It’s not just that Tom Brady is getting ready to start in his sixth NFL title game, tying the record for quarterbacks shared by Otto Graham and Bart Starr. It’s that those Super Bowls have spanned 14 seasons, from 2001 to ’14 — the longest stretch for any QB. Pretty remarkable.
After all, if injuries don’t get you in the demolition derby of pro football, age usually will. Or maybe, later in your career, you won’t be surrounded by the same kind of talent you were earlier. But here Brady is, all these years later, still putting the Patriots in position to win championships. And at 37, he might not be done. I mean, it’s not like the Pats’ roster is a seniors community.
Here’s the list Brady now heads:
LONGEST SPAN OF SEASONS AS A STARTING QB IN THE NFL TITLE GAME
Quarterback, Team(s)
First Title Game
Last Title Game
Span
Tom Brady, Patriots
2001 vs. Rams (W)
2014 vs. Seahawks
14
Johnny Unitas, Colts
1958 vs. Giants (W)
1970 vs. Cowboys (W)
13
John Elway, Broncos
1986 vs. Giants (L)
1998 vs. Falcons (W)
13
Norm Van Brocklin, Rams/Eagles
1950 vs. Browns (L)
1960 vs. Packers (W)
11
Arnie Herber, Packers/Giants
1936 vs. Redskins (W)
1944 vs. Packers (L)
9
Sammy Baugh, Redskins
1937 vs. Bears (W)
1945 vs. Rams (L)
9
Joe Montana, 49ers
1981 vs. Bengals (W)
1989 vs. Broncos (W)
9
Bart Starr, Packers
1960 vs. Eagles (L)
1967 vs. Raiders (W)
8
Roger Staubach, Cowboys
1971 vs. Dolphins (W)
1978 vs. Steelers (L)
8
Sid Luckman, Bears
1940 vs. Redskins (W)
1946 vs. Giants (W)
7
Bob Waterfield, Rams
1945 vs. Redskins (W)
1951 vs. Browns (W)
7
Note: Van Brocklin and Waterfield split the quarterbacking for the Rams in 1950 and ’51. So if you want to kick them off the list, go ahead. I included them because, well, they’re both Hall of Famers.
Also, if you want to get technical about it, Starr’s 1967 win over the Raiders wasn’t in the NFL title game, it was in the AFL-NFL title game. (The leagues hadn’t merged yet.) He beat the Cowboys for the NFL championship — in the storied Ice Bowl.
Graham’s name, by the way, is missing because he played his first four seasons in the rival All-America Conference. If you include those years, his Championship Span was exactly a decade (1946-55), which would put him just behind Van Brocklin.
As you can see, Unitas won titles in 1958 and ’70 — a span of 13 seasons. That’s the record for a quarterback . . . and one Brady would break if the Patriots knock off the defending champion Seahawks.
Source: pro-football-reference.com
Arnie Herber lets fly with a jump pass for the ’36 Packers.
One of these days, you figure, the NFL’s — and television’s — casual indifference to winter weather will catch up with them. By not giving themselves the flexibility to flip-flip the conference championship games — so that Sunday’s tilt in New England doesn’t kick off at 6:40 p.m. — they’ll get hit with the blizzard or ice storm they’ve been risking for years.
Or maybe that’s just a fantasy of mine. Maybe thermal wear is of such high quality now (read: NASA-level) that games can be played — and played well — in any conditions. If so, bully for pro football . . . and especially its TV ratings.
You wouldn’t want another situation, though, like you had after the Ice Bowl in 1967. So much nostalgia has grown up around that game between Vince Lombardi’s Packers and Tom Landry’s Cowboys that we tend to forget some of the comments that were made afterward. Those 60 frigid minutes might have been the definitive test of manhood, but they were far from the definitive test of football. And if you’re trying to determine your league champion, your Best Team, that’s a problem.
“It seems like I might be making excuses,” Dallas quarterback Don Meredith said, “but I just don’t think you can say this is a fair test of football or a football team in weather like this. It takes away all your diversification. We had a couple of things go wrong on us because we couldn’t use that quickness that we have.”
Cowboys president Tex Schramm could only shake his head. “When I saw the four bowl games [the next day],” he said, “which were truly beautiful and great tests of the relative strengths of the teams involved, it was sickening to me that the greatest game of all couldn’t have been played under the same circumstances.”
Later that week, Red Smith, following up on his original Ice Bowl column, wrote, “The Great North is no place to play outdoor games at this season and no place to watch ’em. . . . When the footing is treacherous and hands numb, the wide game is virtually eliminated, speed is neutralized, the passing attack is handicapped and every punt is fraught with suspense. . . . Except for the heroics at the end, it was a stinker.”
