Ice Bowl legacy: Frozen turf, forged legacies and a bygone era
For all the steam coming out of their frozen mouths, you could barely see the faces. Men, women and children, covered from head to toe in winter gear, hoped one more layer would make the next three hours bearable. For one elderly fan, it did not, dying of a heart attack brought on by exposure in the stands.
On New Year’s Eve 1967, a soldout Lambeau Field of 50,861 patrons braved the -13 temperature to watch the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys stage the NFL Championship Game, hoping the home team could win a record three consecutive titles.
In Green Bay, the population that year was 82,982, suggesting that more than half the town was willing to risk frostbite and worse. Perhaps that’s because in those days, a local citizen not willing to trek through the cold didn’t enjoy the luxury of seeing the game on television due to outdated blackout restrictions.
If you wanted to watch, you paid in both cash and raw flesh.
Famously dubbed the Ice Bowl, the contest was and remains the coldest afternoon in league history. By its end, the wind chill was 48 degrees below zero. It featured a dozen future Hall of Famers including a pair of iconic coaches who once shared the same sideline in New York as assistants.
The setting was the NFL’s most hallowed venue, which played a key part in determining multiple legacies thanks to a scoreboard shadow and failing technology.
For those who played in the Ice Bowl, the memories are forever. In some cases, so are the scars and creaky joints. For those who bared witness, it was a spectacle which remains unique for myriad reasons, not the least of which was the barbaric conditions.
The end result was an indelible, unforgettable game that still resonates despite no broadcast footage of it existing. It is a monument to a team and a town, and a legacy-shaping victory for America’s most celebrated head coach.
It was, in many ways, the essence of the sport it showcased and the last gasp of a bygone era.
By 1967, Packers head coach Vince Lombardi had built one of football’s great powers in the athletic outpost of Green Bay. Hired in 1959 and taking over a one-win team, Lombardi forged a juggernaut. Over his first eight seasons on the job, the Packers reached five title games and won four, including consecutive championships in 1965 and ’66, the latter being Super Bowl I.
Green Bay had gone from outdated NFL city to the center of the football world, driven to success by an Italian-American who had a loathing of bigotry and a passion for daily morning mass. He was the son of Harry Lombardi, a butcher who had the words “work” and “play” tattooed across the backs of his fingers. He was the brother of a gay man, Harold, in a time that didn’t accept such cultures. He was a champion of the Black athlete before Selma and the Civil Rights Movement.
“In 1967, they had six black starters on defense, five started in the Pro Bowl when there were seven teams in the conference,” said Cliff Christl, official Packers historian and Green Bay native. “Willie Davis, Dave Robinson, Herb Adderley, Bob Jeter and Willie Wood, and they are all in the Hall of Fame except for Jeter. When they talk about Lombardi having no quotas, that was a big part of his success.”
Former Packers fullback Donny Anderson remembers Lombardi’s ethics striking a similar chord. While much of the NFL was still grappling with the notion of Blacks playing an increasing role in a sport divided by the color line until 1946, Lombardi and the Packers were thriving.
“That was not an issue at all,” Anderson said. “I love to say this because there are only three colors in Green Bay. Green, gold and Italian.”
Today, most think of Lombardi as a coaching savant. While that is true, legions don’t realize the long road he traveled, filled with dead ends due to his advancing age and a vowel at the end of his last name.
Following high school years that had Lombardi considering priesthood, the son of a first-generation immigrant stayed in his native New York to play right guard for the University of Fordham, forever immortalized as one of the Seven Blocks of Granite.
Afterwards, he went to work at St. Cecilia’s High School in Englewood, New Jersey, employed as a teacher and coach. Beginning in 1942 at age 29, Lombardi took a small Catholic school and during his five years as head coach, turned it into a powerhouse. He won five state championships. And, despite having never seen a basketball game, coached the hoops team to a state title in 1945.
From 1947-53, Lombardi served as a college assistant first at his alma mater and then at West Point before landing in the NFL with the New York Giants as an offensive coordinator in 1954.
