Monthly Archives: January 2015

Eyewitnesses to the Ice Bowl

The Ice Bowl is so much bigger now, in memory, than it was in real time. Oh, it got plenty of coverage from TV and print, but it was still, let’s not forget, 1967. Pro football had yet to overtake baseball as America’s No. 1 sport — according to the Gallup people, at least — and other events that holiday week, such as the next day’s New Year’s bowl games, also got their share of attention.

Consider: Arthur Daley, The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize winner, didn’t make the trip to Green Bay. Instead, he wrote about the Packers-Cowboys classic back in the newsroom (or wherever he did his typing) – for the Jan. 2 edition. Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times was a no-show, too. He was busy gearing up for the Rose Bowl between O.J. Simpson’s USC Trojans and the Indiana Hoosiers. It was that way with a lot of newspapers. They might have sent their NFL guy to Wisconsin but not necessarily a columnist.

Another such paper was The Boston Globe, but at least it had a decent excuse: Boston was an AFL town, home of the Patriots. For a pinch-hit voice, the Globe picked up Red Smith’s syndicated column, but get this: It chopped off the last six paragraphs – for “space” reasons, presumably.

Imagine having a Mount Rushmore writer like Smith covering the game for you, a guy who grew up in Green Bay, for goodness sakes, and cutting the bottom third of his column. Not exactly one of your Great Moments in Sportswriting History. (Fortunately, the Globe recovered nicely in the decades that followed.)

A writer or two did make it to the Great White North, though – some, possibly, by dogsled or snowmobile – and it’s their deathless prose that follows. Who cares if Murray tossed off some funny lines later (e.g. “The theory could be advanced that neither team had the advantage because it was cold for the Packers, too. That’s like saying that the shark had no advantage over the swimmer because both were in water.”)? He wasn’t there.

In fact, let’s see if I can put together a composite piece that tells the story of the game from multiple points of view. We’ll start with the hometown boy, Walter Wellesley Smith:

GREEN BAY – On the eve of the game, Henry Jordan and his bride called on the Jerry Kramers.

“Nervous?” said the [Packers] defensive tackle. “Naw. I just keep hollering at Olive.”

Jerry grinned toward the sofa where the wives were chatting. “I keep calling her Jethro,” he said.

If Jethro Pugh was stomping through Kramer’s dreams all last week, Pugh and his violent accomplices in the Dallas defensive line will be haunting Bart Starr for weeks to come, but Bart will be having his nightmares under a Miami moon. Starr bought the Packers tickets to the site of the Jan. 14 Stupor Bowl Sunday with a one-yard plunge that snatched the championship of the National Football League from the Cowboys’ frozen fingers just 13 seconds before the end of the 35^th annual title game.

Shirley Povich, Washington Post:

The Cowboys won the toss and there was some hope they would elect to call the whole thing off, but they didn’t and pretty soon the Packers had a touchdown and a 7-0 lead. They were favored with three penalties against the Cowboys on the drive and from the Dallas 8, Bart Starr taught the Cowboys a simple lesson in metrics. He sent 6-foot-5 Boyd Dowler into the territory of 5-11 defender Mike Johnson and pitched to Dowler in the end zone.

The sheer audacity of Starr got the Packers another touchdown in the second quarter. First thing, it was third and 1 on the Dallas 43 and not a passing down. Certainly not a long-bomb situation.

How bodacious can a quarterback get? Starr put a long-stemmed beauty up in the air and if it came down before it congealed up there the Packers would have a touchdown, because Dowler had five yards on Mel Renfro. The re-entry was perfect, and the Packers had a 14-0 lead. This was making a terrible prophet out of Clint Murchison, the billionaire owner of the Cowboys who was saying before the contest, “It is too cold for the Green Bay passing game, and we will win with our running.” As a football sage he was proving only to be a genius of finance. His own man, Don Meredith, was passing badly and it was apparent that only on the Dallas side of the field was the temperature below zero.

Sam Blair, Dallas Morning News:

When two penguins sauntered into the hotel drug store and bought hot water bottles, when waitresses ice-skated across the coffee shop to serve breakfast, when Admiral Byrd fetched out bags and carried them to the taxi, it really became obvious. All of us – the Cowboys, the Packers, the fans, the press – were trapped in a situation which the sports world had never experienced before. . . .

This was No Man’s weather. . . . No sporting event, with the possible exception of the Winter Olympics, ever had been contested in such brutal coldness. . . . “I have never been so numb or hurt so much from hitting,” [Green Bay linebacker Lee Roy] Caffey shuddered. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to try to catch a ball out there. I might have gotten broken fingers.”

Tex Schramm, Sports Illustrated:

[The Cowboys] got one touchdown back later in the second quarter when the very quick Dallas line, which punished Starr most of the afternoon – he was dumped eight times while attempting to pass – threw him for a 19-yard loss. End Willie Townes hit Starr and forced a fumble; the other end, George Andrie, picked up the ball and scored with it.