(Note: Red Smith, Green Bay born and bred, just called the Ice Bowl “a stinker”!)
More Red: “Human suffering aside, championships should be decided under championship conditions. Not even [commissioner] Pete Rozelle can command the seasons to turn backward, but he can insist that title contests be played where chances are best for playable conditions.”
Sure enough, Rozelle talked about that in the days that followed, told the Dallas Times Herald he’d been in favor of neutral-site championship games in warm climates “for several years.” He just hadn’t been able to gather the necessary 13 votes (out of 16 franchises). Too many owners were wedded to the old way of doing things, with one team having the home-field advantage and the game being accessible to the home team’s fans.
“I’ll work to get it moved,” Rozelle told the Times Herald. “Under the conditions it was played last Sunday, the game is unfair to both teams.”
Browns owner Art Modell, meanwhile, assured the newspaper the matter would “be discussed in no uncertain terms at our February meeting. I personally believe it should be moved to a neutral, warm-weather spot. It was zero today in Cleveland. I wouldn’t like to have the game [in] Cleveland at 5 degrees or 5 below.”
Modell said he planned to push for the next two NFL championship games to played in one of the league’s southern cities as “a two-year test.” But not enough owners could be swayed. The 1968 title game wound up in Cleveland (wind chill: 13 degrees) and the ’69 game in Bloomington, Minn. (wind chill: minus 6).
All this has been lost in the historical glow of the Ice Bowl. And here we are, decades later, awaiting a Jan. 18 game, with a 6:40 p.m. kickoff, in Foxborough, Mass. (Date of the Ice Bowl: Dec. 31.) You just hope the weather cooperates — there’s a chance of snow — and the Colts and Patriots can give us a reasonable facsimile of pro football. But if they can’t, and the conditions turn out to be better earlier in the day, well, you’ll know who to blame.
There’s a chance of snow Sunday in New England, just like there was in the Tuck Rule Game in the 2001 playoffs.
The defending NFL champions host the conference title game Sunday with a chance to go back to the Super Bowl. Which makes you wonder: Have the champs ever lost in this situation?
Answer: Once in 48 years.
It’s something for Wisconsinites to think about as the Packers head to Seattle for the NFC championship game. Yes, the Seahawks won it all last year, and yes, they have the home-field advantage. But a Green Bay victory wouldn’t be unprecedented — just almost.
Here are the nine previous times we’ve had this kind of matchup. Obviously, it isn’t easy to get the stars to align properly; that’s why it’s happened so seldom. You have to win the Super Bowl, of course, which is hard enough, but then you have to come back the next year and post the best record in your conference (except in one instance). In other words: no Super Bowl Hangover.
That’s why the teams on the following list are so recognizable. They were pretty special.
DEFENDING CHAMPIONS WHO HOSTED THE CONFERENCE TITLE GAME
Year
Team (W-L)
Conference Title Game
Super Bowl
1998
Broncos (14-2)
Beat Jets, 23-10
Beat Falcons, 34-19
1993
Cowboys (12-4)
Beat 49ers, 38-21
Beat Bills, 30-13
1990
49ers (14-2)
Lost to Giants, 15-13
DNA
1989
49ers (14-2)
Beat Rams, 30-3
Beat Broncos, 55-10
1982
Redskins (14-2)
Beat 49ers, 24-21
Lost to Raiders, 38-9
1978
Steelers (14-2)
Beat Oilers, 34-5
Beat Cowboys, 35-31
1975
Steelers (12-2)
Beat Raiders, 16-10
Beat Cowboys, 21-17
1973
Dolphins (12-2)
Beat Raiders, 27-10
Beat Vikings, 24-7
1967
Packers (9-4-1)
Beat Cowboys, 21-17
Beat Raiders, 33-14
(The 1967 Packers-Cowboys game — the celebrated Ice Bowl — was actually the NFL title game, the winner of which advanced to the Super Bowl against the AFL champ.)
As you can see, only the 1990 49ers failed to win — and they were going for a three-peat, so maybe we can cut them a little slack. In fact, seven of the other eight went on to take the Super Bowl, which bodes well for the Seahawks as they try to go back-to-back.
But again, you can’t rule out the Packers, historically speaking, because of this:
Here’s the longer version if you want to get the full flavor of the moment:
The moral: Difficult, but not impossible.
Postscript: Did you catch, by the way, that Lawrence Taylor was on the Giants’ field goal protection unit? Gotta love it.
