With the score tied at 10–10 and twenty seconds left, the Steelers tried an onside kick that failed, the ball rolling out of bounds at the Green Bay 46. McHan led the offense onto the field and hit McGee over the middle for a seventeen-yard gain. McGee alertly called a timeout as he went down, stopping the clock with three seconds left. Lombardi sent in Hornung for a forty-three-yard field goal attempt, and the Golden Boy's kick split the uprights as the final gun sounded, giving the Packers a 13–10 win.
Finally, after six games in six states and more than ten thousand travel miles, the exhibition season was over. The Packers had gone 4–2, faring better than anyone who saw them in 1958 could have expected. Speaking to reporters after the Minneapolis game, Lombardi said he was pleased overall. He still needed better talent at some positions and saw numerous mistakes when he reviewed game films, but his players were in shape, blocked and tackled hard, and ran the ball effectively, this last game notwithstanding. It was encouraging, he said, to see them buy into his stricter program. When he came to Green Bay he had thought he would need five years to turn the Packers around, he said, but now he could see it happening in three.
"Remember what I said when I took this job? You have to have a good defense to start with," he said, his smile indicating he believed he now had one.
Indeed, the Packer secondary had been solid since Dillon and Tunnell returned, and the linebackers had been tough and consistent through the exhibition season. Forester, the veteran on the right side, was seldom out of position; a drawling Texan (one day he ordered a steak at a restaurant and the waitress brought him pancakes, thinking he had said "stack") nicknamed Bubba, he was the unit captain. Currie, the second-year man on the left side, was an athletic first-round pick with the speed to cover receivers and a knack for making plays. Bettis, in the middle, loved to flatten opponents.
Up front, Phil Bengston had tried different tackle-end combinations throughout the preseason, but the guesswork was over now that Henry Jordan was around. Jordan and Bill Quinlan, teammates in Cleveland, would start on the left side. Quinlan, as advertised, was a wild man—rumors abounded about his off-day drinking escapades—but he played with a relentless motor, chasing ball carriers and delivering jarring hits. Dave Hanner, in the best shape of his career after surviving training camp, would team with Nate Borden on the right side. This "front four," playing together for the first time, had held Pittsburgh to sixty-nine yards rushing while pressuring Layne on passing plays.
"We had our share of problems last year, but I think we're just a much better defense this year," Bettis said. "I'm looking forward to playing the Bears."
A few days before the game in Minneapolis, a tall, slender athlete knocked on Lombardi's door at Oakton Manor. The coach answered and broke into a smile.
"Hi, Coach," Ron Kramer said, extending a hand.
"Great to have you back. Are you ready to go?" Lombardi replied.
"I think so," Kramer said.
A twenty-three-year-old tight end, Kramer was the best athlete Vainisi had ever drafted, lineman-sized at six feet four and 235 pounds, but possessing a receiver's speed and hands. At the University of Michigan, he had been a two-time football All-American, the leading scorer on the basketball team, and ran track. The Packers had made him the fourth overall pick in the 1957 draft, and he had caught twenty-eight passes and blocked hard as a rookie. Having Kramer out there was like having an extra player on the field, Lisle Blackbourn had said.
Near the end of the 1957 season, though, Kramer went down with a terrible injury during a game in California—three torn knee ligaments and a broken leg. A team doctor repaired the damage but Kramer's doctor in Michigan told him he would never play football again. Kramer didn't tell the Packers about that prognosis. He went into the Air Force for a year and tried to rehabilitate his knee on his own. Day after day in Washington, D.C., where he was posted, he wrapped a hundred-pound weight around his ankle, sat on a table, and kicked up the leg over and over.
Lombardi had been told to expect a major contributor when Kramer was discharged, but Kramer arrived at Oakton Manor in rough shape. His knee was better but he weighed just 212 pounds, well below his usual playing weight. He had suffered from ulcers during the year off, he explained. Still, he dressed for practice, and Lombardi immediately ordered him to run pass routes, curious to see him move. Kramer caught some balls, but later, with his room door closed, raised his foot on a pillow and applied ice packs to his sore knee. It had swelled badly.