“It wasn’t the offensive line breaking down,” Starr said after the game. “They did well enough. But the receivers couldn’t make their cuts on the icy field, and I couldn’t find anyone to throw to. So I was holding the ball too long, and they got to me.”

A little later, the usually sure-handed Willie Wood dropped a punt on the Green Bay 17 and Phil Clark recovered for Dallas. Danny Villanueva kicked a 21-yard field goal just before the half, and the Cowboys, who had been unable to gain more than three first downs in the first half, nonetheless left the field trailing only 14-10.

Bob St. John, Dallas Morning News:

This loss to the Packers hurt even more than last year’s when the Cowboys fell 34-27. Then, Dallas came within two yards of tying the game. This time they came within a hair of winning . . . due to Ol’ Reliable, the Danny Reeves to Lance Rentzel halfback pass.

The Cowboys, trailing 14-10, stood at midfield on the first play of the final period. Both Packer[s] right cornerback Bob Jeter and free safety Willie Wood are all-pro, which speaks for itself. But each one is extremely active coming up to play the run. Wood, in fact, though he is a safety, often comes up to force the play. Willie came up when Reeves started wide to his left. So did Jeter, who should have stayed on Rentzel. Lance took off. Reeves stopped and lofted a perfect pass, of course, which Rentzel ran under between the 15-20 and outraced the other safety, Tom Brown, for the TD.

Lloyd Larsen, Milwaukee Sentinel:

Many may insist that the Packers were lucky to pull this one out of the sub-zero atmosphere. But that would be unfair to a group of men who played like champions when only championship performance would suffice.

I’m thinking, of course, of that final 68-yard drive, on which Starr, Chuck Mercein, Donny Anderson, Boyd Dowler and their teammates on the offensive unit collaborated under pressure as pressure is seldom experienced by athletes.

They had less than five minutes to do the job. And they just made it by the skin of their teeth. That pay-off touchdown “pop” by Starr was a just reward for a great guy whose fumble had put the Cowboys on the scoreboard for the first time. That bobble was the one everybody would have remembered. But it’s different now. And that, I maintain, is a triumph for justice.

Alan Goldstein, Baltimore Sun:

The Packers give you the impression that they will find a way to win no matter how impossible the odds. But even such a hard-seasoned veteran as [Jerry] Kramer admitted that a few doubts entered his mind with the Cowboys leading, 17-14, late in the fourth period.

“We got the ball with about five minutes left,” the rugged offensive guard recalled, “and I was thinking: Well, maybe this is the year we don’t pull it off, that it will all end here. But I know every guy made up his mind that we were going to go down swinging.

“Well, when we finally got down to the 1-yard line and missed on our first two tries, Bart took a little more time than usual in the huddle explaining what he wanted to do. [That is, sneak it in himself.] And the last thing he told us was, ‘And we darn well better make it.’ “

They did. And 47 years later we’re still talking about it.

Birth of The Frozen Tundra

Before there was The Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field, there was “the frozen tundra” of Yankee Stadium . . . and “the frozen tundra at Wrigley Field.” Surprised? So was I.

When I started my research, I was merely trying to determine when people began referring to Lambeau as The Frozen Tundra. After all, the Cowboys are in Green Bay to reprise their Ice Bowl of 47 years ago, and I’d always heard the term had come from that famous frigid day.

Sure enough, a 2010 story in the Los Angeles Times reported: “It was coined by Steve Sabol, now president of NFL Films, and he used it in his script for the [highlight film of the] ‘Ice Bowl,’ the 1967 NFL championship game between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys.”

Sounds plausible enough. Steve was a much-underrated wordsmith (and as an added bonus, played football at the same school – Colorado College – as Lions great Dutch Clark).

There’s only one problem. In his column about the game, Arthur Daley of The New York Times typed these words:

Thus did the Packers win, 21-17, and whisk themselves from the frozen tundra of Green Bay to their destined date with the Oakland Raiders in the Super Bowl at more salubrious Miami a fortnight hence.

So maybe Sabol got the idea from reading Daley’s nationally syndicated column.

Except. After doing some more digging, I discovered the term was already in circulation. A few days before the game, Chuck Ward of the Wellsville Daily Reporter in New York wrote:

Somehow the game loses meaning when you talk about it being worth $30,000 or so to each and every player. But that’s about the amount of booty the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys will be butting heads for Sunday afternoon on the frozen tundra of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field.

But Ward wasn’t the first, either. In 1965, in his follow-up to the Western Conference playoff between the Packers and Colts, Jerry Izenberg of the Newark Star-Ledger described the winning drive thusly:

So here was Green Bay, driving through the gloom of the frozen tundra toward the Baltimore goal. With second and 10 on the Baltimore 25, Elijah Pitts, replacing the wounded [Paul] Hornung, clawed forward for four yards, putting the ball squarely in front of the goal posts.

