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Eagles’ 1960 Victory Was an N.F.L. Turning Point
Published: January 6, 2011
PHILADELPHIA — Before winning became the only thing for Vince Lombardi, it remained for a brief period an elusive thing.
For Vince Lombardi, it was his only playoff defeat as the Packers’ coach. From 1961 to ’67, Green Bay captured five titles.
On Dec. 26, 1960, Lombardi experienced his only playoff defeat with Green Bay as his Packers lost to the Eagles, 17-13, in the N.F.L. championship game. Fifty years later, the teams will meet here Sunday in a wild-card matchup.
The Packers’ roster that season resembled a kind of high school yearbook, full of callow promise and distant achievement. Many of the familiar names — Starr, Nitschke, Hornung, Taylor — were present but had not yet coalesced into pro football’s defining team, one that would win five championships from 1961 to 1967, including the first two Super Bowls. It was a dynasty in incubation, not yet hatched.
“That was a pivotal game in our relationship with Coach Lombardi,” guard Jerry Kramer said. “He had come in ’59, worked our butts off. We weren’t sure about him. We went 7-5 that year; everyone’s attitude was, ‘We ought to win, as hard as we worked, but is this guy really able to take us all the way?’ ”
The 1960 championship game was played here at Franklin Field. Kickoff was moved from Sunday to Monday at noon, given the belief — now quaint in the era of ubiquitous television — that Christmas should be a day for devotion and family, not sports.
Snow ringed the field after a frigid week. The crowd reached capacity at 67,325 as portable bleachers seating 7,000 were installed around the stadium track. Still, a local television blackout was enforced, sending many Eagles fans driving to New Jersey or Baltimore to watch the game.
Green Bay was favored, but Philadelphia fans were relieved not to face Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts, who had won N.F.L. titles in 1958 and 1959. Bart Starr seemed less threatening as the Packers’ quarterback; in 1960, he threw four touchdown passes and eight interceptions.
To many Philadelphians, Lombardi was a relatively obscure former assistant with the Giants. His Packers did not yet inspire great fear. The Eagles had won N.F.L. championships in 1948 and 1949 behind the running of Steve Van Buren, and the Packers had won six titles from 1929 to 1944, but both teams had sunk into mediocrity in the 1950’s. In 1958, the Packers won one game and the Eagles two.
“Everyone was scared to death of the Colts,” said Ray Didinger, who attended the 1960 title game as a 14-year-old and is now the resident Eagles authority as a prominent sportswriter and radio and television personality. “The Packers were going to be a walk in the park.”
While the Eagles (10-2) and the Packers (8-4) met on the field, the N.F.L. was undergoing a transformation off it. The recently appointed commissioner, Pete Rozelle, planned to move the league’s offices from suburban Philadelphia to New York. The rival American Football League had formed. And television coverage was becoming paramount.
Months after the 1960 title game, the N.F.L. gained an antitrust exemption from Congress, allowing teams to pool their broadcast rights into a shared package. By 1966, the rival leagues had agreed to merge and, with the Packers in ascendance, pro football began to eclipse baseball as the national pastime.
Although the Colts’ overtime victory against the Giants in the 1958 title game — televised nationally — is widely considered the N.F.L.’s watershed moment, “it might be more accurate to cite that 1960 game — or certainly the events surrounding it — as the N.F.L.’s real turning point,” Frank Fitzpatrick wrote last fall in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The title game started poorly for Philadelphia. On the first play, a deflected pass from quarterback Norm Van Brocklin was intercepted at the Eagles’ 14-yard line. A fumble on the Eagles’ next possession left the Packers 22 yards from the end zone.
Philadelphia escaped with minimal damage. Its defense was anchored by the ferocious Chuck Bednarik, known as Concrete Charlie, who at age 35 played both ways at linebacker and center. After the interception, Bednarik helped smother fullback Jim Taylor on fourth down at the Eagles’ 5-yard line. All Green Bay managed from the second Philadelphia turnover was a field goal by Paul Hornung for a 3-0 lead.
“We never felt we were going to lose,” defensive end Marion Campbell said. “Points are what count, and we didn’t give up many.”
