Pack Burdened by Title Legacy

GREEN BAY, Wis. — The fans had been coming at him for more than two hours, still in awe after 29 years, and Jerry Kramer, the best-known offensive guard to play in the NFL, obliged them all with a look at his Super Bowl ring, his prediction for today’s NFC championship game against Carolina, and tales of wonderful bygone days for the Green Bay Packers.

Thirteen seconds to play in the 1967 NFL championship game at Lambeau Field and the Packers are losing, 17-14, to the hated Dallas Cowboys. The temperature is 13 degrees below zero, the windchill is minus-46, and Green Bay has the ball, fourth down on the Dallas one-yard line.

“I kind of suggested the play on Thursday the week before the game, so I felt the pressure of going ahead and making the block because I had opened my trap,” Kramer is saying, and he has told the story a million times, but not nearly enough for Packer fans who want to hear it over and over again.

Quarterback Bart Starr takes the snap, steps right behind the block of Kramer and falls into the end zone with a 21-17 victory--the Packers’ fifth NFL title--and the last for the next 29 years.

“Ordinarily, when a quarterback would score on a play like that, there would be a big pileup and the guy on TV would say, ‘Starr scores,’ ” Kramer says. “But they had just invented the stuff to do instant replay and they kept showing it over and over so everyone could see my block. Thank God for instant replay.”

Kramer penned a book, “Instant Replay,” and while it was expected to sell 5,000 copies, the book sold 350,000 hardbacks and three million paperbacks. One good block at a time when everyone was watching.

“I remember feeling only relief because I had suggested the play and if it hadn’t worked. . . .” Kramer says, and everyone around him nods in understanding: Coach Lombardi would have been mad.

And now the fans are leaning forward--the very presence of Vince Lombardi being felt through the man who was there through it all.

“We kind of sensed that this was it for Vince [Lombardi] in Super Bowl II, the last game, and I remember at halftime telling the guys, ‘Let’s go out and win it for the old man,’ ” Kramer was saying, and had the president of the United States been speaking nearby he would have been asked to be quiet.

“We won, the game’s over and I remember saying to Forrest [Gregg], ‘Let’s give him a ride,’ ” Kramer says, and a fan has pushed the picture with smiling Lombardi being hoisted above Kramer and Gregg before him for his autograph. “Wonderful picture.

“I personally had a very antagonistic relationship with Coach Lombardi in the early years, and it was not a love affair. He expected a lot more out of me than I was willing to give and he wanted a lot more than I thought I had, and I resented the pushing and the screaming.

“But this was the end of a great era, and it was just a wonderful feeling with the old man up there on my shoulder. Great, great times; great, great memories.”

It has been 29 years of failure since: 33 more regular-season defeats than victories in that miserable time. Twenty-nine years since the Packers defeated the Raiders, 33-14, in Super Bowl II. Twenty-nine years since the Ice Bowl, the last championship game in Titletown USA.

“What people outside Green Bay don’t understand is that for us to be validated as a great team, we’ve got to exorcise all these ghosts of the Willie Woods, the Willie Davises, the Bart Starrs,” Packer defensive end Sean Jones told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this week.

“The pressure that America is putting on us is tiny compared to that. I am convinced that the Ray Nitschkes and those guys, they think we stink. They probably don’t think we could have played with them. There’s much more pressure to prove something to those guys, who have such a legacy in this league. So the only thing that validates us is a championship.”

ESPN recently broadcast a show called “Inside Titletown USA,” and while it appeared to be a flattering piece, Packer management revoked ESPN’s one-on-one interviewing privileges this week because the show dedicated too much time to the Lombardi era.

“We certainly understand and respect what [Lombardi] did, but it’s like enough already,” said Ron Wolf, Packer general manager.

The Mike Holmgren Packers have embraced yesteryear and for the last few years have invited the former greats to walk the sideline and work as game team captains. But the last man to bring a championship to Green Bay was Vince Lombardi and his legendary warriors.

“I was a part of a very special team, and I’m sure the guys in between then and now didn’t experience the same feelings, the same emotion, the same relationships that we did,” says Kramer, who has retired to hunt and fish in Idaho. “There was a definitely a resentment with previous teams who were sick and tired of being compared to the old Lombardi Packers.

“I will admit, a few years after I left I wasn’t terribly upset that they didn’t go to the Super Bowl and erase all our records and memories. But as the years rolled on and we got 10 years down the road, OK, let’s go, let’s win--you guys are an embarrassment now. After 20 years, it was like, ‘What the hell is going on here?’

“Finally it seems like they have it together.”

The Packers, after all, are playing the Carolina Panthers. They have them at Lambeau Field, where they have won 27 of their last 28 games and all eight playoff games played there. Game-time temperatures are supposed to be in the single digits with the windchill dropping below zero, and in 18 previous games played here in temperatures below 35 degrees, Packer quarterback Brett Favre has compiled an 18-0 record with 40 touchdown passes and only eight interceptions.

The Panthers, a second-year expansion team, have won eight in a row, but all four of their losses came on the road this season, and as a franchise they have yet to play in temperatures below the freezing mark.

“I’d like it to be 60 degrees, but I don’t have it my way,” Carolina linebacker Sam Mills said.

The good people of Green Bay, who won’t feel 60 degrees for five more months, were hoping to witness the demise of the Dallas Cowboys today.

“We realize the fans wanted Dallas,” Carolina quarterback Kerry Collins said. “But we beat the Cowboys, so they’re not coming. We’re an unwanted team for a bunch of reasons.”

The Panthers are not flashy on offense, relying on the running of Anthony Johnson and the high-percentage passes of Collins to tight end Wesley Walls. Carolina’s formula for success is forcing the opposition to turn the ball over because of its inability to deal with a blitzing defense. And with the game still close in the fourth quarter, it’s up to kicker John Kasay to win it.

“It seems like we’re a bunch of misfits,” Johnson said. “We certainly have our share of castoffs, but that’s OK, because we’ve done pretty well.”

The Packers, who lost last year’s NFC championship game in Dallas, 38-27, not only have Favre but a group of players who work to excel so that they might have the chance to leap into the stands. They also have a Reggie White-led defense that led the NFC with 39 takeaways and ranked No. 1 against the pass and No. 1 overall in the league.

“These people deserve another championship,” Kramer was saying, while signing autographs and adding No. 64 below each distinctive signature.

“It’s like they’ve been waiting 29 years between Christmas presents, and it’s Christmas morning and they’re going to go nuts. And I am excited as hell for them.”