That’s the earliest instance I’ve found of Lambeau Field being called The Frozen Tundra — late December 1965, two years before the Ice Bowl. But there are iced-over fields, obviously, in places other than Green Bay. Which raised the question: Had any of them ever been referred to as “the frozen tundra”?

As it turns out, yeah. Here’s Jack Hand of The Associated Press advancing the 1963 title game (Giants vs. Bears):

It is reasonable to assume that there will be a little violence on the frozen tundra at Wrigley Field, just as there was last December when the Green Bay Packers and the Giants met in the Yankee Stadium ice box.

Finally — speaking, as Hand was, of that “Yankee Stadium ice box” — here’s Cameron Snyder of the Baltimore Sun covering the Giants-Packers championship game a year earlier:

It wasn’t a day fittin’ for offenses and both the Packers and Giants failed to demonstrate any consistency in their attacks. The wind gusts played havoc with the passes and the frozen tundra spilled ball carriers and tacklers indiscriminately.

I’m not suggesting my research in any way settles the issue. I’m just saying that, in a few short hours, I turned up Frozen Tundras going back to 1962, five years before Sabol supposedly “coined” it.

I even came across a “frozen tundras” in a 1931 story about an upcoming Army-Notre Dame game at Yankee Stadium. This is from the Brooklyn Eagle:

When Army and Notre Dame have weather, they have nothing else but. Remember the zero gale that swept the field two years ago when Jack Elder intercepted the pass to win for Notre Dame on a run of 98 yards, with two teams slipping and slithering over frozen tundras of the big Bronx ball park?

The Frozen Tundra of Wrigley Field. The Frozen Tundra of Yankee Stadium. I still like The Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field the best. Especially when John Facenda, NFL Films’ Voice of God, says it.

Arthur Daley in the Jan. 2, 1968, New York Times

From the Dec. 27, 1967, Wellsville (N.Y.) Daily Reporter

Jerry Izenberg in the Dec. 29, 1965, Syracuse Post-Standard

Jack Hand of The Associated Press, Dec. 24, 1963

Cameron Snyder in the Dec. 31, 1962, Baltimore Sun

George Currie in the Nov. 28, 1931, Brooklyn Eagle

One way to keep your players warm

The game time forecast for Foxborough on Saturday is a balmy 17 degrees with a 7 mph wind. In Green Bay the next day, we’re looking at snow, 5 degrees and an 18 mph wind. But the games will go on, of course, because the games always go on, barring a natural disaster or some national tragedy. If football is a test of manhood, then football in January — in the northern climes, at least — is the ultimate Final Jeopardy.

While the Patriots, Ravens, Packers and Cowboys are busy stocking up on thermal wear, let me tell you about the time an NFL coach dealt with frigid weather in a most unusual way: by keeping his subs in the heated locker room instead of having them freeze their butts off on the sideline.

Actually, it wasn’t just any old NFL coach. It was Green Bay Hall of Famer Curly Lambeau. That’s right, the franchise that gave us the Ice Bowl also gave us — what should we call this, the Empty Bench Play?

The date was Dec. 6, 1942, a day shy of the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The site was State Fair Park in Milwaukee, where the Packers played some of their home games in those days. Jack Sell of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the setting thusly:

“Only 5,183 fans braved sub-freezing temperatures to witness what was probably the final league game of pro football for the duration. Snow was swept from the grid in midweek but was piled high near the sidelines and often ball carriers were tossed into it. Most of the players wore basketball shoes.”

At kickoff, the temperature was around 10 degrees, and Lambeau, always looking for an edge, decided if his players weren’t on the field, moving around, they were better off indoors. So he stationed backfield coach Eddie Kotal in the dressing room and communicated with him by phone. Whenever Curly needed a replacement he’d call Kotal, and Eddie would send one running out — with feeling in all four of his extremities. That was better that you could say for the Steelers reserves, who huddled under blankets to try to keep warm.

“The move occasioned a lot of surprise on the part of the fans, who couldn’t figure out, at the start of the game, where the substitutes were,” Don Hickok of the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported. You have to understand, though: The Packers had never played a home game in December before — and wouldn’t play another for almost a decade. Back then, they scheduled their Green Bay/Milwaukee games for the first part of the season, when the weather was more conducive to drawing a decent crowd, and spent the latter part of the season on the road. In 1929, the year they won their first title, they played their first five at home and their last eight away.

Toward the end of the game, won by the Packers, 24-21, Hickok left the press box and went down to the Green Bay locker room to survey the scene. His account:

Kotal sat on a table with his ear against the telephone . . ., his other ear cocked toward the radio [and the play-by-play of WTMJ’s Russ Winnie]. The players were silent except when one of them missed [the] description of the play and asked what it was.

[Quarterback] Cecil Isbell came in with about three minutes to play and lifted his pant-legs to display two badly skinned knees, the result of his smashing [tackle] of [Pittsburgh’s] Bill Dudley after a pass interception down on the Packer[s] 20-yard line, which saved a touchdown. . . . The effort cost the Packer[s] pitcher several square inches of skin when he skidded along the frozen ground on his knees. So far as the effect on the players was concerned, the field might as well have been paved.

