Had Vince Lombardi stayed, history might have been rewritten

[Cheesehead]

Karl from Fond du Lac, WI


Fan since the mid-1970s. Always been fascinated with Packers history, including the Lombardi era. One question I always think about: If after 1967, Lombardi continues coaching in Green Bay, how would the 1968 to 1970 teams have done? I know they had some age. But the defense was still good enough with younger talent at some positions. 10-4 or 9-5 type teams? Maybe not champions, but playoff teams with Lombardi driving them like always?


Fascinating question. The 1967 Packers weren't supposed to win and were underdogs for a home playoff game against the supposedly younger and much more talented Rams, but they defied the oddsmakers, dominated the Rams at County Stadium and won their third straight NFL title. In 1968, the Packers had the same 22 starters and finished 6-7-1. Admittedly, the Packers had lost Don Chandler, their kicker, to retirement and his replacements – Jerry Kramer, Chuck Mercein, Errol Mann and Mike Mercer – were a combined 13 of 29 as the Packers lost three games by four points or less. Vince Lombardi, the GM, didn't do Phil Bengtson, his successor, any favors, despite the Packers' desperate need for a kicker. Then again, Mann made 25 of 37 field goals the next year for Detroit and lasted 11 years in the NFL. Mercer was nearing the end of his 10-year career, but he made 7 of 12 field goals in six games with the Packers, which wasn't a bad percentage back then. So, I don't know how much you can blame the kicking game for Bengtson's failures that year. Plus, I can't imagine Lombardi becoming so vexed over the situation that he would have hired an Appleton radio announcer to try and fix the problem as Bengtson did in late November when he accepted an offer from WAPL's Bill Kiss to voluntarily tutor Packers kickers.


With Lombardi coaching, I don't think it can be ruled out that the Packers might have won the Central Division – Minnesota won it with an 8-6 record – and maybe even beaten Baltimore and Cleveland to advance to Super Bowl III. I recognize the Vikings had become a more formidable opponent under second-year-coach Bud Grant. And a lot might have depended on Bart Starr's availability in the postseason. After all, he was the key to the offense by then and had been at his best in the playoffs the previous two years. But Starr had injured his ribs and played sparingly in the final month of the 1968 season. Then again, Zeke Bratkowski was on par with the starting quarterbacks for the Packers' primary challengers in the Western Conference. Joe Kapp was QB of the Vikings, Jack Concannon for the Central Division's second-place Bears and Earl Morrall was filling in for an injured Johnny Unitas in Baltimore.


You're right about the defense. Lombardi had overhauled it during his last five seasons and it was still one of the best in the league, finishing third in fewest yards allowed. It was the offense that struggled, but it also had been ineffectual for stretches during the three-peat. It ranked 12th, eighth and ninth from 1965 to 1967, and then 10th and 11th in 1968 and '69. How much of a factor was age? Starr was 34 and missing more time with injuries. Also, Lombardi's plans to revamp his offensive line hadn't panned out. Forrest Gregg was 35; Bob Skoronski, 34; and Kramer, 32. Defensively, it was less of a problem, but Willie Davis was 34 and Henry Jordan, 33, and both were a year away from retirement.


What I found interesting was an impromptu, poolside press conference Lombardi held in Miami after Super Bowl II. He stayed there after the game to contemplate his future and met with several reporters the day after the game. His comments included the following:


· "The history of Green Bay is in the future, not the past."


· "Some great teams are going to come out of Green Bay in the next four years. We have great talent – more talent than ever before."


· "We have 20 players on our squad that nobody knows much about who are going to be real standouts in the next couple of years."


· "(Don) Horn is going to be a real star of the National Football League. He's going to be another Starr and you can spell that with two r's if you want."


· "This year our halfbacks could run to daylight, but not our fullbacks (Ben Wilson and Chuck Mercein after Jim Grabowski got hurt), although they did a great job for what they are. Grabowski has the quickness and speed of a halfback, something (Jim) Taylor never had."


