The Big 50: Green Bay Packers: The Men and Moments that Made the Green Bay Packers

By Drew Olson, Jason Wilde and Bob Harlan

The Big 50: Green Bay Packers is an amazing look at the fifty men and moments that have made the Packers the Packers. Longtime sportswriters and radio host Drew Olson and Jason Wilde recount the living history of the team, counting down from number fifty to number one. The Big 50: Green Bay Packers brilliantly brings to life the historic franchise's remarkable story, from Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr to Brett Favre, Reggie White, Aaron Rodgers, and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781641253529

Book preview

Olson

Contents

Foreword by Bob Harlan

1. Super Bowl XLV

2. Vince Lombardi

3. Favre: Birth of a Legend

4. Curly Lambeau

5. Ice Bowl

6. Drafting Aaron Rodgers

7. Super Bowl I

8. Don Hutson

9. Antonio Freeman’s Improbable Bobble

10. Lambeau Leap

11. Bart Starr

12. Reggie White

13. The Brett Favre Trade

14. Super Bowl XXXI

15. Jerry Kramer

16. James Lofton

17. 1966 NFL Championship Game

18. Brandon Bostick and the One That Got Away

19. Bob Harlan

20. Ron Wolf

21. The Birth of the Packers

22. Ray Nitschke

23. The John Hadl Trade

24. Lynn Dickey

25. Verne Lewellen

26. The Instant Replay Game

27. Hornung, Taylor, and the Power Sweep

28. Early Championships

29. Mike Holmgren

30. Monday Night Madness

31. A MNF Game for Irv

32. Ted Thompson

33. Dan Devine and His Dog

34. The Messiest Divorce in Sports History

35. 1929 Championship

36. Uniform Decisions

37. Lombardi and Race Relations

38. The Fail Mary

39. Snow Bowl

40. The Butler Did It

41. Mike McCarthy

42. Super Bowl XXXII

43. Donald Driver

44. Ezra Johnson and the Hot Dog

45. Clay Matthews

46. Mud Bowls

47. Fourth and 26

48. Charles Woodson

49. Getting Their Kicks

50. Todd Rundgren and Bang the Drum All Day

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Foreword by Bob Harlan

In a lot of ways, this book—and really any book about the Green Bay Packers at this point—is a testament to Brett Favre, Ron Wolf, and Mike Holmgren and the marvelous job they did in resurrecting a franchise that had been so dormant and in such terrible shape for so long.

When they came to town, we were coming off a 24-year period where we had four winning seasons and two playoff appearances. Our fans were actually giving up on our future. Ron came to town and took charge of the football operations side. First, he hired Mike as coach. Then, he sent a first-round draft choice to the Atlanta Falcons for Brett. Then, he signed Reggie White. And the character and dignity were restored to this franchise immediately. We started winning right away.

Thanks to those three gentlemen for what they started in 1992—after having a 24-year period where we were down, dormant, and mediocre—we were a team that was a contender every year and had one of the best winning percentages in the NFL. I’m so proud to know those gentlemen. I thank them for what they did for this franchise to make us legitimate again.

When I hired Ron, I thought we needed a change and we needed to bring in a strong football person and guarantee him there would be no interference from the executive board. I had my eye on Ron for a long time. I visited with George Young, the longtime general manager of the New York Giants. And about two months before I hired Ron, I told George I wanted to make a change in our leadership and go after Ron. And he told me I was making the smartest hire I could make.

I knew what Ron needed—full authority. Without offering him that, I knew he wouldn’t leave the job he had with the New York Jets. Once we gave him that, the negotiation was very short. We hired him on November 27, 1991.

He obviously had his eye on Brett from the moment he took the job since he had wanted to draft Brett to the Jets, but the Falcons had taken him one pick earlier. It just so happened that a few days later we were playing the Falcons in Atlanta. I was in the press box that Sunday, and Ron came up and put his briefcase down next to me. He said, I’m going to go watch Atlanta’s backup quarterback. I had to look and see who the backup was. It was a third-stringer named Brett Favre.

