Vince Lombardi carried off the field by Jerry Kramer at the end of Super Bowl II
When the NFL talks about winning coaches, one name towers above all others…Vince Lombardi. He was a leader of men and motivated the Green Bay Packers to great heights in the 1960’s. His team won half the NFL championships of the 1960’s while appearing in 6 total. No team has won more than four in a decade in the modern era. Yet when folks talk about a three-peat, everyone keeps forgetting Lombardi and his Packers achieved this feat.
Think about that for a second… Chuck Noll would have had to take the 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers to two more Super Bowls to equal that feat. Yet there is debate on who was the greater team. You have to give the edge to Green Bay because they did win three in a row. When they say no one has achieved this in the Super Bowl era, that isn’t entirely true.
The two that concluded this 3 year period were victories in Super Bowl I & II. Yet there is one season that seems to go overlooked of the Lombardi Packers…the 1965 NFL Championship team.
The 1961 Packers were known for Lombardi’s first championship. It’s the 1962 team that was remembered as Lombardi’s greatest and strongest team. Only a Thanksgiving Day ambush 26-14 loss to the Lions kept them from going undefeated. They were 13-1 while outscoring the opposition 415-148 while repeating as champions. Of course his ’66 squad won the first Super Bowl and the ’67 team was known for winning The Ice Bowl then Lombardi’s last game, Super Bowl II.
However when you go back to 1965, the Green Bay Packers were trying to re-establish themselves among the NFL elite. They had a chance to win 3 in a row after ’61 & ’62, however Paul Hornung’s season long suspension for gambling short circuited that effort. After watching the Bears and Colts win their conference in 1963 and 1964, the Packers were back to contend. Â However there was a new bully on the block. The Cleveland Browns powered by Jim Brown had won it all in 1964, and were looking to repeat in 1965 to take their place among greatest league champions.
In their 23-12 victory over Cleveland, the Packers not only ended Jim Brown’s playing career on a down note, they would be the last to hold the rotating NFL trophy that moved from champion to champion. The following year was the first to be played under the merger agreement and the Tiffany Company started to produce a Super Bowl Trophy every year. Lombardi had driven his team back to prominence where they would sit atop the football world for three years. They had unseated a reigning champion to do it. That can’t be underscored.
The Ed Thorpe NFL Championship Trophy for 1965. No one knows where the one all the teams held is.
After defeating the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II, Vince Lombardi stepped down as coach. He had his secretary draft his resignation letter which sits in the Packers Hall of Fame:
After winning 99 games in 9 years, 6 conference championships, and five world championships, how does one follow that type of success?? Most of the Packers players had mainly played for Vince Lombardi and were used to his demanding, driving spirit. Bart Starr, Jerry Kramer, Fuzzy Thurston, Ray Nitschke, Willie Davis, Forrest Gregg, and Herb Adderley had all grown up Lombardi. Now as we look back should they have replaced the Green Bay legend with a coach that was similar in temperament??
Vince Lombardi will always be seen as the gold standard when it comes to NFL coaches. One unique aspects of his tenure and times are the broken stereotypes that were forged through his career. It was thought of at the time he wouldn’t become a head coach or be successful because of his Italian and Catholic roots. It was one of the reasons he didn’t succeed New York Giant Head Coach Jim Lee Howell, whom he served as Offensive Coordinator during the championship years 1956-1958. Only once he was hired and successful in Green Bay did they try to lure him back. Ironically he beat the Giants for his first two championships. Prejudice is bad for business.
Furthermore the NFL during that time was one where black players were unable to play the “thinking” positions on defense such as linebacker or safety. There had to be a sensitivity to that plight because of the stigmas Lombardi himself faced. Although Willie Wood was unable to play quarterback in the pros, he went on to be an 8 time Pro bowl participant and became a Hall of Fame player. The same for Linebacker Dave Robinson, who was just elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame this past February.
Ryan and The Chancellor at Vince Lombardi’s statue outside Lambeau Field 9/21/17.