The NFL didn’t even have a Final Four until 1967, when it split the conferences into two divisions and added an extra playoff round. Before that, there was only a Final Two — the championship game. So when we talk about Final Four quarterbacks, we’re talking only about the Super Bowl era (which began in ’66).
In those 49 seasons, no QB has been to the Final Four more often than the Patriots’ Tom Brady, who’ll play in his ninth AFC title game Sunday against the Colts. In fact, Brady has gotten to the
Tom Brady
Final Four as many times as Hall of Famers Dan Marino, Bob Griese and Fran Tarkenton (3 each) combined.
It’s been an incredible run for him and the Patriots, especially since there’s free agency now, which is supposed to make it harder to sustain success. Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach and Ken Stabler never had to worry about losing a key offensive player to another team. Brady, on the other hand, has seen receivers Deion Branch (Seahawks) and Wes Welker (Broncos) and linemen Damien Woody (Lions) and Logan Mankins (Bucs) either take the money and run or get traded for salary cap reasons. Yet here he is again, going for another AFC championship.
Granted, it’s easier to make the Final Four these days with so many more playoff spots available (12 instead of the original eight). If you can just sneak in as a sixth seed, you’ve got a shot. But that doesn’t really apply to Brady and the Pats. Every time they’ve qualified for the postseason, they’ve done it as the division champs.
Anyway, here’s the company Brady keeps:
QUARTERBACKS WHO REACHED THE MOST FINAL FOURS, 1966-2014
Quarterback, Team(s)
Seasons
W-L
Total
Tom Brady, Patriots
2001*, ’03*, ’04*, ’06, ’07, ’11, ’12, ’13, ’14
5-3
9
Joe Montana, 49ers (6)/Chiefs (1)
1981*, ’83, ’84*, ’88*, ’89*, ’90, ’93
4-3
7
John Elway, Broncos
1986, ’87, ’89, ’91, ’97*, ’98*
5-1
6
Terry Bradshaw, Steelers
1972, ’74*, ’75*, ’76, ’78*, ’79*
4-2
6
Roger Staubach, Cowboys
1971*, ’72, ’73, ’75, ’77*, ’78
4-2
6
Brett Favre, Packers (4)/Vikings (1)
1995, ’96*, ’97, ’07, ’09
2-3
5
Donovan McNabb, Eagles
2001, ’02, ’03, ’04, ’08
1-4
5
Jim Kelly, Bills
1988, ’90, ’91, ’92, ’93
4-1
5
Ken Stabler, Raiders
1973, ’74, ’75, ’76*, ’77
1-4
5
Peyton Manning, Colts (3)/Broncos (1)
2003, ’06*, ’09, ’13
3-1
4
Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers
2004, ’05*, ’08*, ’10
3-1
4
Steve Young, 49ers
1992, ’93, ’94*, ’97
1-3
4
Troy Aikman, Cowboys
1992*, ’93*, ’94, ’95*
3-1
4
Daryle Lamonica, Raiders
1967, ’68, ’69, ’70
1-3
4
*Won Super Bowl.
Some other fun facts:
● Stabler played in the most consecutive Final Fours — five. This will be Brady’s fourth in a row, tying him with McNabb, Aikman, Kelly and Lamonica. Kelly played in five in six seasons;
Ken Stabler
Bradshaw and Staubach played in six in eight seasons.
● Brady’s nine Final Fours have come in a 14-year span (2001-14). That puts him second only to Favre, who played in five in a 15-year stretch (1995-2009).
● Griese (Dolphins) and Kurt Warner (Rams/Cardinals) were 3-0 in conference title games. Jim Plunkett (Raiders) and Len Dawson (Chiefs) were 2-0. (Dawson’s games, like most of Lamonica’s, were AFL championship games.) Elway was 5-1, Kelly 4-1.
● Aikman and Young faced each other in three straight Final Fours in the ’90s (1992-94). Troy won the first two games, Steve the last. Bradshaw and Stabler did the same in the ’70s (1974-76) — with the same result. Terry won the first two, Snake the finale. Finally, Elway and Bernie Kosar (Browns) squared off three times in four seasons in the ’80s (1986-87, ’89), with John taking all three games.
Footnote: As impressive as Bill Belichick’s Patriots have been in the 2000s, their nine conference title games in 14 seasons don’t quite measure up the 14 in 17 seasons by Tom Landry’s Cowboys (1966-82) or the nine in 11 seasons by Al Davis’ Raiders (1967-77). Of course, the Pats might not be through. Brady certainly doesn’t look like a quarterback who’s losing his edge, even if he is 37.
The last of Joe Montana’s seven Final Fours was with the ’93 Chiefs.
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 35th 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.
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
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.
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 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 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.)
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.
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:
