What made Lombardi great??

[Little Whiskey]

star, hornung, taylor, nitschke

They were all there before Lombardi, and the Packers were the worst team in the league.

your right. I was just trying to be a smart ass.

[run pMc]

I think oregonpackfan nailed a lot of it.

Read "When Pride Mattered". Good biography.

[Maxie the Taxi]

Vince Lombardi was great primarily because…

He believed in mind over matter. He realized that unless a player believes – really believes – he can be a champion, that player doesn’t stand a chance of being a champion. Lombardi spent every second on the job making his players believe in themselves. He turned Ray Nitschke from a cautious, doubting Thomas into a self-confident leader of the defense by making him believe in himself.

He was a master of treating every player the same by treating each player differently. He learned each player’s unique set of motivational buttons and set about pushing them remorselessly. He’d find out who needed a kick in the ass and gave it too them in spades. He’d find out who required dispassionate, reasoned teaching and supply it. He treated Starr with kid gloves because Starr couldn’t handle harsh, public chewings out. He’d mercilessly tongue lash Hornung and McGee because he knew they could take it and needed it.

He was a practitioner of the KISS method of management. He kept it simple. He believed football games were won by the players who blocked and tackled best. All of his schemes were basic and simple. He was a perfectionist, running simple plays over and over and over again until every block was perfectly executed. He believed that the way to beat an opponent was to attack and defeat the opponent’s strongest asset. If an opponent was strongest at stopping the run, he’d have his offense run right at that defense time and time and time again until in time it cracked. He believed that if you take away the opponent’s best weapon you force him to play off balance, relying on weapons he’s not used to wielding.

He was a master at delegating. He put Phil Bengtson in charge of the defense; he concentrated on the offense. He never undercut Phil’s authority. When he blustered, Bengston was the perfect good cop to Lombardi’s bad. Phil shared Lombardi’s fondness for the KISS principle. When, later in his career, Herb Adderley went to play for the Dallas Cowboys, Herb recounted that the Cowboys’ defensive playbook was as thick as the Dallas Yellow Pages. Green Bay’s defensive playbook, Adderley said, consisted of 10 pages!

He was a great General Manager. Although his college drafts weren’t extraordinary, he recognized talent on film and realized how that talent would best fit into his system. He used Hornung not as a quarterback but exclusively as a halfback. He traded for Henry Jordan and Willie Davis. Against all logic he used the undersized Jordan exclusively as a defensive tackle allowing Jordan to excel at that position. He broke some NFL taboos. He brought in NFL rejects like Chuck Mercein and Big Ben Wilson (I think he ticked off an owner or two by signing these guys off practice squads) and they performed under pressure and in the clutch.

He was where the buck stopped and demanded loyalty to the Packers above all. He refused to deal with agents. Legend has it he sent Jim Ringo packing because Ringo had the audacity to hire an agent. When Packer legend Jim Taylor signed as a pseudo-free agent with the New Orleans Saints, it is said Lombardi refused to speak to him until, eventually, they spoke after they both had retired.

Lombardi was the epitomy of “old school.” He taught character, principles and old school values like dedication, loyalty, perseverance and courage. Virtually every player interviewed after his death commented not on what Lombardi taught them about football but what Lombardi had taught them about life.

Lombardi was an anachronism even in his own era. He believed in black and white, good and bad, right and wrong, and he practiced what he preached.

[retailguy]

your right. I was just trying to be a smart ass.

I guess you pulled it off... :P