Gary Knafelc welcomed Kramer back; they had become friends standing next to each other in the huddle throughout the 1957 season.
Great to see you, Ron. Hope you're ready. You won't believe how things have changed.
So I hear.
But Knafelc couldn't help wondering what was in store for him now that Kramer was back.
Knafelc had fretted about his future since the day in February when Lombardi told him he was moving from receiver to tight end, Kramer's position. Knafelc had gone home and told his wife, "We're in trouble, honey. I'm going to have to start blocking people, something I've never done!"
Knafelc, twenty-seven, really wanted to stick with the team. His lopsided grin, high cheekbones, quick wit, and dashing sweep of dark hair had made him a fan favorite. Unlike many of his teammates, who fled Wisconsin as soon as the season was over, he had built a year-round life in Green Bay with his wife and two young sons, purchasing a home and a business. Everyone in town knew him. He had hosted one of the Packers' weekly television shows several years earlier.
After being ordered to switch positions, he worked hard to become a tight end. Lombardi taught him the ABCs of blocking, how to take a quick first step, fire into an opponent, and pop the man in the chest. Knafelc hurled himself at defenders in the nutcracker drill, his easygoing nature masking a tenaciousness that had helped him make it in pro ball after a career at the University of Colorado. His tight-end competition included Kramer, a star, and Steve Meilinger, a low-key veteran who blocked well. Lombardi had alternated Knafelc and Meilinger during the exhibition games, but Meilinger had broken an arm in Winston-Salem, putting him out for the season. Now Kramer had returned. Knafelc glumly watched the bigger, stronger, younger tight end in practice, thinking his chance to start had evaporated.
After the Minneapolis game, Lombardi brought the team back to Pewaukee Lake for a few final days of hard practices before the regular-season opener against the Bears on Sunday at City Stadium. A palpable sense of excitement coursed through the camp. Lombardi initially opened the practices to the public, but when more than one hundred fans showed up on Tuesday, the coach eyed them nervously, knowing George Halas was famous for spying on opponent practices. Fans who returned to watch the Wednesday and Thursday practices were shooed away by police.
Lombardi drove the offense relentlessly in these final workouts, zeroing in on his beloved sweep, the heart of his running game. It looked simple, just a handoff to a back running wide, but was actually a complex dance in which every player had a crucial assignment. It failed unless every player did his job, making it the perfect play for emphasizing the importance of limiting mistakes and playing well together, key commandments in Lombardi's football faith. His Giants had mastered the sweep, and his Packers would, too, he vowed.
The play call was "twenty-eight" or "forty-nine," depending on which back carried in which direction, but either way, its identifying marker was the "pulling" of the guards, who, instead of driving forward on the snap, stepped back, pivoted in the direction of the play, and raced parallel to the line until they passed the tackle and turned upfield ahead of the back, who had taken a handoff and was just behind them, looking for openings. The goal was to create mismatches between the guards and opposing linebackers and defensive backs. For that to happen, the other Packer blockers had to keep the rest of the defense away. Ringo had to handle the middle linebacker. The tackle on the side where the play was directed had to control the defensive end. The back that didn't carry the ball had to
take on the defensive tackle the pulling guard ordinarily took.
And the tight end, after lining up wide of the tackle, had to shoot out to the inside and seal off the linebacker, whose area the play went through. That was the most important block. The sweep was doomed if the tight end missed it.
Lombardi wanted his players so comfortable with the sweep that they ran it perfectly, never making a bad read, missing a block, or hitting the wrong hole. He drove them toward that goal in Pewaukee, running the play again and again. The linemen made their reads, the guards pulled, the back took a handoff, and for it all to work, the tight end made the key sealing block.
"Come on, make the reads!" Lombardi shouted. "Hold your blocks! Drive your man!"
Early in the workout, Knafelc and Kramer alternated, but then Lombardi ordered Knafelc to stay on the field. Knafelc lined up and blocked Forester for ten straight plays, Lombardi standing right be side him, voicing a stream of criticisms. Come on, Gary, move your arms! You can do better than that! Then Knafelc lined up against Currie for ten straight plays. Drive, drive, drive, Gary! Hit him harder! More, more! Finally, Knafelc lined up against the crazed Ray Nitschke for ten straight plays. No, Gary! The play fails if you can't make that block!