There was some concern, as Sell mentioned, that the NFL might shut down after the season because of a manpower shortage. So many able-bodied men were already in the military, and more were on the way. And, indeed, the league had to get creative to keep going in 1943. The Rams, after all, ceased operations that year and dispersed their players — on a lend-lease basis — to other clubs. The Steelers and Eagles, meanwhile, merged, creating a two-headed “Steagles” monster that finished a game out of first place in the East.

As for Curly Lambeau, he went right on thinking. In October of ’43 he coached a game against the Lions not from the sideline but from the press box — just to satisfy his curiosity. “You can see so much more here,” he said afterward. “I’m going to do it again.”

So it was in the 1940s, when pro football was being invented. Coaches would try just about anything.

Player safety in the 1960s

My Internet wanderings recently led me, as they often do, to an unexpected place: a classic 1967 photo of Chiefs cornerback Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. It shows Williamson, famous for bludgeoning receivers with a karate chop to the head, wearing a cast on his feared right forearm — “THE HAMMER” written in big block letters across it. He’d broken the arm in an exhibition game two weeks earlier against the Jets. The New York Times described the collision this way:

In the first quarter [Jets quarterback] Joe Namath completed a 15-yard pass to Don Maynard, who was covered by Fred Williamson. The talkative Williamson tackled Maynard, his right elbow crashing into Maynard’s spine near the neck. Williamson’s right arm was broken on the play. Maynard suffered a slight concussion and was sent to University Hospital [in Birmingham, Ala., where the game was played] for observation.

Williamson’s “Hammer” — “having great velocity and delivered perpendicular to the earth’s latitude,” as he liked to say — usually won these battles. The year before, he’d fractured the cheekbone of the Dolphins’ Howard Twilley. Anyway, here’s the photo of Fred’s arm encased in plaster:

Pro football back then was still fairly cavalier about shots to the cranium. The head slap had become a popular — and legal — weapon of defensive linemen, and high hitting like Williamson’s tended to be tolerated as long as the victim wasn’t decapitated. It was a far cry from the concussion-conscious times we now live in. In the ’60s there was no such thing as “targeting” a “defenseless” player. That was just, well, football.

It wasn’t until 1962 that the NFL made it illegal to grab the ball carrier’s facemask. (Until then, he was the only one exempted from the rule — for some strange reason.) In high school and college ball, grabbing anybody’s face mask had been a personal foul since 1957.

By then, David M. Nelson writes in Anatomy of a Game, “large numbers of players were wearing face guards, and opponents were grasping them legally and putting the wearer at a disadvantage. Citing the injury possibility with grasping and holding, the Rules Committee passed the first 15-yard face mask penalty.”

That happened this very week in 58 years ago (which is why I wanted to post about it). Talk about a red-letter day in football safety. The NFL was still a ways away, though, from giving the ball carrier the same protection. When it finally did, Commissioner Pete Rozelle made some interesting comments.

“It has been against the rule to grab face masks in blocking,” he said, “but you could grab the mask of a ball carrier. But the ball carrier actually is the most defenseless of all, and this new rule could prevent possible serious injury.”

More from Rozelle: “We didn’t have any serious trouble with this in league play. Actually, most of our injuries are of the knee or leg type. However, I did see one ball carrier grabbed by his mask and thrown several yards. It scared me a little.”

As well it might.

(I love this headline that ran in a newspaper the day after the rule was passed — specifically the “for ’62” part. Did people actually think the league might change its mind about rule and repeal it?)

It took defensive players — some of them, at least — a while to adjust to the revised rule, as this 1964 photo shows. That’s Lions’ end Sam Williams trying to yank down Jim Taylor, the Packers’ Hall of Fame fullback:

Just thought, with such a (needed) emphasis on player safety these days, it was a good time to revisit Fred “The Hammer” Williamson and celebrate the 1957 passing of the face mask rule — even if it took the NFL a little longer to wise up.

The Godfather I and II of pro football

Many think the 1958 title game, the overtime thriller between the Colts and Giants, is the greatest game in NFL history. I’ve never quite bought into it. If you’re going to convince me, you need to show me something measurable, not just say, “Well, Pete Rozelle always said . . . .” Put it this way: The league had bigger attendance increases after the ’56 (11.2 percent) and ’57 (6.0) championship games than it did after the ’58 game (4.5). How is that possible – I mean, if it really is the game that had the greatest impact? (It certainly wasn’t the greatest game from an artistic standpoint. There were eight fumbles that afternoon and seven turnovers.)

For me, the Greatest Game discussion actually begins with two games: the 1966 and ’67 title games between the Packers and Cowboys (who, conveniently for this post, meet in the playoffs Sunday in Green Bay for the first time since the famed Ice Bowl). I look at those ’66 and ’67 classics as a matched set, the NFL equivalent of Godfather I and Godfather II.

Packers QB Bart Starr (15) scores for winning TD in the Ice Bowl.

