Vince Lombardi and the Turnaround

In December of nineteen fifty-eight, the Green Bay Packers finished their season with a record of one win and ten losses and one tie. Six future Hall of Fame players were on that roster. The problem was not the talent.

The problem was the coaching. On February second, nineteen fifty-nine, the Packers hired a forty-five-year-old offensive coordinator from the New York Giants named Vince Lombardi, who had never been a head coach at any level above high school. He arrived in Green Bay and immediately told the franchise's executive committee something that must have startled them: I want it understood that I am in complete command here.

The nineteen fifty-nine Packers went seven and five, more wins than the previous three seasons combined. Lombardi was named Coach of the Year in his first season. By nineteen sixty-one he had his first NFL championship.

By nineteen sixty-seven he had won five. His overall regular-season record in Green Bay was eighty-nine wins, twenty-nine losses, and four ties. His only postseason loss in Green Bay came in his first trip to the championship game, after the nineteen fifty-nine season; he then won nine straight.

Three consecutive NFL championships, nineteen sixty-five, sixty-six, and sixty-seven, remain unmatched in the modern era. No team has done it since postseason play expanded in nineteen thirty-three. Lombardi left after the sixty-seven season for Washington and died of cancer in nineteen seventy, two months after the stadium was renamed in his honor.

Lambeau Field had originally been called Green Bay City Stadium when it opened in September of nineteen fifty-seven. It became Lombardi's monument eight years later, and carries both men's legacies today. What he built here was specific to this place: a small, frozen, lake-effect city holding the most demanding expectations in American professional football.

He met them.