Knafelc knew he was being tested. He looked over to the sideline and saw his young sons, who had accompanied him to practice. They could hear their father being lambasted.
After blocking on thirty straight sweeps, Knafelc rose wearily from a pile, turned to Lombardi, and said, "Coach, Ray knows what is coming." Moments later, Lombardi ended practice. Knafelc's sons ran to him and hugged him, and they walked across the field to the locker room. Knafelc's oldest son looked up and said, "It's OK, Daddy, we still love you."
The players spent a final night at Oakton Manor before returning to Green Bay Friday morning. Knafelc and his wife and sons were eating an early breakfast at the coffee shop before heading out when Knafelc's wife's face went ashen.
"Honey, he's walking toward us ... Coach Lombardi," she whispered.
"Oh, no. He's going to cut me or something," Knafelc muttered.
There was a pause and his wife continued, "Yes, here he comes. He's walking right to us."
Moments later Lombardi arrived at their table. He greeted Knafelc's wife and children, put his hand on Knafelc's shoulder, leaned close, and whispered in his ear.
"Gary," he said, "you're starting Sunday."
Knafelc nodded. He was speechless, stunned, and electrified. Lombardi had challenged him, humbled him, frightened him, helped him, and in the end, rewarded him. He didn't know if he could keep the starting job for long, but he had it now.
Suddenly, he couldn't wait for Sunday. He would play harder for this demanding coach than he had ever played before. And he knew his teammates would, too.
***
Before breaking camp in Pewaukee, Lombardi made his final cuts, paring the roster down to thirty-six men. It was a long, emotional day as he gave bad news to some players and good news to others.
Tim Brown fully expected to get cut when Lombardi called him in; he thought he had played well enough to earn a job, recent drops and fumbles notwithstanding, but he had probably run his mouth too much, and NFL teams just didn't keep that many black players, especially ones who chafed at the status quo.
But Lombardi stunned him.
"Congratulations, Brown. You're on the team. You had a hell of a camp," he said.
It took every ounce of Brown's limited self-restraint to keep him from breaking into song as he walked out of the room.
The final roster had three quarterbacks (McHan, Starr, and Francis), five offensive backs (Hornung, Taylor, Carpenter, Don McIlhenny, and Brown), seven offensive linemen (Ringo, Kramer, Thurston, Gregg, Skoronski, Masters, and John Dittrich), five offensive ends (McGee, Knafelc, Kramer, Dowler, and A. D. Williams), six defensive linemen (Quinlan, Hanner, Jordan, Borden, Jim Temp, and Ken Beck), four linebackers (Bettis, Forester, Currie, and Nitschke), and six defensive backs (Dillon, Tunnell, Symank, Whittenton, Gremminger, and Freeman). Lombardi had delivered on his promise to shake things up, adding three rookies and eight other players who had not been with the Packers before. But still, twenty-five of the thirty-six men had played for Scooter and, in most cases, experienced at least several years of Packer misery.
Basically, Lombardi would be playing a new game with a pat hand.
His last move in camp was to name McHan the starting quarterback. The news didn't generate big headlines or stir a dramatic response. Francis had played the best of any of the quarterbacks in the exhibition season, but Lombardi wasn't about to start him against a defense as savvy and hard-hitting as Chicago's. Starr excelled in film sessions, but alas, the game was played on a field. McHan hadn't stood out until the last quarter in Minneapolis, when he led a touchdown drive and then completed a clutch pass to set up Hornung's game-winning field goal—just the kind of playmaking Lombardi had hoped for when he obtained McHan.
McHan exhaled inwardly when Lombardi gave him the good news, having never stopped worrying that he might get shipped back to the Cardinals and that dingbat Wolfner. Now he could relax and play ball, once again bearing a heavy load of responsibility, just as he always had and always preferred.
He thanked Lombardi for the chance and pledged to reward the coach for having faith in him.
Let's go out and win on Sunday, Coach. We can do it. We can beat the Bears.
