by Jerry Kramer
There are several different stories about why Lombardi traded Jim Ringo, who was then our captain and an All-Pro center, a few years ago. The most logical story, the one I believe, is this: The day Vince asked Ringo to come in and discuss his contract, Ringo showed up in Lombardi's office with another man. “Coach,” Ringo said, “I'm not very good at negotiating for myself. This is my agent. He'll discuss my contract with you.”
Lombardi asked to be excused for a moment. He left his office, walked down the hall and came back in a few minutes. “I'm afraid you're negotiating with the wrong man,” he told Ringo's agent. “Jim Ringo has just been traded to the Philadelphia Eagles.”
JANUARY 11
We've been working hard preparing for Oakland. They're a much better team than Kansas City was last year. Once, watching the films, when we saw the Raiders' safety men collide, we laughed, but it isn't like last year, when we were laughing all the time. The Raiders look tough, and their five-two defense is a real problem for us. We haven't seen anything quite like it in the NFL. Over and over, Vince has been showing us the movies of the Oakland-San Francisco preseason exhibition. The 49 ers won 13-10, but Oakland put up a tremendous struggle. San Francisco didn't score a touchdown until the final period. That movie keeps us from getting too cocky.
The difference between our attitude for this game and our attitude for the Los Angeles and Dallas games is obvious, I guess. For those two games, Vince didn't have to keep telling us how good our opponents were, and we didn't have to persuade ourselves. We knew the Rams and the Cowboys were tough. We have to keep saying it about the Raiders; we have to force ourselves to be respectful of Oakland. We know the importance of winning Sunday—each winning player gets $15,000 in the Super Bowl, and each losing player gets $7,500—but, still, there's not really any doubt on the club. We don't say IF we win; we say WHEN we win.
Before our calisthenics this morning, Lombardi gathered the whole team for a brief talk. “This is the most important game of your lives,” he said. “It's certainly the most important of my life.” His remarks reminded me of his comment last year before the Super Bowl game. “This isn't the most important game you've ever played,” he said then. “Next year it may be, but this year it isn't.”
His words—the emphasis he placed on this game—raised the question of his retirement once again. It's on everybody's mind. Bart and I talked about it tonight at supper, and we agreed we wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear Vince announce his retirement in the locker room, as soon as the Super Bowl ends.
JANUARY 12
We had our afternoon meeting at 2:45 today, a little early, because Coach Lombardi had to go to an AFL-NFL meeting in Miami. He came into the meeting room—wearing a blue shirt, a tie, dark pants and glasses—turned to Dave Hanner and said, “Everybody here, Dave?”
“Well, I got forty-two,” Hanner said.
“How many you supposed to have?” said Lombardi.
“Forty-two,” said Dave. “But I might have miscounted.” He checked the room again. “I think I've got everyone here.”
Lombardi turned and faced us. “OK boys,” he began, then stopped and rubbed his hands together for several seconds, obviously thinking about what he was going to say. “This may be the last time we'll be together, so … uh …” His lips actually began to tremble; his whole body quivered. He looked like he was about to start bawling. He never finished the sentence. He sat down, facing the movie screen, right next to the projector, his back to all the guys, and said, “Let's break up.”
The defensive players left the room, going off to their own meeting, and Vince stayed with the offensive team. He didn't say a word. He just put on the projector and let it run, not even bothering to run the film back and forth until late in the movie. I don't think any of us concentrated on the film; we were all wondering what playing for Green Bay would be like without Lombardi. I don't particularly want to find out. It's been hell to play while he's been there, but I don't want to play if he's not around. I wondered how many of the old pros on our club could keep going without the driving force and will of Vince Lombardi. I hope we don't have to find out.
“What did you think of Vince's statement?” Donny Anderson asked me, after the meeting ended.
“Looked like there's no question about his retirement,” I said. “I've never known the man to get emotional over nothing. It looked like a clear indication to me that this is going to be his final football game.”
JANUARY 13
We had a short workout this morning, the last one before the Super Bowl, and while he was taping me, Bud Jorgensen, our trainer, said to me, “Well, Jerry, how many does this make?”
“How many what, Bud?” I said. “Seasons?”
He nodded.
“End of the tenth,” I said.
“This is the last one, huh?” Bud said.
“Yeah, Bud, I guess it is.”
I don't really think it's my last season, but I took a look around the locker room and I looked at Fuzzy and Max and Henry and a few of the other guys who're thinking about retiring, and I got very nostalgic, very sad. I'm going to miss those guys.
I remembered that I used to play every game as if it were my last game, and I wished I could get back that old concentration. I thought again about Vince retiring—I was still in a state of shock from his comments yesterday—and I realized I might be playing my last game for him tomorrow. I want to make it a perfect game. I don't want to have one bad thing, not even one medium thing.
We played our regular volleyball game, the King Ranch Bullies against the Cicero Sissies, and we were tied 8-8 when Vince blew the whistle for the start of practice. We tried a few plays, and Gilly got off late once—he missed the count—and Coach cussed him pretty good. If Vince's going out tomorrow, he's going out strong.