One reason his legend has become so large is he passed away in 1970, just 3 seasons removed from coaching his great Packer teams. This leads to several question. He coached the Washington Redskins to a 7-5-2 record in his only season of 1969. Ironically his first season in Green Bay was 7-5 in 1959.
- Would he have completed the rebuild of the Washington Redskins?? Remember they did play in Super Bowl VII just 3 years later.
- Would his legend have been damaged had he only a  moderately successful career had he lived longer and coached the Redskins into the mid 1970’s??
- If he had gone back to New York and coached the Giants in 1960 would he have been as successful as he went on to become in Green Bay??
Green Bay Packers 1965 NFL Championship Ring
After his passing in September of 1970, the NFL decided to name the Super Bowl Trophy in his honor. Â In such a condensed time of 9 years, his teams won 5 championships. Don Shula, the NFL’s all time winningest coach won 2 in 33 years. Tom Landry won 2 in 29 years. All time greatest coach in NFL history?? You better believe it. Of all his great teams, it’s the 1965 team that seems to be forgotten. After all they were the first in the only successful three-peat in NFL history won on the field, and is the chief reason he’s immortalized.
Sitting at Vince Lombardi’s Desk inside The Packers Hall of Fame at Lambeau.
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Taylor Blitz Times 
Unless you actually think that Buffalo beats Green Bay in a hypothetical 1965 Super Bowl, you simply HAVE TO treat ’65-thru-’67 as a legitimate three-peat by that very Dynasty!
I certainly see it as such! All due respect to those ’65 Bills, first off they were a step down or so from what they were the previous AFL Championship campaign. Second, this is LOMBARDI’S PACKERS we’re discussing! Back to championship-form again in ’65, no one in the NFL was going to top them, yet alone an AFL champ, as long as Vince was still their head coach! Or, at least, not for the next three years!
In my opinion, the ’64 Bills are the only pre-SB AFL champ who would have at least given a challenge to the NFL champ (Browns). Everyone talks about Chargers giving Halas’s Bears a game in ’63 but (with all due respect to Sid) I disagree.
The Packers and Browns of 1964 & 1965 reminds me of the Steelers and Cowboys of ’77 & ’78. Browns win-it-all in ’64 but still lose to GB in the regular season; didn’t have to meet them in the post-season. Same with Dallas in ’77. They win-it-all but still lose to Pittsburgh in the regular season; not having to meet them in the post-season either. Both ’64 Packers and ’77 Steelers were just “good”, not the champs they just recently were. Then they both return to that very form the next year and beat the very defending-champs in their respective title games!
As much a Steeler-fan I am while holding that ’70s Dynasty in SUCH Legendary HIGH esteem, there’s no looking past FIVE titles in a seven season stretch! Not to mention…a THREE-PEAT nestled in! And although “almost” is only good in horseshoes, the Pack was REAL CLOSE to winning-it-all in 1960 already at Bednarik’s Eagles!
Guy Chamberlin’s Bulldogs of 1922-thru-’24, and Curly Lambeau’s 1929-thru-’31 Packers had themselves three-peats of their own albeit each in the pre-League Championship Game era. And one can only wonder if back-to-back champ, George Halas, would have waited until the end of the ’42 campaign before enlisting – AT AGE 47 – in WWII (also having served in WWI), if he would have not only completed the three-peat, but punched-in the very first unbeaten and untied NFL season 30 years in-advance?
And how about Paul Brown’s 1946-thru-’49 teams? If you think that each of those four AAFC champs were already “ready” for the NFL (which I think they already were; even BETTER than when they finally joined in 1950), then maybe the Browns would have had an NFL three-peat as well!
I think so!
Halas’s ’46 Bears were deserving but simply a ‘mere’ championship team. Nothing special, nothing “all-time-great” about them. Now Conzelman/Trippi’s Cardinals of the following year? It would have been quite a tall task. But I give the Browns the edge thus the win. 1948? 14-0, as would a certain squad 24 years later, but DOMINANT! They beat the Eagles thus three-peat as well. Now the following year…I say nada. That ’49 Eagles champ (Concrete Charlie’s rookie year) was REAL superior, and – though winning the AAFC yet again – the ’49 Browns were, in my opinion, lesser than the previous three installments.