Packers QB Bart Starr (15) scores the winning TD in the Ice Bowl.

For drama, you had both games ending on the goal line — the Packers denying the Cowboys in ’66 to hang on, 34-27, then punching it across in ’67 to pull out a 21-17 win. For star power, you had two Hall of Fame coaches, Green Bay’s Vince Lombardi and Dallas’ Tom Landry, plus 12 Hall of Fame players (though Packers fullback Jim Taylor played in only the first of the two games).

Beyond that, you had — in the Ice Bowl, at least — the granddaddy of all matchups: Man vs. Nature. It wasn’t just cold that day at Lambeau Field, it was inhumanly cold, with the wind chill plunging to minus 50 (depending on your source). And this, mind you, was before all the super-duper, will-keep-you-warm-on-Mars thermal wear they use now.

The games also gave you a glimpse of the more racially diverse NFL of the Future. Both rosters were well-stocked in ’67 not just with black starters (15 in all) but with black stars — defensive end Willie Davis, linebacker Dave Robinson, cornerback Herb Adderley, free safety Willie Wood and running back-return man Travis Williams for the Packers and wide receiver Bob Hayes, running back Don Perkins, cornerback Cornell Green and free safety Mel Renfro for the Cowboys. Most are in Canton. (And I’m not so sure Perkins doesn’t belong, too. He was No. 5 on the NFL’s all-time rushing list when he retired — at 30 — after the ’68 season.)

What’s criminal is that football fans can’t just sit down and watch these games — in their entirety — and judge for themselves how great they were. The league and TV networks really dropped the ball on this one. Does a tape of either game still exist? If so, I haven’t seen (or heard of) it.

Instead, we have often-shown clips of Robinson pressuring the Cowboys’ Don Meredith into a game-ending interception in ’66 (and Landry’s subsequent grimace) and Starr squeezing over from the Dallas 1 in ’67 — assorted bits and pieces that don’t come close to adding up to The Whole.

Clemenza gives Michael some cooking pointers.

Clemenza gives Michael Corleone some cooking pointers.

Imagine having to watch The Godfather like that — just a few memorable scenes rather than the whole glorious epic. (No Clemenza, for instance, showing Michael how to cook meatballs and sausages in tomato gravy.) Think it would alter the viewing experience?

Anyway, that’s my spiel on the ’66 and ’67 NFL title games, the Godfather I and Godfather II of pro football history. We may never see two better title games back to back, never mind between the same teams. (Compare them to the consecutive Super Bowl duds between the Cowboys and Bills or the mostly forgettable string of Lions-Browns championship games in the ’50s.)

It was the beginning of the Super Bowl era, and the Packers and Cowboys set the bar incredibly high. If you want to read more on the subject, here’s a link to Bob O’Donnell’s piece about Starr’s sneak, taken from our 1990 book, The Pro Football Chronicle. It’s one of the best things Bob ever did, and that’s saying a lot.

The Ice Bowl: Bart Starr’s sneak

With the Packers and Cowboys cracking helmets Sunday – their first postseason meeting at Lambeau Field since the legendary 1967 Ice Bowl – it seemed like a good time to revisit the most famous play from that game, Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak that won it.

There was no discussion of a [subsequent] fourth-down play or possible field-goal try. That’s testimony either to Lombardi’s supreme confidence or the effect the cold was having on his brain.

By Bob O’Donnell (from The Pro Football Chronicle)

If one play has come to symbolize Vince Lombardi’s great Green Bay Packers teams, it’s Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak that won the 1967 Ice Bowl. Remember?

Sixteen seconds left. Dallas ahead 17-14. Temperature: minus 19. Guard Jerry Kramer drives the Cowboys’ Jethro Pugh out of the hole, and Starr falls behind him into the end zone for the winning score. It’s one of pro football’s golden moments.

What you don’t hear about Starr’s sneak is that (1) it was a lousy call, (2) Kramer was offside and (3) Packers center Ken Bowman should have shared the credit for the famous block.

Let’s start with the play itself. It was an outrageous gamble, really. Cowboys assistant coach Ermal Allen muttered afterward: “I just wish it had failed. You think there wouldn’t have been a few million words written about that? Then we’d see how smart [Lombardi] felt.”

Allen was right, if a little bitter. The Packers had the ball two feet from the Dallas goal line, third down. They were out of timeouts. Had the sneak been stopped, the Packers wouldn’t have had time to attempt the tying field goal or any way to stop the clock. The Cowboys would have been the 1967 NFL champions, and the legendary Lombardi would have been second-guessed for centuries.

“We thought they would throw,” then-Dallas coach Tom Landry says. “We thought they probably would go on an option, a rollout run or pass so they could stop the clock [with an incompletion] if it didn’t work.”

So did most people. It was the percentage move.

The sneak was Starr’s idea. On the two plays preceding it, halfback Donny Anderson slipped taking the handoff and was stopped for almost no gain. The south end of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field lay in the shadow of a large scoreboard and was frozen solid. When Anderson slipped a second time, Starr decided the Packers’ best shot was for him to keep the ball.