That same year, the Giants would name Tom Landry their defensive coordinator, despite Landry still playing two more years as a defensive back. Landry, a former Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps., had no issue pulling double duty that season, earning both Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors for the only time in his career.
The Texan and New Yorker combined to make the greatest assistant duo in NFL history, helping New York win a championship in 1956.
After losing the 1958 NFL Championship Game to the Baltimore Colts, Lombardi took Green Bay’s offer to be head coach, finally earning the title at age 45. Many believed Lombardi had previously been blackballed due to his Italian heritage, something that stuck with him throughout his life. As for Landry, he left Gotham a year later, heading to Dallas to jumpstart the expansion Cowboys.
In manner and deed, the two men could not have been more different. Landry was cool and collected, the picture of stoicism in the face of panic. Lombardi was bombastic and caustic, famously willing to challenge any player at a moment’s notice.
For his players, Lombardi’s impact extended well beyond football, touching all the corners of their lives.
“Most of us that played for Vince Lombardi have some rules that we will never forget and we perform under today,” Anderson said. “I’ve had people share this with me, they always say that Vince Lombardi was five minutes ahead of God’s time. I’m always punctual. … I’m an avid golfer, and I’ve probably played 1,000 times, I’ve never missed a tee time. … The clocks in my house are five minutes ahead of time.”
Anderson’s angst for punctuality is shared by at least one teammate forever scared by an initial Lombardi encounter.
“I was a rookie in 1964 and I walked into a meeting at seven o’clock,” said Bob Long, former Packers receiver. “I thought I’ll impress Lombardi by getting there 10 minutes early. I walked into the room at St. Norbert College at 10 minutes to seven and everybody is there. Lombardi is sitting there and said ‘where the hell were you?’ … I promise you, I’ve been at least 10-15 minutes early in all my business meetings. I drive my wife crazy.”
On the field, the two approaches were also in stark contrast. Landry was constantly innovating, ranging from the creation of a “flex” defense — the first iteration of the 4-3 defense — to the shotgun formation. Additionally, he also took the concept of motion into another stratosphere. By the 1970s, Landry had his offensive lineman bobbing up out of their stances before a given play and then back down, concealing where players were moving pre-snap.
Lombardi favored simplistic methods. The Packers relied on repetition and brawn more than guile, showcased by his notoriously small playbooks. Unlike Landry, Green Bay didn’t attempt to fool opponents but simply ran them over with a combination of sweeps and power runs between the tackles. Green Bay never instructed its backs to run through a given crease, but rather to find space and go, something counter to the hyper-specific instructions Landry would hand out for 30 seasons.
“That’s how you win major football,” Anderson said. “You have a system, and you can use (Bill) Belichick in that as one of the best coaches today. You’re there to win and however he motivates those guys, evidently he does a hell of a job. That’s how we think of Lombardi and any guy who played for him would say the same thing. There was no nonsense. You go out there you play football and you don’t make mistakes. I think in Super Bowl I we had one penalty for five yards.”
Perhaps their biggest difference came in the search for talent. Landry and the Cowboys were famously obsessed with computerizing data, trying to parse which players would be ideal fits based on strict criteria. Lombardi was the polar opposite, convinced a man’s heart outweighed physical gifts.
After going to the Washington Redskins as head coach in 1969, Lombardi placed a call to an old hand in dire straits.
Long, who had played with the Atlanta Falcons the year prior, endured a brutal car accident in the offseason. The wreck left him with one leg shorter than the other, sapping him of speed and quickness.
Undeterred, Lombardi demanded Long be his starting flanker. He wanted the veteran’s toughness and reliability. Long would become the only player to take the field for Lombardi in both Green Bay and Washington.
With uneven limbs, Long caught 48 passes for 533 yards. Before that season, with two good legs, Long amassed 47 catches in his five-year career.
Ultimately, history shows that both styles worked, with Lombardi and Landry combining for seven championships and 13 title game appearances.
And on that cold December day in 1967, the two styles collided to create a classic, spotlighting their beliefs and convictions down to the final seconds.