Lombardi is the best NFL head coach EVER! For a little while recently, I wondered if the reason for thinking it is because I actually do see him as #1 all-time; or because I’m afraid that the sacrilege-police will come and take me away if I think someone else (Belichick, Brown) may be better. But I’m confident enough to feel that it’s because of the former.
Every single season he coached he had a winning season! Took over a 1-win Packers team in ’59 who hadn’t won in years yet immediately posts a winner! Ten years later he takes over a Washington team that hadn’t won in a long time either and an instant-winner as well! Such THICK competition the NFL had in the ’60s! Sherman/Huff/Gifford/Tittle’s Giants…Browns & #32…Shula’s Colts & Johnny U…Halas’s Bears…Schmidt’s Lions…George Allen and the Fearsome Foursome…Landry’s Cowboys… …and Vince wins FIVE in that very Era!
Whether the Raiders do or don’t beat the two-time-defending-Champs in the ’76 AFC Championship anyway even if Franco & Rocky play, one thing that could be said in favor of Vince…he completing his three-peat in ’67 without having TAYLOR and HORNUNG anymore! And don’t let the 9-4-1 finish fool you. GB had things wrapped up at 9-2-1 yet still were a blocked punt away from beating George Allen’s regular season juggernaut, Rams, penultimate week at the Coliseum (then they lose the finale to Austin’s Steelers but, again, they had the division won weeks ago). They crush Rams for the conference title, 28-7, and then beat an outstanding Landry team yet again for the ‘formality’ two weeks later (and – again – without Taylor/Hornung)!
In chronological order, my ‘Rushmore’ of NFL head coaches is Halas, Brown, LOMBARDI, and Belichick!
PS – Nice factoid is that Vince’s final season was Chuck Noll’s first with the Steelers. Both met that very season, at Pitt Stadium, in Week #6 with Lombardi winning, 14-7 (however, Landry beat Vince twice that year – the only two times he ever beat him). In Chuck Noll’s final season, 1991, he coached twice against Belichick who was in his first season as a head coach at Cleveland. Belichick won the first game – at Cleveland – with Noll winning the second one which was the season finale (his final game-period) at Three Rivers.
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Thank you great edition ❤️ Sent from my iPad
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If anything, 1965 was probably the key year of the Packers run during the 1960’s, even more so than is stated here. The Colts, Green Bay’s main rival at the time, had won 2 NFL Championships in the late 1950’s when Unitas was young, and then the Packers won 2 early in the 1960’s as noted. The Colts had restocked their team from the 1950’s with some younger players and had won the Western Division in 1964, and their loss to Cleveland in the 1964 NFL championship was considered a major upset. For much of the 1965 season, Baltimore seemed to again have the upper hand, but injuries took a heavy toll on both teams late in the year and they wound up tied at the end, leading to the famous playoff game in which Colts running back Tom Matte had to play QB for them. Green Bay prevailed only barely, and went on to beat Cleveland for the championship that year, along with the first two Super Bowls in the following years.
Sports Illustrated’s lead NFL writer, Tex Maule, covered the Packer Colts rivalry in these years on a regular basis, and his work is available at the SI Vault archive for anyone interested – which also includes a lot of great photo’s included in the magazine from that era.
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Good ole Tex Maule… he was the NFL writer in that era
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Thanks Jef ,great work,thank you
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I had the pleasure of living in Green Bay in 62-67 aged 7-12 just up the street from players like Jerry Kramer. Bob Skoronski, Henry Jordan,and Jimmy Taylor.
Truly a magical time and a great football team the likes of which will never be seen again.
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I think most football fans don’t know enough about the 60’s era Packers. I didn’t even know a lot about them, as I was too young to enjoy football in the early/mid 60’s. Its a shame that the NFL didn’t keep any tv broadcasts of this great team, so people could see their greatness. Sure, there are highlight films, but that doesn’t do a great team justice!
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