My wife's been here the past few days, and so has Chandler's. Tonight we're putting the girls in one room, and Donny and I are sharing one. It's better for the girls to be away from us tonight. We're always grumpy and grouchy the night before a game.
JANUARY 14
I was tense this morning, much more than I had expected to be. I had so many things to do. I had to help Barbara get packed and off. She was going right back to Green Bay after the game. I had to get my own stuff packed and sent to the airport for my trip to Los Angeles. I'd bought thirty-five tickets for the Super Bowl, and I had to make sure they were all distributed. I must have had a thousand different distractions, and, after our pregame meal at 10:45, I got up, left the dining room, went to meet my wife in the coffee shop, and completely forgot about the meeting that we've had after every pregame meal for ten years.
I was sitting in the coffee shop talking to Barbara when I suddenly remembered I'd left my tape recorder in the dining room. I rushed back and tried, unsuccessfully, to open the door. It was locked. I knocked, and somebody unlocked the door, and I walked in, and there was the whole offensive team, right in the middle of the meeting. All the guys gave me a funny look. Coach Lombardi gave me a look that wasn't funny at all. He didn't say a word. He just scowled. The meeting lasted another ten or fifteen minutes, and I hardly heard a word, my mind wandering to all the things I'd done to get ready to leave. After the meeting I hurried down to the lobby, checked out, paid my incidental expenses, and climbed aboard the team bus about twenty minutes before it was supposed to leave. Five minutes later everybody was on the bus. We were all tense.
When we got to the Orange Bowl in Miami I dropped my stuff in the locker room and strolled out to the field for a little look at the pregame festivities. I saw the two big statues, one marked Oakland, the other marked Green Bay, breathing smoke. I just wanted to kill a little time, settle down a little.
In the locker room, for the first time all season I decided to leave my tape recorder running during the pregame talks. If I got caught by Lombardi, I didn't think he'd suspend me at this stage of the year.
Bob Skoronski spoke first. “Let's not waste any time, boys,” he said. “Let's go out ther
e from the opening play. They're a good football team, boys. If we lose, boys, we've lost everything we ever worked for. Everything. I don't have any damn intention of losing this ball game, and I don't think anybody else here does.”
“Fellas,” said Willie Davis, “you know as well as I do that when we went to camp in July, this is what we had in mind. This game. This game is going to determine what's said about the Packers tomorrow. Fellas, in another sixty minutes, we can walk in here with another world championship. Fellas, it's recognition, it's prestige, and, fellas, it's money. So let's go out and have fun. Let's go out and just hit people. Let's just go out and play football the way we can.”
“My impression of this ball club,” Forrest Gregg said, “is that they're the type of people who like to intimidate you. Watch those linebackers, those linemen, the way they're hitting people late. No sense getting upset about it. They're gonna do some pass interference and holding and stuff like that, but let's not get upset about it. Let's go out there and play our brand of football. Let's face it. They're a little bit afraid of us right now. Let's put it to them from the very first whistle and put it to them every play.”
“It's the last game for some of us,” said Max, “and we sure don't want to go out of here and live the rest of our lives letting these guys beat us.”
“Let's play with our hearts,” said Nitschke.
Then Carroll Dale led us in the Lord's Prayer, and we broke up with whoops and hollers, and we ran out on the field and loosened up, and then we came back inside for our pads and our helmets and a few words from Coach Lombardi.
“It's very difficult for me to say anything,” Vince said. “Anything I could say would be repetitious. This is our twenty-third game this year. I don't know of anything else I could tell this team. Boys, I can only say this to you: Boys, you're a good football team. You are a proud football team. You are the world champions. You are the champions of the National Football League for the third time in a row, for the first time in the history of the National Football League. That's a great thing to be proud of. But let me just say this: All the glory, everything that you've had, everything that you've won is going to be small in comparison to winning this one. This is a great thing for you. You're the only team maybe in the history of the National Football League to ever have this opportunity to win the Super Bowl twice. Boys, I tell you I'd be so proud of that I just fill up with myself. I just get bigger and bigger and bigger. It's not going to come easy. This is a club that's gonna hit you. They're gonna try to hit you and you got to take it out of them. You got to be forty tigers out there. That's all. Just hit. Just run. Just block and just tackle. If you do that, there's no question what the answer's going to be in this ball game. Keep your poise. Keep your poise. You've faced them all. There's nothing they can show you out there you haven't faced a number of times. Right?”
“Right!”
“RIGHT!”
“Let's go. Let's go get 'em.”
We rushed out of the locker room and onto the field, and all the speeches were a lot better than the way we played the first half. The first time we got the ball, we moved fairly well. They threw the five-two defense at us, and they threw a few other defenses at us, and we found out fast that they weren't going to give us any special trouble, that we could move the ball against them. Physically, they weren't quite so awesome as our NFL opponents. But we made a million mistakes, stupid, high-school mistakes. Kenny Bowman called his block one way and blocked the other way three or four times. He hadn't done that more than twice all year. We all made silly little blocking mistakes.