The other two quarterbacks reacted differently to the news, which they heard from teammates. (Lombardi, like most coaches, informed only those who would be playing, not those who wouldn't.) Francis shrugged; he had never really expected to start. Starr took it hard. He was glad to make the team, but having been the Packers' primary starting quarterback for the past two seasons, disappointed about being passed over. McHan had beaten him out.
He packed for the trip back to Green Bay with dull eyes and an impassive expression, saying little. As the team bus rolled out of the Pewaukee camp under gray skies on Friday, carrying the players toward Green Bay and the start of the regular season, he stared out a window and kept his thoughts to himself.
But he wasn't sulking. It simply wasn't in Starr's makeup to sulk.
I am going to keep working hard.
I am going to prepare myself to play as if I'm the starter.
And one of these days, I will be.
PART II
12
TWO HOURS BEFORE kickoff on September 27, Lombardi was at City Stadium. It had rained on and off during the night, and he wanted to check on the grass. He put on his tan overcoat and dark fedora in the locker room, walked down the tunnel, and stepped onto the field. A light mist fell and a breeze blew the tails of his coat as he tapped a shoe into the thick green turf.
Good, it's firm. We should be able to run the ball.
Looking up, he envisioned the now-silent stadium as it soon would be, filled with cheering fans. But would the damp conditions limit the passing game? McHan was experienced, having made fifty-three starts for the Cardinals, but he was prone to self-doubt. The Bears are tough on defense. I hope his confidence doesn't sag.
Lombardi and Marie had entertained friends the night before, but amid the laughter, clinking ice, and cigarette smoke, his mind seldom strayed far from the looming occasion, his first regular-season game as an NFL head coach. He had awakened early, collected Vincent, and driven across town to the stadium, stopping at St. Willebrords for mass. (Vincent, whose high school football season had started, would watch the game from the end of the bench. Marie Lombardi would sit in the stands with the wives of the other coaches.) The rain, wind, and chilly temperatures gave the day a wintry feel, and it wasn't even October. Welcome to Green Bay.
The game had been sold out for more than a month, with all but a few of the 32,500 tickets in the hands of Packer fans curious to see if this coach could succeed where Scooter McLean, Lisle Blackbourn, and Gene Ronzani had failed. Could Lombardi make the Packers respectable again? He believed he could.
His players were in better shape and more disciplined and confident, and although most had played on the horrid 1958 squad, Lombardi had added talent, especially on defense. If the exhibition season was any indication, the Packers would at least no longer lose by 56–0 scores.
Of course, Lombardi knew better than to attach significance to meaningless contests. Even though the Packers had won four exhibition games, Sports Illustrated and Sport magazines had still picked them to finish last in the Western Division—they had so far to climb. Even the ever-optimistic Press-Gazette had predicted they could win "three or four games, maybe more."
The Bears, meanwhile, were expected to challenge the Colts for the Western Division title. They had won eight of twelve games in 1958 and had a bruising defense led by Bill George, regarded as the game's best middle linebacker along with the Giants' Sam Huff and Detroit's Joe Schmidt. Smart, quick, and almost impossible to block, George had started out as a lineman until Halas discovered that, with his agility and reactions, he could make plays all over the field when positioned just behind the line instead of on it. His supporting cast included Doug Atkins, a vicious, tackle-tossing 260-pound end, and veteran pass defenders Erich Barnes and J. C. Caroline.
The Packers had almost beaten Halas's team in August, but now, Wally Cruice, the Packers' advance scout, told Lombardi that Halas had played with his hands tied behind his back that night, using just a few of the many defensive alignments he employed to confuse opponents, changing them from play to play as expertly as a major league pitcher mixed a fastball, curve, and changeup. Cruice was a former Northwestern halfback whose job, since the early 1950s, was to study Green Bay's next opponent and prepare a report. He knew his stuff. The Packers would have a tough time.
Lombardi had huddled with his quarterbacks during the week, debating which plays to run. Taylor off right tackle? Hornung around left end? McGee over the middle? As always, he wanted input from the quarterbacks themselves, especially McHan, who would be calling the plays. Starr, despite having been relegated to the bench, had studied film of the Bears—more than McHan—and made several astute suggestions. As always, his intelligence and work ethic impressed Lombardi.
That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory Page 16