Brett was the greatest competitor I’ve ever been around, and he played with the passion and enthusiasm of a kid on a sandlot. I was thrilled and privileged to work with him and watch him play in Green Bay for 16 years. When he played against us when he was on that other team, I didn’t listen to the game. I didn’t watch the game. I turned on the radio two hours later to find out who won. I didn’t want to see him play against Green Bay. So I’ve never seen him play against Green Bay—and I didn’t want to. I wanted to remember him as a Packer.

Two weeks after that game in Atlanta, Ron came into my office after watching practice. We’ve got a problem on this practice field, he said to me. This team is 4–10, and they think they’re 10–4. So in two weeks on the job, he had decided that Brett was going to be our quarterback and that Lindy Infante was not going to be our coach. It convinced me even more that bringing him in in November was valid.

For his coach he wanted an offensive-minded leader. Ron said, The league is going offense. We need to go offense. Mike was the hot item in the league at that point. Ron came to me and said, Mike’s the guy I’m going after. Every time he’d go after one of these things—trading for Brett, firing Lindy, hiring Mike—he’d say, Are you okay with it? And I said, Absolutely. You have total authority.

Years later, I was approached at a league meeting by Charley Casserly, who’d run the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans for a long time. He said, How did you ever get those two guys? Well, I found Ron, but Ron found Mike. They just worked so well together. It was outstanding leadership in our football operations. It was such a different culture than we’d had in all my years here. And five years later, they won the Super Bowl.

There’s no doubt that success helped us in the stadium referendum to renovate Lambeau Field in 2000. As tight as that stadium referendum was, I heard from people that the fact that we were playing so well again was a huge factor. I mean, it was a tough sell anyways. We won by a margin of 53 to 47 percent. I think it would have been an impossible sell if we would’ve been playing the way we were in the ’70s and ’80s. So yeah, without what they did, we wouldn’t have this stadium.

The worst thing I ever heard came after we won the referendum. Paul Jadin, who was the mayor at the time, called me and said, I felt that if you lost that referendum, the Packers wouldn’t be here by 2015. I’m not sure how we could have competed in that old stadium. We were making about $2 to $3 million a year in the old Lambeau. The first year in the new Lambeau, we made $25 million. We were actually talking in the late 1990s about having to borrow money in a few years to fund our operation, as we looked at where player costs were going and what kind of money we were going to make from the old stadium. A stadium just produces so much revenue, and we were just dropping like a rock behind the teams moving into new ones.

And then when we hired Ted Thompson in 2005, we made sure that success continued. He drafted Aaron Rodgers, he hired Mike McCarthy, and by 2010 we had another Super Bowl championship. The reason I went after Ted so strongly was because I watched Ted work for Ron for eight years. When Mike Holmgren went to Seattle, the first person he took was Ted. Both in the hiring of Ron and Ted, I really felt that I knew what I was going to get. I knew both men, I respected both men, and they came in and did the job.

Two of the most critical things to happen with this organization in the last 30 years were Ron getting Brett and Ted getting Aaron. I can’t tell you the negative mail I got when Ron traded a first-round draft choice for Brett. And when Aaron kept slipping down, Ted took me out of the draft room and said, This isn’t going to be a popular decision, but I’m going to take Rodgers. And we got a lot of angry mail then. But we went through more than 30 quarterbacks in the 24 years we couldn’t win. To have those two and have them play at the level they’ve played is unbelievable.

That’s why all the credit has to go to the football people. I have a lot of respect for them and am just very thankful for what those men did. Those guys truly did resurrect the organization. They lifted it right out of the ashes.

In this book you will read some of those stories—and many others. When Jason asked me to write the foreword to this book, I told him that it would be a true honor for me to be a part of this work. And it is. I hope you enjoy The Big 50: Green Bay Packers.

—Bob Harlan Packers chairman emeritus Packers president 1989–2008

1. Super Bowl XLV

The dye is officially No. 5535 on the Pantone Matching System color chart. It’s what gives the heavyweight polyester mesh its dark green hue. But as he stood near his locker for quite possibly the final time, Brandon Jackson knew that far more had seeped into that jersey, that it had absorbed four of the best years of his life Sunday by Sunday, culminating in the Super Bowl XLV championship 48 hours earlier.

It was a remarkable scene at Lambeau Field that afternoon with more than 50,000 devoted people braving subzero wind chills to listen to their heroes thank them for their support, promise a repeat in 2011, and share the love that came with the Packers’ fourth Super Bowl title and 13th overall championship. But to truly understand what this team accomplished with its 31–25 victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Cowboys Stadium on February 6, 2011, you needed to come in from the cold. Super Bowl MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ speech was great, the players’ victory lap around the stadium while holding out the Vince Lombardi Trophy for front-rowers to touch was wonderful, and general manager Ted Thompson nervously calling it the Lambeau Trophy was charmingly comical. But it was in watching 50 or so grown men jockey for position at the equipment room window—where Tom T-Bone Bakken, Gordon Red Batty, Tim Odea, and the rest of the equipment staff were handing out their game-worn green jerseys—that the accomplishment became real.

It was in watching Jackson tugging at the edges of the fabric, tracing the outline of the No. 32 twill, and Jarrett Bush’s eyes moistening as he talked about the interception he’d snared while wearing his No. 24. It was in those moments when the reality of what they’d accomplished truly sunk in. That’s four hard years of dedication, blood, sweat, tears, adversity that goes into that 32, said Jackson, the undersized running back who toiled as the team’s third-down back without a single complaint even after Ryan Grant’s season-ending ankle injury didn’t lead to the full-time starting gig he’d expected. The history of the organization goes into that 32. My family, the love, the support goes into that 32. My faith in Christ goes into that 32. There’s a lot of history, there’s a lot of accolades, there’s a lot of things that go into that 32 that’s on that jersey. That jersey will not be washed. It will be hung up, framed with the rest of my jerseys that I have from college, high school. That 32 is very special to me…It’s emotional when I talk about it because I’ve been through a lot here. The road is tough. And to bring home the Lombardi Trophy, to have that patch on the side of my shoulder, it’s amazing.

Moments earlier, in another part of the expansive locker room, Bush was staring at the captains’ patch embroidered on one side of the collar and the Super Bowl XLV logo heat-transferred on the other. The special teams ace had been through his share of ups and downs during his five years in Green Bay, enduring more than his share of criticism along the way. But as he looked at the No. 24 on his jersey, he rattled off the stains: Gatorade, dirt, some chicken broth.

He came to another mark and knew immediately what it was from: the ball from his second-quarter interception. My heart melted, he said, bowing his head, tears welling. Just all the doubters, all the believers who believed. It’s gratifying. Gratifying. To get an opportunity at that time, at that moment in time throughout the whole season, to have it happen at that time, it was special. It meant a lot to me. After the game I broke down. That’s how much I put into this. It’s not just here. I go home, I think about it. I think about the stuff I try to work on. I work on that year-round. I go back home; it doesn’t end here. It’s a job, but you definitely take it home because you take so much pride in it.

The MVP of Super Bowl XLV, quarterback Aaron Rodgers raises the Lombardi Trophy after throwing for 304 yards and three touchdowns in the victory.

The post-Super Bowl jersey giveaway wasn’t the first time Packers players were allowed to keep their jerseys, but according to T-Bone, who has been with the team for more than two decades now, it is a rarity. Each jersey is specifically tailored to each player—You don’t just throw a jersey at them, Bakken said—for the perfect fit, so they are normally re-used for multiple years.

But after their Super Bowl triumph, each jersey was given to its owner, and each told a story. I took mine from the game. I didn’t want them to wash it. I wanted to keep it stinky with the holes and the tears and the scuff marks on it, fullback John Kuhn said. Just great memories, man. There was a lot of hard work that went into that victory we had on Sunday. We’ve all had our ups and downs this year as an individual and as a team.

While there were no tears from Rodgers that afternoon, there was an incredible sense of accomplishment, a feeling that came after he’d spent so much of his football life…waiting. Waiting for Division I college recruiters who never called. Waiting in the green room of the Jacob Javits Center in New York City during the 2005 NFL Draft, when he fell from possibly being the No. 1 overall pick to No. 24. Waiting three years behind a waffling legend whose attempt to reclaim his job in the summer of 2008 divided Packer Nation.

As it turned out, it was all worth the wait—for Rodgers and for the Packers. So when Rodgers took to the postgame victory dais after the game alongside coach Mike McCarthy, Thompson, and team president/CEO Mark Murphy to accept the Lombardi Trophy from FOX Sports’ Terry Bradshaw, Rodgers waited patiently off to the side. Then he told those three men what he’d been waiting years to tell them: thank you. That’s what I did on the podium. I thanked Ted and Mark and Mike really for believing in me and giving me an opportunity, Rodgers said. I told Ted back in 2005 [that] he wouldn’t be sorry with this pick. I told him in ’08 that I was going to repay their trust and get us this opportunity.

And while Rodgers was rewarding Thompson, McCarthy, Murphy, and the team’s passionate fanbase with the franchise’s fourth Super Bowl championship, he didn’t go home empty-handed after completing 24-of-39 passes (numbers skewed by several drops by receivers) for 304 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions for a passer rating of 111.5.

For his patience Rodgers was rewarded with an uplifting celebratory ride on the shoulders of his teammates, a championship belt from Clay Matthews to commemorate his signature belt celebration, the Super Bowl MVP award, and a place in the hallowed lore of the NFL’s most historic franchise. I’m very proud of Aaron. He’s a good player, a good teammate, Thompson said in the locker room later. I think people are going to write stories about him 10 years from now. He’s pretty special. Even though he’s done so much, he’s still just kind of getting started.

Rodgers got started fast against the Steelers, but he saved his biggest throws for the fourth quarter. The first came with 13 minutes and 16 seconds left in the game and the Packers clinging to a 21–17 lead. Facing third and 10 from the Steelers’ 40-yard line after Jordy Nelson dropped what would have been a first down and more, Rodgers lined up in the shotgun with Jackson in the backfield and his four remaining wide receivers (with Donald Driver out with a high ankle sprain) spreading the field. He went right back to Nelson, who beat safety Ryan Clark for a 38-yard gain to the Steelers’ 2. Two plays later Rodgers hit Greg Jennings for an eight-yard touchdown and a 28–17 lead. He played extremely well, offensive coordinator Joe Philbin said, adding that Rodgers made a protection adjustment on the play just before the snap. If you’re going to win a championship, you’ve got to make some plays in the fourth quarter when things are tough.

Rodgers made another such play on the Packers’ next possession after the Steelers pulled within three points on Mike Wallace’s 25-yard touchdown catch and the ensuing two-point conversion. Facing third and 10 from his own 25 with 5:59 to play, Rodgers threw an absolutely picture-perfect ball to Jennings across the middle with the ball sneaking just over the outstretched hand of cornerback Ike Taylor and right in stride to Jennings, who caught the ball at the Green Bay 45 and turned it into a momentum-shifting 31-yard gain. Rodgers then hit James Jones for a 21-yard gain three plays later, and while the Packers settled for a 23-yard Mason Crosby field goal when the drive bogged down inside the 10, the Packers were back in control.

We put everything on his shoulders, said McCarthy, whose team set a Super Bowl record by having just 13 rushing attempts—11 by James Starks (for 52 yards) and two kneel-downs by Rodgers (for -2 yards) in the victory formation. He did a lot at the line of scrimmage against a great defense. He did a hell of a job.

The defense clinched the win from there, and Rodgers, who received 17.5 of a possible 20 MVP votes, joined Bart Starr (Super Bowls I and II) as the only Packers quarterbacks to win the MVP award in the sport’s greatest game. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: no one person has ever won a game by themselves, Rodgers said. This is a team effort and a great group of men, special guys. And I’m just blessed to be one of the leaders on this team. Individually, it’s the top of the mountain in my sport, my profession. It’s what you dream about as a kid.

2. Vince Lombardi

It is hard to measure Vincent Thomas Lombardi’s impact on the city of Green Bay, the Packers franchise, and the National Football League, but we’re going to give it a shot. The Packers’ stadium and front offices are located at 1265 Lombardi Avenue, a street named after the coach who won five NFL titles in nine seasons, spanning from 1959 to 1967.

Then again, plenty of notable people in other cities are honored with street names. Green Bay-area motorists drive on Holmgren Way, Mike McCarthy Way, and Brett Favre Pass.

There is a Lombardi statue—a 14-footer with a four-foot base—located outside Lambeau Field that draws hundreds of thousands of photo-taking fans per year. A lot of people are honored with statues, particularly athletes, so that isn’t exactly unique.