We scored the first two times we had the ball, but both times only on field goals, which was a little unsettling. Then Boyd broke into the open, and Bart hit him with a long pass, and we were ahead 13-0. We got lazy and careless, the way we always seem to when we build up a lead. Oakland came roaring back, hitting real hard, and scored a touchdown. Chandler's third field goal gave us a 16-7 lead at the half, not a terribly impressive margin.
Between the halves there wasn't much we could discuss. Our plays were working fine; we just weren't executing them right. A few of us veterans got together—Forrest and Ski and Henry and me and a few others—and we decided we'd play the last thirty minutes for the old man. We didn't want to let him down in his last game.
Oakland never quit. The year before, against Kansas City, the game was settled by half-time even though we were only winning 14-10. In the second half, the first time we lined up for an extra point—which is generally the perfect time for a defensive man to take a swing at your head or smack you with a forearm or just give you his best shot—the Kansas City kid playing opposite me leaned on me, uttered a loud groan and applied about as much pressure as a good feather duster. I knew the game was over.
But Oakland played just as hard in the second half as it did in the first. Right near the end, when we had the game locked up, we had a short yardage situation. The play was going to go between Gregg and me, and I figured it might be one of my last plays for Lombardi, and I wanted to make it good. I got a perfect block on Dan Birdwell, knocked him down. He jumped up—he hadn't spoken to me all day—and said, “Helluva block, Kramer.” He patted me on the rear and said, “Way to go.” The next play, Birdwell practically killed himself to beat me. Zeke rolled out to the right, and I took Birdwell that way, and he slipped off me and got Zeke. He was still going all out. He hadn't slowed down a bit.
The game ended 33-14, with Oakland in possession of the ball. We had been planning for the co-captains, Skoronski and Davis, to carry Vince off the field, but Willie was playing when the gun went off, so Gregg and I, the two men closest to Coach, just lifted him up and started running out on the field. He was grinning at us and slapping us and he hollered, “Head for the dressing room, boys,” and we headed for the dressing room, clutching the man who'd made us the Super Bowl champions for the second year in a row.
When we had all reached the dressing room, Vince gathered us together. “This has to be one of the great, great years,” he said. “I think it's something you'll always remember. You know everything happened to us. We lost a lot of people. Thank goodness we had the boys who could replace them and did a helluva job. And those who were not hurt played a little bit better. Boys, I'm really proud of you. We should all be very, very thankful.”
We got down on our knees, and we began, in unison, “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”
We finished the Lord's Prayer and we all began slapping each other on the back and hugging each other, and, once again, the cameramen and the reporters poured in.
I sat in front of my locker, and I talked and talked and talked. I talked about the mistakes we made during the first half. I talked about the spirit of our team. I talked about Lombardi. I saw the fellow who wrote the article in Esquire about Lombardi, and I cussed him out a bit. I told anecdotes and I told my opinion of just about everything, and after a while I noticed that most of my teammates were dressed and were starting to leave the locker room. I was still in my uniform, still perched in front of my locker. I really didn't want to get up.
I wanted to keep my uniform on as long as I possibly could.
EPILOGUE
Fuzzy crowing about the two greatest guards in the history of the National Football League … Max telling Coach to throw one in his diddy-bag … Bart threatening to kick Steve Wright in the can … Tommy Joe talking about Cecil Barlow's cow… Ray Nitschke wearing a toupee and shades … Hornung … Currie … Tunnell… Taylor … Jordan … Quinlan … Davis … Adderley … Gregg … Chandler … Hart… Ron Kramer … on and on and on … all the guys I played with for the past ten years. That's why I play professional football.
That's why I'm going to keep playing professional football.
I know now that for me the main lure of football is the guys, my teammates, the friendship, the fun, the excitement, the incredibly exhilarating feeling of a shared achievement. When I look back upon the 1967 season, before I remember the blo
ck on Jethro Pugh, before I remember Bart's touchdown against the Cowboys, before I remember our victory in the Super Bowl, I remember a very special spirit, a rare camaraderie, something I can't quite define, but something I've tried to capture in this diary.
A few years ago I was flying to California for the Pro Bowl game with Frank Gifford and Forrest Gregg. Forrest was talking about retiring to go into college coaching, and Frank had just returned to the New York Giants after a year in retirement. “Forrest,” Gifford said, “don't quit till you have to. It'd be a terrible mistake. You'd miss it too much.”
Gifford's remark hit me. He had everything going for him—a promising television career, financial security—yet he still wanted to play so badly. I think I understand now; I think I understand what Gifford missed, what I would miss. I feel right now that I'm ready to play another five years, maybe a couple of years at guard, then a few at tackle, where you don't have to run so much or so fast.
If anybody had told me a year ago that I'd be thinking about playing five more years—even three more years—I'd have told him he was crazy. I figured then that 1967 was my last season or, at best, my next-to-last season. But the 1967 season was a revelation to me. I felt physically better than I had in five years. Finally, I'd come back from my injuries and my operations. Finally, I wasn't groaning and aching every single day. Finally, professional football wasn't a chore. I know that I complained often during the season, that I went through periods of depression, but, ultimately, I enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the whole season.