The morning of Dec. 31, 1967 broke bright and clear in Green Bay. It was to begin the coldest nine-day stretch in the city’s history, with the temperature never breaking zero. The sun was present, but so were fierce gusts of Arctic wind. By kickoff, the temperature had dropped to -15, with the wind chill hovering around -40.
“I’m telling you, it was cold,” Long said. “What made the day of the Ice Bowl different was the wind. Wind doesn’t blow at 40 miles per hour all the time. The wind coming out of the west made that game unique.”
For Anderson, the day began with his regular routine. The former Texas Tech star showered, shaved and dressed before jumping into his car, parked in the heated garage of his home. Anderson never turned on the radio to hear about the dire conditions, only discovering them when he saw men trying to start a car with jumper cables.
“I asked them what they were doing and they told me the cold front had come in,” Anderson said. “Here I’m thinking it’s been zero all week and they’re saying the cold front came in. They said it was 20 below.”
Anderson finished his morning with eggs, toast and a few cigarettes, gearing up for an unfathomable situation that bordered on the inhumane.
Going into that afternoon, the Packers were facing uncharted territory. Over their 49-year history, the franchise had only hosted three regular-season and a trio of postseason games in December, including two during the Lombardi era. In those games, including a Dec. 17 contest against the Pittsburgh Steelers only two weeks prior, the temperature hadn’t dipped below 20 degrees. Only once was it below 34 degrees; the 1961 NFC Championship Game.
Christl, a 20-year-old fan at the Ice Bowl, was bundled to the hilt, sitting with parents and brothers. The ticket was $12, including a 35-cent state tax. Sitting in section 18, row 13 and seat 15, Christl was on the 40-yard line, hoping to witness another championship.
“It was a fairly nice day for late December the day before,” Christl said. “We had no expectations it was going to be that cold.”
Readying for the intense chill, Packers’ groundskeepers laid a tarp over the field the previous night. Under the direction of Lombardi, the team had purchased a heating grid the year prior and installed it below the playing surface. However, due to the frigid conditions, the grid failed to properly warm the field, leaving the exposed grass to freeze under a layer of moisture created by the covering.
In essence, the Packers and Cowboys would play on a slab of ice.
At Lambeau Field, Lombardi was preparing for a game. He sent out the quartet of quarterback Bart Starr, center Ken Bowman, safety Willie Wood and kicker Don Chandler to warm up as part of the kicking unit. When they returned to the locker room, Wood had icicles hanging from his mustache, and as Anderson remembers, Starr looked like “Santa Claus” due to the redness of his face.
Led by a thawing Wood, many players didn’t believe the game would be played. There is even a legend that Landry and Lombardi tried to reach NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to discuss rescheduling the game, but couldn’t reach him. As fate would have it, Rozelle was lounging in the Florida sun.
The game would go on, and so would many layers.
“I had some cotton longhandles,” Anderson said. “I cut off from my elbows up and put tape around to keep it from sliding over my shoulders. I did the same thing with my thigh pads. I did the same with the tape around my knee. I wore just a regular winter jersey which was silk, and a dickey around my neck, and that was it. Vince didn’t want anybody wearing gloves except for the offensive and defensive linemen.”
On the game’s first play, referee Norm Schachter put his metal whistle to his mouth and blew. Upon its retreat, Schachter found it stuck to his lips, forcing him to rip both metal and skin off his face. The blood froze instantly, and the rest of the Ice Bowl was played to the shouts of officials commanding players to stop.
Between the pleas and the beginning of the next play, players sought comfort.
“Gale Gillingham was in front of me in the huddle and if there was a timeout or delay of some sort, I would put my hands underneath his armpits to keep my hands and fingers warm,” Anderson remembered.
Going into the title bout, Green Bay was favored by 6.5 points and showed why early. The Packers took a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter on a 46-yard touchdown pass from Bart Starr to Boyd Dowler, their second scoring connection on the day.
Defensively, Green Bay was dominant, stifling a potent Cowboys offense featuring Don Meredith under center. However, some of its success had less to do with physical talent and more because of attention to detail, a Lombardi staple.