The NFL’s Super Bowl trophy carries Lombardi’s name. And, you’ll see replicas of all sizes in bars, bowling alleys, and backyards throughout Titletown. There are plenty of folks with trophies named in their honor. John Heisman, Cy Young, Larry O’Brien, Hobey Baker, and Lord Stanley spring instantly to mind. There was a Broadway play about Lombardi and a best-selling biography, but Hamilton and countless others have experienced similar honors.

How many people, though, can say they have their own time zone? Since 2012 the clock over the Bellin Health Gate at Lambeau Field has been set to Lombardi Time, which is to say it is 15 minutes fast. Legend has it that Lombardi demanded that players, assistant coaches, and team attendants arrive for practice, meetings, travel, and other appointments 15 minutes before the scheduled time. If you weren’t early, you were late, Hall of Famer Dave Robinson said, echoing what dozens of other players from the glory years said of their coach. Although its usage may have waned in recent years, a generation of Baby Boom-era parents in Green Bay, De Pere, Ashwaubenon, and surrounding areas implored their kids to get ready for school, church, and family functions on Lombardi Time.

When the Packers unveiled the giant clock—which faces Lombardi Avenue—in 2012, they considered installing a Lombardi Time sign underneath. They didn’t. Several people called the team offices to point out the time was off, but then Michele Tafoya broke the news during a national broadcast of a Packers-Lions game in December of 2012. We decided not to announce it. We thought the best way to do it would be to let it come out naturally, team president Mark Murphy told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It will be kind of an urban legend. It will be the kind of thing that people will now look at when they come to Lambeau Field and talk about it.

A half-century after his passing, folks in Green Bay still talk about Lombardi—and not just in reference to the time. A Brooklyn native who had spent the previous five years as the halfbacks coach for the New York Giants, Lombardi was hired by Green Bay on January 28, 1959. The Packers were coming off a franchise-worst 1–10–1 record, and Titletown hadn’t experienced a winning season in 11 years. That changed instantly thanks to a man whose only previous head coaching experience had come at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey. I’ve never been associated with a loser and I don’t expect to be now, Lombardi said at his introductory press conference, which marked the culmination of infighting among the 45 members of the board of directors, who might as well have been The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

The board had considered hiring Forest Evashevski, the head coach at the University of Iowa, but settled on Lombardi, who demanded his fate be decided by the smaller executive committee rather than the full board. Longtime Milwaukee Sentinel columnist Bud Lea was in the crowd that day. People were asking, ‘Who in the hell is Vince Lombardi?’ Lea recalled. Well, it didn’t take very long for them to find out.

A master motivator with a keen eye for talent who was relentless in his pursuit of perfection in both gameplanning and execution, Lombardi led the Packers to a 7–5 record his first season. In 1960 the Packers lost an agonizingly close NFL Championship Game against the Philadelphia Eagles. After that they captured five titles in seven years, including a run of three straight that began in 1965 and ended with triumphs in the first two Super Bowls.

Vince Lombardi poses after being named head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers in 1959.

Lombardi resigned as coach of the Packers on February 1, 1968, to focus on his duties as general manager. He left Green Bay the following year and spent one season as the head coach of the Washington Redskins. He died of cancer at age 57 on September 3, 1970.

• Lombardi’s legacy in Green Bay encompasses more than a street, statue, championships, trophies, or a clock tower. Consider:

• In 1961 he made the decision to add the G logo to the Packers’ helmets. The design and development included Gerald Dad Braisher and his part-time assistant, an art student at St. Norbert College named John Gordon, along with Romo Display Advertising of Green Bay.

• His final game in Green Bay, the Ice Bowl victory against the visiting Dallas Cowboys, is one of the iconic games in NFL history. The Packers overcame -13 degree temperatures and beat the Cowboys 21–17 on Bart Starr’s one-yard plunge into the end zone with 13 seconds left.

• Lombardi’s infamous power sweep became one of the more famous plays in football history.

In an era when racial tensions ran high throughout the nation, Lombardi lectured his team about intolerance and took steps to make sure black players were treated fairly on the team and in the nearly all-white