Original Article May 1, 2013 – Updated August 28, 2028
When the NFL talks about winning coaches, one name towers above all others…Vince Lombardi. He was a leader of men who drove the Green Bay Packers to unprecedented heights in the 1960s. His teams won half of the NFL championships during the decade while appearing in six championship games overall. No other team has won five championships in a decade in the modern era.
Yet when folks talk about a three-peat, everyone seems to forget that Lombardi and his Packers already achieved the feat.
Think about that for a second…Chuck Noll would have had to take the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers to two more Super Bowls to equal that feat. Yet there is still debate over which dynasty was greater. You have to give the edge to Green Bay because the Packers did something Pittsburgh didn’t—they won three championships in a row.
So when people say no team has achieved a three-peat in the Super Bowl era, that isn’t entirely true.
The final two championships of that three-year run came with victories in Super Bowls I and II. Yet there is one season of the Lombardi Packers that seems to get overlooked…the 1965 NFL Championship team.
The 1961 Packers were known for Lombardi’s first championship. The 1962 team is remembered by many as Lombardi’s greatest and strongest team. Only a 26-14 Thanksgiving Day ambush by the Detroit Lions kept them from going undefeated. They finished 13-1 while outscoring the opposition 415-148 on their way to repeating as NFL champions.
Of course, his ’66 squad won the first Super Bowl, while the ’67 team became immortalized by winning the Ice Bowl and then Lombardi’s final game as Packers head coach, 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 three in a row after ’61 and ’62, but Paul Hornung’s season-long suspension for gambling helped short-circuit that effort.
After watching the Bears and Colts win the Western Conference in 1963 and 1964, the Packers were back to contend. However, there was a new bully on the block. The Cleveland Browns, powered by the great Jim Brown, had won it all in 1964 and were looking to repeat in 1965 to take their place among the league’s great champions.
In their 23-12 victory over Cleveland, the Packers not only ended Jim Brown’s playing career on a down note, they became the final team to hold the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy, the NFL championship trophy that had traditionally passed from champion to champion.
The following season was the first played under the NFL-AFL merger agreement, and Tiffany & Co. began producing a new trophy for the Super Bowl champion each year.
Lombardi had driven his team back to prominence, where they would sit atop the football world for three straight years. They had unseated the reigning NFL champions to do it.
That can’t be underscored enough.
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 aspect of his tenure was the stereotypes he broke throughout his career. At the time, there were those who questioned whether he would 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 Giants Head Coach Jim Lee Howell, under whom Lombardi served as offensive coordinator during the championship years of 1956-1958.
Only after Lombardi was hired and became successful in Green Bay did the Giants try to lure him back. Ironically, he beat the Giants for his first two NFL championships.
Prejudice is bad for business.
Furthermore, the NFL during that era was one where Black players faced barriers to playing what were considered the “thinking” positions, such as quarterback, linebacker and safety. Lombardi had to have some sensitivity to that plight because of the stigmas he himself had faced.
Although Willie Wood was unable to play quarterback in the pros, he went on to become an eight-time Pro Bowl selection at safety and eventually a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Linebacker Dave Robinson also became a Hall of Famer, joining Wood as another great Black player who flourished under Lombardi in Green Bay.
Vince Lombardi’s accomplishments had already made him a legend. But his death in 1970, just three seasons removed from coaching his great Packers teams, forever froze his image near the height of his football powers. It also leaves us with several fascinating questions.
He coached the Washington Redskins to a 7-5-2 record in his only season there in 1969. Ironically, Lombardi’s first season in Green Bay produced a similar 7-5 record 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?
After his passing in September 1970, the NFL named the Super Bowl trophy in his honor. In the condensed span of just nine seasons as head coach of the Packers, Lombardi’s teams won five NFL championships. Don Shula, the NFL’s all-time winningest coach, won two championships in 33 years. Tom Landry won two in 29 years.
The greatest coach in NFL history? You better believe it.
Yet of all his great teams, it’s the 1965 Packers who seem to be forgotten.
After all, they were the first champions of the only three-peat in NFL history won on the field. That three-year run helped immortalize Vince Lombardi and ensured that every Super Bowl champion that followed would ultimately raise a trophy bearing his name.
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With 3 Hall of Famers from Lombardi’s Great 1965 team: Jerry Kramer, Paul Hornung, & Dave Robinson.
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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.
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.
Good ole Tex Maule… he was the NFL writer in that era
Thanks Jef ,great work,thank you
[…] threepeat or 3 NFL Championships in a row…only time it’s been done in the modern era…1965-1966-1967…concluded with Super Bowl II win over the Oakland Raiders 33-14 and included the […]
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.
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!