“Bob Jeter, Herb Adderley and Willie Wood, they would come over to the sidelines and say we have a clue,” Long recalled. “Bob Hayes was so cold that when he wasn’t going out for a pass, he kept his hands in his pants to keep them warm. The only time he pulled his hands out was when he was supposed to receive a pass. That’s what they call home-field advantage.”
With less than five minutes remaining in the first half, the Packers were backed up at their own 25-yard line. On a dropback, Starr was sacked by defensive lineman Willie Townes and fumbled. George Andrie picked up the ball and rumbled the final seven yards into the end zone, cutting Green Bay’s lead in half. With 32 seconds before the break, Danny Villanueva booted a 21-yard field goal following a muffed punt by Wood, bringing the score to 14-10 at halftime.
Dallas didn’t gain a single first down in the second quarter and scored 10 points.
The third quarter brought a sinking sun and no points for either side. With the ice thickening on the frozen turf, traction was becoming increasingly difficult to find. Finally, on the first play of the fourth quarter, Landry unleashed a gadget play. After taking a pitch to the left, halfback Dan Reeves rose up and lofted a pass along the sideline to Lance Rentzel, who jogged into the end zone for a 50-yard touchdown.
Trailing 17-14, the Packers were up against it. Throughout the second half, Green Bay’s offense dried up, with the team running 31 plays and totaling -9 yards. It was the result of horrific conditions and a looming Doomsday defense, one that amassed eight sacks on Starr.
Following Rentzel’s score, the teams continued to trade punts as time dwindled. The Packers and Cowboys, two teams that had met in a brilliant title game the season prior, were locked in a defensive struggle.
“I didn’t expect, and I don’t think most people expected, the Packers to have any problem with the Cowboys,” Christl said. ” …The Cowboys had played the Packers tough before but the Eastern Conference was considered inferior … You didn’t expect it to be that good of a game. I don’t know at any point I thought the Packers weren’t going to win. By the second half I was more concerned about my fingers and toes than the score.”
When the Cowboys punted for the final time, Green Bay found itself 68 yards from the end zone with 4:50 remaining in regulation. The Packers would have to drive more than half the field into the closed end of the stadium, with a historic defense and time going against them.
The ensuing march would define both a man and his team.
With time short and odds long, the Packers began their assault.
Green Bay moved slowly but efficiently toward the south end zone, picking up six yards on a pass into the flat for Anderson. On second down, journeyman back Chuck Mercein swept around the right edge for seven yards, giving the Packers positive yardage for the half.
Mercein would become a central figure in the drive. Released by the Giants earlier in the ’67 season, Mercein was called by the Redskins, with the two sides verbally agreeing to a deal. Before he could sign, Lombardi called and urged him to reconsider. Mercein did, ending up in Green Bay as a backup to Anderson and Jim Grabowski.
Before the climatic drive, Mercein had amassed 61 total yards in Green Bay, His output would increase exponentially in the frantic final minutes. All told, Mercein accounted for 34 of the drive’s 68 yards, including two carries for 15 yards and a critical 19-yard catch-and-carry to the Dallas 11-yard line.
Anderson and Mercein accounted for all the drive’s yardage save one Dowler reception, with the second-year back doing so in pain. Earlier in the game, Anderson careened out of bounds and landed on his elbow, cracking it. To this day, Anderson can remember the Ice Bowl by looking down and seeing a hole that remains in the crook of his arm.
“That was quite a drive to be able to do that, to be in the game, to see what they were doing,” Anderson recalled. “Coach Landry was taking Bowd Dowler and Carroll Dale away on square outs and turn ins. I was always in position to see if Chuck Howley was blitzing, and he would fall back into the weak side zone to take away Dowler’s position.
“I shared with Bart that I’m over here all by myself, and I’m here if you need me. One of those big plays was a pass of 19 yards where Bart checked, and Landry never changed. He stayed in zone instead man-to-man, and he said later maybe he should have played more man.”
Following runs by Mercein and Anderson, Green Bay faced first and goal from the Dallas 1-yard line. On two consecutive plays, the hardened field would betray the home team. Due to the scoreboard at the top of the stands, any sun that could have warmed the area was blocked. With the resulting shadow, Green Bay was trying in vain to get footing.