· "… we might even go to some type of the old T-formation with three big backs or put (Donny) Anderson out as a flanker."


Would those players' careers have turned out differently if they had played for Lombardi? How many of Lombardi's 12 Hall of Famers, not counting Bobby Dillon, would have been inducted into Canton if they hadn't played for him? After all, seven of them played on the 1958, 1-10-1 Packers – Taylor, Gregg, Starr, Nitschke, Jim Ringo, Paul Hornung and Kramer – while Henry Jordan and Willie Davis were essentially castoffs acquired from Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown; and Willie Wood was a non-drafted free agent. Lombardi admitted to close friends that he wasn't any smarter than other coaches, but he had supreme confidence in his ability to get the most out of each and every one of his players on a consistent basis. Bengtson was an outstanding defensive coach, but didn't have the personality, the judgment or the resolve to win as a head coach.


Rick from Denver


I've often thought about what a loss it was that (Jack) Vainisi passed on at such a young age, given the mutual respect that there was between him and Lombardi. The Packers of the 1960s might have been even better with him backstopping Lombardi on scouting and drafting. Perhaps, too, the 1970s and '80s may have looked quite different.


First, it was Jack Vainisi, not Jerry, who was Lombardi's business manager and top scout for nearly two years. Jerry was general manager of the Bears and vice president of player personnel with Detroit; and he, too, was a good football man. As for Jack, his death at age 33 from a heart problem was tragic. No question, he was as close to Lombardi as anyone in the organization when he died in late November 1960; he was widely respected throughout both college and professional football ranks; and his work on the draft played a big part in Lombardi's success. I never heard anyone from the many players to coaches to scouts to executives who knew Jack say a bad word about him in the many interviews I conducted years back.


Had Vainisi lived would the Packers have won more titles? Lombardi won five in a seven-year span. No other coach in the history of the NFL has won five in a decade. Lombardi lamented until the day he died that he didn't win more. And the Packers couldn't have come much closer to winning than they did in both 1960 and 1963. In fact, Lombardi once said his 1963 team was his best. But, realistically, what were the chances of the Packers winning six, seven, eight, nine league titles in nine years?


A few years ago, I thought Jack Vainisi had a shot at being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a contributor. And maybe he still does. The main drawback, as I saw it, was his lack of longevity. He worked for the Packers for only 11 years. Plus, he was hired after the 1950 draft, died before the 1961 draft, and was hospitalized in Chicago for two months during the 1952 football season while former Bears great and Rams head coach Joe Stydahar assumed his duties preparing for the January 1953 draft. Still, I believed a strong case could be made on Vainisi's behalf if it focused on his pioneering efforts: building a one-man personnel department that led to some of the best drafts in pro football history and also one that helped establish the framework for the much larger personnel departments of today.


Instead, what happened was a number of stories were told and published that inaccurately portrayed Vainisi's role. Those stories credited Vainisi with actually making the picks when he didn't. The Packers' head coaches did. Back in the day when sportswriters were allowed to sit at the table in the big ballrooms where the draft was conducted, Art Daley of the Green Bay Press-Gazette had a front-row seat to the proceedings, at least on occasion. In January 1959 after Scooter McLean had been forced out and before Lombardi was hired, Daley explained how Vainisi would call the shots on the Packers' picks for the first time ever over rounds five through 30. The first four rounds were held in December 1959 and McLean made those choices. "Vainisi has worked up the Packers' draft since he joined the club in 1950, but the head coach made the selections," Daley, the only sportswriter to cover the Packers throughout Vainisi's time in Green Bay, wrote two days before the second phase of the 1959 draft. "Jack will decide the picks Wednesday." I'm sure that's why writers from that period who were still working when I was cutting my teeth in the business referred to the best of those drafts from 1956 to '58 as Lisle Blackbourn's drafts, not Vainisi's. That said, Blackbourn heaped praise on Vainisi for his preparation and credited him with having considerable influence on his selections.