He called the team’s final timeout. Before coming to the sideline to meet with Lombardi, he asked Kramer and Bowman if they could get enough footing to run 31 Wedge. They said they could. The play was a simple dive right. The guard and center double-teamed the defensive tackle, and the quarterback handed off to a back running straight ahead.

“I told Coach Lombardi there was nothing wrong with the plays we had run, it’s just that the backs couldn’t get any footing,” Starr says. “I said, ‘Why don’t I just keep it?’ All he said was run it and let’s get the hell out of here. That’s all he said.”

There was no discussion of a fourth-down play or possible field-goal try. That’s testimony either to Lombardi’s supreme confidence or the effect the cold was having on his brain. What made the call even more unusual was that Starr rarely ran the sneak. He could recall doing it on only one other occasion, a few years earlier against the 49ers. Sleet had turned the field to ice, and the footing was terrible that day, too. Nonetheless, he had scored.

“I still don’t think it was a smart play,” says Cowboys halfback Dan Reeves, now the Denver Broncos’ coach. “But maybe that’s the reason Lombardi won all those championships and I haven’t won any.”

Packers fullback Chuck Mercein looks at it this way: “Bad is only bad if it doesn’t work. To me, success justifies a lot of questionable calls.”

Of course, it always helps if your right guard can beat the snap count. A fraction of a second before Bowman hiked the ball to Starr, Kramer picked up his hand and started out of his three-point stance. You can’t imagine what a comfort that knowledge is to Pugh.

In December 1967, he was in his third year in the NFL. He played 11 more and never shed the label as The Guy Who Got Blocked On Starr’s Sneak. For years after the Ice Bowl, he carried inside him this image of Kramer moving before the snap. The Cowboys never bothered to watch the game films, so he kept it to himself. It sounded like the cheapest kind of excuse.

“In a goal-line situation like that you key the football,” Pugh says. “And I could visualize Kramer’s hand moving an instant before the ball did. My first thought [after the play] was, ‘We got ’em . He’s offsides, and that’ll cost ’em five yards.’ I was shocked when I didn’t see a flag. I kept looking around for one.”

Four times in the ’70s Pugh’s Cowboys went to the Super Bowl. Reporters never failed to bring up the play. He answered their questions but kept the little picture of Kramer moving a split second early to himself. Years later, he finally had an opportunity to see the game films and watched with a combination of curiosity and anxiety.

“I saw it, and I said, ‘My goodness, I was right,’ “ Pugh says.

Even Kramer doesn’t deny it. In his 1968 best seller, Instant Replay, he says: “I wouldn’t swear that I didn’t beat the center’s snap by a fraction of a second. I wouldn’t swear that I wasn’t actually offside on the play.”

The block made him famous. The networks showed the play over and over in the days after the game, and Kramer didn’t hesitate to take credit. He became America’s Guard. Every football fan knew him and his block — and soon, his book.

Largely overlooked was Bowman’s contribution. Pugh lined up on Kramer’s inside shoulder on the play, and his instructions were to stay low and clog the middle so linebacker Lee Roy Jordan could make the tackle. It was Kramer’s job to raise Pugh up so Bowman could get a clean shot at him. Together, the two could then drive the Cowboys tackle out of the hole. That was precisely what happened on the play, and it still rankles Bowman that Kramer got almost all the glory.

“The older I get, the more it bothers me,” he says. “I was young [a fourth-year pro] and stupid, and he patted me on the shoulder as he went up to the [television] podium after the game and said, ‘Let an old man have his moment in the spotlight. You’ve got 10, 12 more years.’

“What I didn’t realize was that blocks like that come along once in . . . hell, it’s been two decades now.”

Says Kramer: “My feeling is that I don’t know how much he contributed. I did say to him, ‘You tell them about what you did because you’ve got a few more years. I’m talking about what I did.’ ”

Pugh sides with Bowman. “Kramer had good position, but Bowman did more of the blocking,” he says.

All this was lost in the strange beauty and confusion of the moment. As the Packers broke the huddle and came to the line of scrimmage, the 50,000 frigid fans started to cheer. There hadn’t been much opportunity for that since early in the game.

The Cowboys had dominated the second half and appeared on their way to winning until the Packers put together their final, improbable drive. Now a third straight NFL title for Green Bay was 24 inches away.

The sun was sinking. The wind chill factor was minus 50. Many of the fans were dressed in brightly colored hunting gear, and Green Bay assistant coach Phil Bengtson said the effect was that of a red halo around the field. Breath poured from them like smoke from chimneys.

Pugh tried to dig himself a foothold in the frozen turf, but his toes were numb. He gave up and took his position. So did the Packers. The crowd hushed. Bowman snapped the ball, and before Pugh could get out of his stance, Kramer was on him. Then Bowman was, too, and Pugh slid helplessly out of the way. Starr took a step to his right, then slipped into the fast-closing opening. Touchdown.

Marvin Lewis and the perils of January

The Bengals have made the playoffs in six of Marvin Lewis 12 seasons. You’d think congratulations would be in order — first for surviving a dozen years in any coaching job, and second for steering his team to the postseason so often. But Lewis’ 0-6 record in the playoffs has folks wondering, rightfully, whether he’ll be working in Cincinnati much longer. This is, after all, the Not For Long League. It’s not enough to just win, baby. You have to keep on winning, baby, into January and beyond.

Not that he’ll take any comfort in this, but Lewis is hardly the first coach to trip over that final hurdle. Heck, there are guys in the Hall of Fame who tripped over that final hurdle — and several others who rank high on the all-time victories list. Indeed, if there were a Misery Index for coaches, it might look something like this:

100-WIN COACHES WHO HAD A LOSING RECORD IN THE PLAYOFFS

Span	Coach (Titles)	Teams	Regular Season	Playoffs
1986-01	Jim Mora	Saints, Colts	125-106-0, .541	0-6, .000
2003-14	Marvin Lewis	Bengals	100-90-2, .526	0-6, .000
1955-74	Sid Gillman (1)	Rams, Chargers, Oilers	122-99-7, .550	1-5, .167
1931-53	Steve Owen (2)	Giants	151-100-17, .595	2-8, .200
1966-77	George Allen	Rams, Redskins	116-47-5, .705	2-7, .222
1984-06	Marty Schottenheimer	Browns, Chiefs, 2 others	200-116-1, .613	5-13, .278
1973-86	Don Coryell	Cardinals, Chargers	111-83-1, .572	3-6, .333
1992-06	Dennis Green	Vikings, Cardinals	113-94-0, .546	4-8, .333
1973-94	Chuck Knox	Rams, Bills, Seahawks	186-147-1, 558	7-11, .389
1967-85	Bud Grant	Vikings	158-96-5, .620	10-12, .455
1994-14	Jeff Fisher	Oilers/Titans, Rams	162-147-1, 524	5-6, .455
1996-08	Tony Dungy (1)	Bucs, Colts	139-69-0, .688	10-12, .455

(Note: If you want to be technical about it, Grant won the NFL championship in 1969, then lost the Super Bowl to the AFL’s Chiefs. Also: Schottenheimer’s other teams were the Redskins and Chargers.)

That’s 12 coaches with 100 regular-season victories who have lost more playoff games than they’ve won. Four are in Canton (Gillman, Owen, Allen and Grant) and another has been a finalist (Coryell) and may eventually get elected. Clearly, then, a poor postseason record doesn’t have to be a reputation-killer for a coach. (And yes, Gillman’s and Owen’s situations are much different from the others’. All but one of their playoff games was a title game — back when that was the extent of pro football’s postseason.)

The biggest problem for Lewis, obviously, is the goose egg. Aside from Mora, everybody else in the group had at least one notable postseason. Owen, Gillman (AFL) and Dungy won titles; Grant, Allen and Fisher reached the Super Bowl; and Schottenheimer (three times), Coryell (twice), Green (twice) and Knox (four) all made multiple trips to the conference championship game.

As for Lewis and Mora, well, Jim probably said it best:

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Road warriors

After Saturday’s 30-17 crunching of the Steelers, John Harbaugh’s Ravens are once again taking bows for their road exploits in the playoffs. They’re now 7-4 in such games under Harbaugh,

Ravens coach John Harbaugh

which would be an impressive record in any postseason venue.

Before anybody builds any statues, though, allow me to point out what the Chiefs — and their predecessors, the Dallas Texans — did in the ’60s. Not only did they go 3-0 in AFL championship games in those years, all three were on the road. Better still, in each of those postseasons they had to beat the defending champions on their own turf en route to the title. To review:

● 1962 — Beat the Oilers, 20-17, in double overtime at Jeppesen Stadium. Houston had won the previous two AFL championships.

● 1966 — Beat the Bills, 31-7, at War Memorial Stadium. Buffalo had won it all in ’64 and ’65 (the last two years before the Super Bowl).

● 1969 — The coup de grace. In the first round they beat the Jets, the defending titlists, 13-7, at Shea Stadium. Then they beat the Raiders, winners of the ’67 championship, 16-6, at Oakland Coliseum.

So they were 4-0 in the playoffs in those seasons, all four games on the road, and three of them against the defending champs, two of whom were the two-time defending champs.

The Super Bowl, of course, is played at a neutral site. But Harbaugh’s Ravens, let’s not forget, are 1-2 in AFC title games on the road, losing to the Steelers in 2008, the Patriots in 2011 and defeating the Pats the next year.

Anyway, just thought I’d throw that out there. You can go back to what you were doing now.

A triumphant Hank Stram after the Chiefs took down the Vikings in Super Bowl III.

One Easy Pick

You’ve gotta love the interception Terrell Suggs made in the fourth quarter Saturday night to help the Ravens beat the Steelers, 30-17.

