The First America's Team. Bob Berghaus
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and Tom Fears.
As he watched practice he said he was impressed with Starr’s accuracy and said the present Packers team had much more overall talent than the best squads in his day.
“We only had twelve or thirteen real good football players, but this team has thirty-six,” he said in a story that appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
Lombardi rode the Packers hard in training camp and offered little praise during preseason wins, calling a performance against Dallas “listless.” Never mind that the Pack won all six of their preseason games, extending their streak to nineteen consecutive wins in exhibition contests. He stayed on them because he didn’t want his players getting soft.
“He was already thinking about winning three straight championships,” Paul Hornung recalled.
Defensive end Willie Davis remembered one of Lombardi’s pet phrases as he looked back almost fifty years on that 1962 season. “Once you win a championship you have a target on your back,” Davis said. “He’d say it’s harder to attain than to maintain.”
A Golden Day
Packers 34, Vikings 7
September 16, 1962, City Stadium
Paul Hornung knew how to light up a scoreboard.
In 1960 he ran and kicked his way to 176 points during a twelve-game season, establishing a record that stood until San Diego running back LaDainian Tomlinson scored 31 touchdowns for a 186-point season in 2006.
The following year the schedule was expanded to fourteen games and Hornung again was the league’s top scorer despite missing two games because of military obligations. He scored 146 points and was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. He earned another MVP award in the championship, scoring a playoff-record 19 points on 1 touchdown, 4 extra points, and 3 field goals in the Packers’ 37–0 win over the Giants.
That was the game Hornung didn’t expect to play. He was serving a tour stateside in the Army and a week before the game called Lombardi, telling him he didn’t think he’d get a weekend pass to be able to play. Lombardi called in a favor to the one man who could get his left halfback back to Green Bay in time for the game. The coach had struck up a friendship with John F. Kennedy, who was in his first year as the country’s thirty-fifth president. Kennedy was a huge football fan and an admirer of Lombardi. At one point he had given the coach his private number, telling him to call if he ever needed anything.
There are varying accounts of what happened for Hornung to leave Fort Riley to play in the game, but enough proof exists to suggest that the young president did have a hand in making that happen.
In the book When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, author David Maraniss writes about a letter from Lombardi to Kenneth O’Donnell, a special assistant to Kennedy. He states that Lombardi expressed his gratitude: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your help in obtaining leave for Paul Hornung so he could participate in the Championship game.”
Before Lombardi arrived, it seemed as if Hornung would never live up to the big-game reputation he earned at Notre Dame, enabling him to win the Heisman Trophy in 1956 and to be the overall first pick in the 1957 NFL draft. During his first two seasons with the Packers, he showed flashes of brilliance but earned a reputation as a player who cared more about what he accomplished off the field rather than on it. He gained a total 629 yards in his first twenty-four games.
“I was ready to quit after fifty-eight and do something else,” Hornung said. “I hated losing.”
Lombardi came in and made Hornung his left halfback, telling the Golden Boy he was going to be used in the same fashion Frank Gifford was used in New York when Lombardi was offensive coordinator for the Giants.
Hornung wound up rushing for 681 yards and scoring 94 points, but some of Lombardi’s assistants weren’t convinced his heart was dedicated to football. During a five-game losing streak in 1959, Lombardi asked his assistants for honest appraisal of every player on the roster. The notes given to Lombardi were later used in a book compiled by Len Wagner from reports provided by Phil Bengston’s son, Jay, titled, Launching the Glory Years: The 1959 Packers, What They Didn’t Tell Us.”
One assistant was highly critical of Hornung: “Not a team player. Has ability to do many things but is very lax. Not a good blocker. Does not make the big play when called upon to do so…I question his value as a top flight football player.”
Another assistant added: “Paul is a fair receiver, poor blocker. Could be a great ball player but lacks drive. He has pride. He gets by putting out just enough to do the job. He is a problem as far as training and social life and I don’t think he is going to change. If we could get a top pro player and a kicker somewhere, I would be in favor of trading him. I think it would do the team more good.”
Lombardi didn’t listen. He knew Hornung could be special, and the former Heisman Trophy winner showed signs during the final four games of that season by scoring 6 touchdowns after reaching the end zone just once in the first eight games.
He also threw touchdown passes and was instrumental in helping turn a 3–5 team into one that finished 7–5 and showed signs of becoming special. Hornung was a playboy, and he never did change his lifestyle. He partied hard during the week but was ready on Sunday. He was well liked by his teammates and had a lot to do with the strong camaraderie on the team. As time wore on, he became Lombardi’s favorite player. Lombardi famously said Hornung was ordinary between the 20-yard lines but had a nose for the goal line once the Packers crossed the opponent’s 20.
There were some games when he was truly spectacular, as he was in the first regular-season game of 1962. The Packers opened up a new season at City Stadium against the second-year Minnesota Vikings with Hornung leading the way. The former Heisman Trophy winner from Notre Dame scored 3 touchdowns on runs of 6, 7, and 37 yards. He also booted 4 extra points and a pair of field goals for a 28-point day.
Hornung rushed 10 times for 67 yards and also completed a 41-yard pass to Boyd Dowler on a halfback option. Packers fullback Jim Taylor rushed for a team-high 75 yards on 17 tries but failed to get into the end zone. He gained 14 yards on the Packers’ first offensive play of the season, picking up most of the yardage after a key block by Dowler.
Hornung scored his first 2 touchdowns in the opening period to stake Green Bay to a 14–0 lead. The Packers had a second-quarter drive stall on the 3, and Lombardi elected to let Hornung boot a 10-yard field goal for a 17–0 halftime lead. Remember, those were the days when goalposts in the NFL were on the goal line.
Hornung displayed a strong leg with a 45-yard field goal in the third quarter. Bart Starr, who had an average passing day (7 completions in 14 attempts for 108 yards) hooked up with tight end Ron Kramer on an 18-yard scoring strike later in the quarter. Hornung’s 37-yard run early in the fourth quarter gave the Pack a 34–0 lead.
Meanwhile the Green Bay defense did a great job in containing Fran Tarkenton, the Vikings’ scrambling quarterback, who had rushed for 308 yards and 5 scores during his rookie season a year earlier.
The Packers line, led by end Willie Davis and tackle Henry Jordan, sacked Scramblin’ Fran six times for 52 yards in losses. The secondary also had a big day picking off 5 passes, 2 each by Willie Wood and Herb Adderley and 1 by Hank Gremminger. The Packers also forced the Vikings into 2 fumbles for a total of 7 turnovers.
A day after watching film of the easy win, Lombardi said the Packers offense lacked consistency and that the tackling was “bad.”
A few days after the game the Green Bay Press-Gazette ran a story about the rival American Football League, which, in its third season, was luring talented players away from the NFL with contracts significantly larger than most of the players in the more established league were playing for.
Dowler, who began his career with the Packers in 1959, admitted that the lure of money would have been tempting had the AFL been in existence when he came out of college.
“I would have very seriously considered the other league,” he said. “The idea of