The Eagles took a 7-6 lead in the second quarter on a 35-yard pass from Van Brocklin to flanker Tommy McDonald. Tiny and fleet, McDonald was among the last players of that era to begin wearing a face mask. He slanted inside, broke toward the corner and caught the scoring pass before being pushed into a snowbank.
McDonald had a trick for holding on to the ball. On the road, he sometimes sandpapered the tips of his fingers. At home, he rubbed them briskly on the brick walls at Franklin Field.
“You didn’t make ’em bleed,” McDonald said. “You just made them more sensitive, made the skin stand up so it was a little more dedicated to leather.”
At halftime, the Eagles led by 10-6 after Hornung botched a short field goal. It was a costly miss for a player who ran, passed and kicked for a league scoring record that season. Another Green Bay drive failed on fourth-and-short early in the third quarter. All told, the Packers reached the Eagles’ 5-, 13-, 8- and 7-yard lines, but mustered only 6 points on those possessions.
According to David Maraniss’s book “When Pride Still Mattered,” Lombardi later regretted not attempting two additional easy field goals, saying: “When you get down there, come out with something. I lost the game, not my players.”
Still, the Packers were not done.
Max McGee slalomed for 35 yards on a fake punt, then caught a 7-yard touchdown pass to put Green Bay ahead by 13-10 in the fourth quarter. He ran furtively to the bench, ducking the ire of Lombardi, who had once told McGee, “We punt the ball; we don’t run the ball.”
Kramer said, “It was a great play that helped our chances, but Max knew he was going to get chewed on.”
Philadelphia was again behind, but not panicked.
Van Brocklin, the Hall of Famer known as the Dutchman and playing his final game, was a fierce and gruff leader who carried a coach’s authority on the field. At training camp, according to split end Pete Retzlaff, Coach Buck Shaw would diagram plays, turn to Van Brocklin and say, “That O.K. with you, Dutch?”
On the team’s weekly day off, many players, including Van Brocklin and his ever-present Camel cigarettes, would gather at Donoghue’s bar in West Philadelphia. A number of Eagles lived in a nearby apartment building. These gatherings led to a bonding among players. Tom Brookshier, the star defensive back, once told Didinger, the sportswriter, “Where else would your wife wake you to get you to a bar?”
After McGee’s touchdown, Ted Dean returned the ensuing kickoff 58 yards. He later swept into the end zone from 5 yards and Philadelphia regained the lead, 17-13. Vital minutes ticked away. With 1 minute 20 seconds remaining, Green Bay began its final drive, minus Hornung, who had a pinched nerve in his shoulder. Only a touchdown would suffice.
The Packers reached the Eagles’ 22, out of timeouts. On the game’s final play, Starr swung a pass to Taylor, who bulldozed past two defenders to the 8 before Bednarik and safety Bobby Jackson tag-teamed him to the ground.
Taylor tried to get to his feet, but Bednarik sat on him until time expired. Then, using a choice modifier, he said, “You can get up now, Jim, this game is over.”
Bednarik thrust his hand into the air in celebration and screamed.
“I wanted to kill him,” Kramer said, laughing. “I still call him Cement Head Charlie.”
Though disappointed, the Packers now fully supported Lombardi’s demanding style, Kramer said. Hornung said: “I’ve always remembered Vince’s speech. He told us, ‘We’ll never lose another championship.’ And we didn’t.”
The Eagles, on the other hand, have waited a half-century for another title.
No parade accompanied the 1960 championship. A day or so later at Wanamaker’s department store, Brookshier spotted a set of commemorative drinking glasses, embossed with the victory headline from a local paper. He hoped to be given it as a gift; instead the clerk charged him $10.
Meanwhile, Bobby Walston, the Eagles’ kicker, soon headed for the Pro Bowl in Los Angeles, declining to bring his wife because he wanted to celebrate with the guys, according to Retzlaff, the split end. When Walston returned home, the story goes, his wife had spent a sizable portion of his $5,116 playoff bonus on a fur coat.
“It would have been a lot cheaper,” she said, according to Retzlaff, “to take me to the Pro Bowl.”
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