spirit. If he wasn't going to make it in pro football, he was at least going to fail with his head held high.

  Shouldn't even unpack, huh?

  The taunt echoed in his head as he checked into Sensenbrenner Hall and went to meet Lombardi, who made him wait at the office door for fifteen minutes while he talked on the phone—a trick coaches used to make cowed youngsters more nervous.

  Finally, Lombardi got off the phone and motioned for Brown to come in. They shook hands, and Lombardi slowly and silently looked him up and down.

  "So, you're Brown," he finally said.

  Brown wanted to say, "In more ways than one," but checked his tongue.

  "Yes, sir," he said.

  "You don't look like a football player," Lombardi commented.

  "Well, I'm not sure what you think a football player looks like," Brown replied. "I'm not a big lineman. I'm a running back."

  Lombardi eyed him. "So you're a smart guy, huh?" he asked.

  "Well, sir, I did just graduate from college," he answered.

  Lombardi waved a hand and said, "Go on, get out of here."

  Brown turned to leave, but stopped at the door and looked back. "You know what I'm going to do, sir? I'm going to go unpack," he said.

  He couldn't help himself and didn't regret saying it, but the remark put him squarely in Lombardi's crosshairs. Suddenly, he was no longer just another faceless low-round draft pick. He was Brown, the wiseass.

  By the eve of the first full-squad practice, fifty-six players were in camp. They gathered in a meeting room after dinner, squeezed into tight rows of varnished oak classroom chairs. Lombardi paused briefly before entering, double-checking what he planned to say. In two months, by the Packers' first regular-season game in late September, he had to have his offense and Bengston's defense up and running, and starters selected at many positions, including quarterback. Most importantly, he had to have the players believing in his new, strict regimen.

  Many of the players had either met Lombardi or heard about his brutal practices. They fell silent when he stepped in front of t
hem and began to speak.

  "Gentlemen, we're going to have a football team here," he said, "and we're going to win some games. Do you know why? You are going to have confidence in me and my system. By being alert, you are going to make fewer mistakes than your opponents. By working harder, you are going to out-execute, out-block, and out-tackle every team that comes your way."

  He paused. The room was silent.

  "I've never been a losing coach and don't intend to start here. There is no one big enough to think he's got the team made and can do what he wants. Trains and planes are coming in and leaving Green Bay every day, and he'll be on one of them. I won't. I'm going to find thirty-six men who have the pride to make any sacrifice to win. There are such men. If they're not here, I will get them. If you're not one, if you don't want to play, you might as well leave right now."

  Starr, who had been so inspired by Lombardi's opening speech at quarterback camp a month earlier, could tell by looking around that many of his teammates were reacting similarly to their first brush with the new coach. It was stunning to imagine the languid Packers in the hands of such a clear-eyed, forceful leader.

  Bill Forester, a veteran team captain who thought he had seen everything, felt sweat on his palms. Lombardi made him want to put on pads and hit someone.