The First America's Team. Bob Berghaus
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1962.
The Packers knew they would see a different Giants team than the one they faced in 1961. The Giants were looking for payback—and to prove that the 37-point loss the previous year was a fluke.
“We were concerned about the quality of team we were facing and playing on the road in ’62; that’s where the focus was,” said Bart Starr, who had his best season, completing 62.5 percent of his passes while directing the most potent offense in the game. “We had a lot of respect for the Giants, but I think the focus was more that it was a road game, in New York, where we would be facing a hostile crowd, so to speak. We also recognized the strength that the Giants had that year. They had excellent leadership, and Tittle was a very strong and talented quarterback.”
Still seething from the 37-point humiliation the year before, the Giants wanted the Packers to leave Yankee Stadium the way they had left Green Bay twelve months earlier.
“I’ve never been as anxious to play a game as this one,” Giants defensive end Andy Robustelli said at the time “We will absolutely kill the bastards. It’s the only way I’ll be able to forget about the one out there last year. It won’t be enough to just win the game. We have to destroy the Packers and Lombardi. It’s the only way we can atone for what happened to us last year.”
Lombardi knew there would be a sense of awe for many of his players to play such a prestigious game at Yankee Stadium. They had played at the cavernous facility in 1959, but it was a midseason game. This one was different: the Packers were going for their second straight title, and the entire nation would be watching.
The game had special meaning to Jerry Kramer, the Packers talented right guard. He broke his leg midway through the 1961 campaign and missed the championship game. He’d been on the sidelines in Green Bay and had celebrated with his teammates, but it was not the same. He worked hard during the offseason and had a terrific 1962 season, earning consensus All-Pro honors for the first time in his career.
The rematch with the Giants also carried added significance for Kramer because he had become the team’s kicker for extra points and field goals when Hornung injured his knee before the midway mark of the ’62 season.
“When we got to the game my main concern was not letting the team down, trying to make the field goals, trying to grab a hold of my composure,” Kramer recalled in late 2010. “We were in Yankee Stadium and I was about to wet my pants.
“Yankee Stadium was hallowed ground, and it was an awesome experience to walk into the stands, especially for me. With Hornung injured and me kicking out there, it was a pretty damn exciting time for me.”
The Packers were a running team, led by Taylor, the powerful fullback who during the season averaged 105 yards per game and scored 19 touchdowns, numbers that helped to beat out Tittle for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. Even though the ground attack was the strength of his offense, Lombardi, after studying hours and hours of film on the Giants, was convinced Starr could beat them through the air. The game plan revolved around the pass, and many expected the championship game to be a wide-open contest between the league’s two highest-scoring teams.
The Packers led the NFL that season in eleven offensive categories, including scoring and rushing. The Giants, who scored 391 points, topped the NFL in total offense as they gained more than 5,000 net yards and had a league-leading 35 touchdown passes.
The game also featured many of the game’s greatest players, including fifteen that would land in the Hall of Fame. For the Giants: Roosevelt Brown, Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Robustelli, and Tittle. The Canton-bound Packers were Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Forrest Gregg, Paul Hornung, Henry Jordan, Ray Nitschke, Jim Ringo, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, and Willie Wood. In addition, Giants’ owner Mara and Packers’ coach Lombardi would be voted into the Hall.
For all of these reasons and more, there was great national interest in this championship game. Pro football had been growing in popularity since the 1958 sudden-death championship game between Baltimore and the Giants. This rematch featuring the hard-hitting team from the NFL’s smallest market against the big city New Yorkers was going to be a treat for football fans throughout the country.
According to a story in the Press-Gazette, players on the winning teams would receive approximately $6,000; losing players would earn $4,000. Both amounts were records. The NFL would earn $632,000 from television, radio, and film rights, a considerable difference from the $75,000 the league made in 1951, the first time a championship game was nationally televised.
Game day came and any expectations of a shootout were blown away by a strong wind that swept throughout Yankee Stadium. Gusts ranging from thirty to forty miles per hour made for horrific conditions, especially with the temperature hovering around twenty degrees.
The Packers were ready. As the bus that carried the team and media members arrived at its destination, Nitschke leaped out of his seat and yelled, “Welcome to Yankee Stadium, home of the World Champion Packers.”
Defensive end Willie Davis recalled the field feeling like a “parking lot.” The grass was gone, and the dirt was frozen. Those who took the field had never remembered conditions being so primitive. At the time it was the coldest many players had felt on a football field. Some of those same players, who five years later beat Dallas in the infamous “Ice Bowl” when the temperature was minus thirteen degrees, recalled Giants Stadium feeling just as cold because of the wind.
“Vince (Lombardi) Jr. once told me he thought it was colder or worse than the Ice Bowl,” Kramer said later. “I remember the wind blowing like a bitch. We came out at halftime and our players’ bench—it was a small bench without a back on it, just two sides and the setting surface—the wind had blown the bench back onto the playing field. It may have blown maybe ten yards out onto the field. Our capes and all kinds of shit was being strung all over hell and back. The trainers were trying to pick everything up because of that wind. I don’t know what the wind chill factor was but it was bitter cold.”
The wind was so severe that it tore the American flag that flew in the stadium. One of the cameras used for the national telecast blew over. In the baseball dugouts, photographers built little bonfires to thaw out their cameras. Before the Packers kicked off to begin the game, the ball fell off the tee three times because of heavy wind gusts.
Despite the elements, the Giants fans were ready for the Packers. Shouts of “Beat Green Bay. Beat Green Bay” filled the stadium from the more than 62,000 that attended.
Fans in a team’s home market could not watch their team’s regular season and playoff games on television because of the NFL’s blackout policy, which was in place to protect gate receipts. Because of that policy, many residents of New York City piled into cars and traveled to hotels in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania so they could watch the game on TV.
The primitive conditions forced Lombardi to scrap his plan on surprising the Giants with a passing attack. As usual, the Packers offense would revolve around Taylor, whose every move was being followed by Sam Huff, the Giants All-Pro linebacker. Huff had help; the Giants couldn’t wait to hit Taylor over and over.
“They beat the shit out of Taylor,” Hornung remembered almost fifty years later.
Early in the game Taylor bit his tongue when he was tackled, causing him to swallow blood for much of the game. He also suffered a cut on his arm and was stitched up by team doctors at halftime. As his teammates tried to thaw out at halftime they heard Taylor scream in agony from the trainer’s room while he was being sewn up.
Despite the pain and physical punishment he was enduring, Taylor played like a champion. Of the Packers’ forty-six running plays, Taylor was given the ball thirty-one times, finishing with 85 of the toughest yards he would ever gain in a game. During the second quarter with his team up 3–0, thanks to a 26-yard first-quarter field goal by Kramer, Taylor scored the game’s only offensive touchdown on a 7-yard run that gave his team a 10–0 lead.
Years later Huff said, “Did everything I could to that sonofabitch.”