How did he do it, you ask? I’m guessing he got a pep talk at halftime from Jack Nicholson:

FYI: That’s part of a classic scene from the 1970 movie, Five Easy Pieces (in case you’ve never seen it).

Unanimous AP all-pro

The words wash by you as you wade into the story about this year’s selections: “Watt, Gronk unanimous AP all-pros.” What exactly does it mean, this Unanimous Thing? How often has it been achieved — and by whom?

Answer: For starters, it’s pretty rare, which makes sense when you stop and think about it. After all, how often can you get 50 media folk to agree on anything? In 2007, for instance, the Patriots’ Tom Brady had one of the greatest quarterbacking seasons ever: 50 touchdown passes, 8 interceptions, a 117.2 passer rating and, oh yeah, a 16-0 record. But some yo-yo still felt obliged to split his vote between Brady and the Packers’ Brett Favre, who threw about half as many TD passes (28), about twice as many picks (15) and had a 95.7 rating. (He/she must have had Favre on his/her fantasy team or something.)

By my count, 15 players have been unanimous AP all-pros in the 2000s, three of them twice (Watt, Peyton Manning and LaDainian Tomlinson). So it’s happened 18 times in 15 years — roughly once a year. As you scan down the list, you’ll realize that just about every one of these guys is either in the Hall of Fame, a lock for the Hall of Fame or beginning to move strongly in that direction.

UNANIMOUS AP ALL-PROS IN THE 2000S

● 2014 (2) — Patriots TE Rob Gronkowski, Texans DE/DT J.J. Watt. Gronkowski, now fully recovered from a blown-out knee, had a typical Gronk year: 82 catches for 1,124 yards and 12 TDs in 15 games. (Bill Belichick held him out of the last one.) Watt had an even better season: 20.5 sacks, two defensive TDs, a safety and three TD catches on offense.

● 2013 (1) — Broncos QB Peyton Manning. At 37, Manning had a career year, breaking NFL season passing records with 55 TDs and 5,477 yards as Denver went 13-3, best in the AFC.

J.J. Watt makes another impression on a QB.

J.J. Watt makes another impression on a quarterback.

● 2012 (2) — Vikings RB Adrian Peterson, Watt. Peterson: 2,097 rushing yards (8 off Eric Dickerson’s mark of 2,105, which has stood since 1984). Watt: 20.5 sacks, 16 passes defended (more than many starting DBs).

● 2011 — Nobody.

● 2010 (1) — Patriots QB Tom Brady. There are all kinds of numbers I could throw at you, but the best one is: Brady didn’t throw an interception in the Patriots’ last 11 games (a record streak of 319 attempts that was stretched to 335 the next season).

● 2009 (1) — Titans RB Chris Johnson. Rushed for 2,006 yards, topped 100 rushing yards in the final 11 games and set a mark – which may not be broken anytime soon – with 2,509 yards from scrimmage.

● 2008 (1) — Ravens FS Ed Reed. League-leading nine interceptions and three defensive TDs, including a 107-yard INT return, the longest in NFL history.

● 2007 (2) — Chargers RB LaDainian Tomlinson, Patriots WR Randy Moss. LT wasn’t quite as sensational as he’d been the year before, but he still rushed for an NFL-high 1,474 yards, scored 18 TDs and threw for another TD. Moss, in his first season with Brady, caught a record 23 TD passes, one more than Jerry Rice totaled in 1987 (in 12 games).

● 2006 (3) — Tomlinson, Dolphins DE Jason Taylor, Broncos CB Champ Bailey. This was LT’s ridiculous 31-TD year. Enough said. Taylor: 13.5 sacks, two interception returns for scores. Bailey: 10 INTs (nobody has had more since 1981), 21 passes defended.

Antonio Gates in the open field.

● 2005 (1) — Chargers TE Antonio Gates. The first 1,000-yard season of Gates’ great career (89 catches, 1,101 yards, 10 TDs).

● 2004 (1) — Manning, Colts. Even though he blew off the last game except for a few snaps, Peyton set season passing marks with 49 TDs and a 121.1 rating (both of which have since been broken).

● 2003 — Nobody.

● 2002 (1) — Colts WR Marvin Harrison. His 143 catches (for a league-leading 1,722 yards) is still the NFL record . . . by 14.

● 2001 (2) – Rams RB Marshall Faulk, Giants DE Michael Strahan. Faulk: 1,382 rushing yards, 2,147 yards from scrimmage, 21 TDs. Strahan: A record (with the help of Favre) 22.5 sacks.

● 2000 – Nobody.

To recap, Faulk and Strahan are already in the Hall, and the rest — with the exception, probably, of Johnson — could well be headed there. (Peterson, of course, will be an interesting case, depending on where his career goes from here.)

Conclusion: Being a unanimous AP all-pro says a lot about a player, a lot more than just: he had a really, really good year. We’re talking about the best of the best here.

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

The whole 100 yards — and sometimes the end zones, too.