Twice, Starr called a dive into the line for Anderson. Twice, the halfback lost his balance, falling inches short of the goal line. After the failure on second down, the Packers were forced into calling their final timeout with 16 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, trailing by a field goal.
Conventional wisdom suggested that Green Bay would attempt to roll out and throw the ball into the end zone. If nothing was open, Starr could throw the ball away and Green Bay would kick an 8-yard field goal, sending the game into overtime. Lombardi, who had been part of the NFL’s first and only overtime game to that point, was open to other ideas.
When Starr came to the sideline, he offered up a call that didn’t exist in Green Bay’s playbook: a quarterback sneak. Lombardi approved, and thus the gutsiest call in NFL history was made.
In the huddle, Starr called for a wedge run, a play designed to go to Mercein. The call was on two. Instead of turning around to hand off, Starr took advantage of his upright position directly behind the line. Following a surge by right guard Jerry Kramer on Cowboys defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, Starr lunged into the end zone.
If the play hadn’t worked, the Packers would have run out of time, inches short of a title. It’s fair to wonder how Lombardi’s legacy would have been altered if the final call of his dynasty was an unnecessary risk that ended in disaster.
Instead, Lombardi’s last moment on the sideline at Lambeau paints a picture of a man with ultimate conviction, making the decision that led to glory.
“The Green Bay Packers, throughout the time Lombardi was coaching, were able to dominate the line of scrimmage with power football,” Christl said. “To me, that call made perfect sense.”
Three days later, the Packers returned to practice. It was 27 degrees below zero. Lombardi ordered them outside.
Every great dynasty has its inevitable fall. The Romans were toppled by Germanic tribes, the Byzantines were swallowed by the Ottomans and the Packers were sacked by Father Time.
Going into the Ice Bowl, more than a single championship was on the line. For Lombardi, a win would mean immortality, becoming the first coach to win three straight titles. While he couldn’t have known it at the time, it would also shape the way time reflected on the Packers.
Looking back at NFL history, teams and titles are typically separated by the pre and post-Super Bowl era. Many people don’t talk about the great teams that came before 1966, the first year of what was originally called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. Few talk about the dominance of the Chicago Bears of the 1940s under George Halas or the greatness of the Cleveland Browns with Otto Graham and Paul Brown in the 50s.
If Green Bay failed to beat Dallas in ’67, it still would have been a dynasty. The Packers would have won four titles in six years, matching what the Pittsburgh Steelers would do a decade later. Nobody would question that Green Bay was the team of the 60s, but without two Super Bowl titles to kick off the burgeoning era, it would be more NFL footnote than modern dynasty.
As it happened, the Packers did beat the Cowboys before trouncing the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. Instead of the final image of Lombardi’s Green Bay tenure being a dejected, freezing coach walking off a gray field, it is of Lombardi being carried off on the shoulders of Kramer with fading sun and Miami palm trees in the background, champion once again.
In the ensuing months, Lombardi would leave coaching for a front office position. The Packers did not win another playoff game until 1982. The Brooklyn native was then briefly considered as a running mate of presidential hopeful Richard Nixon due to his immense popularity, only to find out Lombardi was a stone-cold democrat.
In 1969, Lombardi took over as head coach and minority owner of the Redskins. He led them to their first winning season since 1953, going 7-5-2. In 1970, at age 57, Lombardi abruptly retired due to an aggressive form of colon cancer, dying in September.
Little did the NFL know Lombardi’s final victory with the Packers would also crystallize the changing of the guard. Lombardi, who alternatively represented the old school in his coaching methods and the new school in his progressive social beliefs, was moving on and making room for the anti-establishment wave led by Joe Namath and his flashy white shoes.
As for the pre-merger NFL, its last iconic moment was a quarterback sneak, something symbolic and fitting when one considers the league’s knuckles-in-the-dirt reputation of the day. It was the simplest possible play, the most mundane and unastetically appealing.
In retrospect, the Ice Bowl was a great game won by a great team. It was a touchstone for both coach and players, making one final statement before disappearing into a collective fog of breath.