The (Old) Pack Is Back : Long Super Bowl Absence Has Former Green Bay Greats Giddy With Anticipation While Recalling Their Heyday

NEW ORLEANS —  What’s it like to make the Super Bowl every three decades? Says Willie Wood: “You miss three decades of hype.”

Said Jim Taylor: “Thirty years is a long time between team parties. We’re having a ball here.”

Wood and Taylor are both Hall of Famers. They were on the Green Bay team that won Super Bowls I and II.

And along with a dozen other old Packers, they’re both here for Game XXXI, which presents Green Bay against New England next Sunday in the Packers’ first Super Bowl appearance since 1968.

“We’re having a reunion all week,” says former fullback Taylor, who lives in nearby Baton Rouge, where he manages investment properties. “It’s like old times except that today, they’re handing the ball to someone else.”

In the years when they handed it to Taylor, “everyone had trouble stopping Green Bay,” he says. “And the thing I like about today’s Packers is that after all the passing they did earlier in the year, they’ve finally learned to run. When you are running the ball, the other guys can’t score.”

The thing Wood likes about this team is that it has swept him back into the Super Bowl hype.

“The media attention is fun, if you like it, and I like it,” he says.

To be in New Orleans, Wood, the former USC quarterback who played safety for Green Bay, has taken a week off from his job as a mechanical contractor in Washington, D.C., where his firm installs ventilators, sometimes for the government.

He likes dealing with the United States.

“You know you’ll get paid,” he says.

Wood and the other old Green Bay champions, whose role this week is to discuss two Packer eras, have arrived at two conclusions:

--Their team, as coached by Vince Lombardi, would beat this Green Bay team.

--This Packer team will beat New England, extending the NFC’s winning streak to 13.

“Our team rose to every challenge in the 1960s,” said Hall of Fame defensive end Willie Davis. “And if we played these guys, we’d rise again.”

Now a Marina del Rey businessman with a University of Chicago master’s degree, Davis owns two radio stations in California and two in Wisconsin, his two favorite states.

“What’s bothered me most about the NFL this year is the horror in Texas,” he says of the Dallas Cowboys’ recurring scandals. “I’m very glad to say that something is still very right in Green Bay. But I wouldn’t take any team that ever played over a Lombardi team.”

Neither would Max McGee, the wide receiver who, on his biggest day in football, caught two touchdown passes for the Packers in the first Super Bowl.

“I’d hate to line up against this year’s team, though,” said McGee, who once owned a restaurant chain in Minneapolis, then sold it to serve the Packers as a game-day announcer. “They’d outweigh us 40-50 pounds a man. Their quarterback, Brett Favre, [weighs] 225. Ours, Bart Starr, was 195.”

Starr, who isn’t here yet, lives in Birmingham, Ala., where his new firm develops and maintains medical office buildings.

Ray Nitschke is one of the few still living in Green Bay. A Hall of Fame linebacker, Nitschke said the difference between the 1967 and 1996 Packers is that “these people have never won the NFL.”

The 1960s Packers, before flying to Los Angeles for the first Super Bowl, had already won four NFL titles.

“We had more big-game experience,” says Nitschke, who is now the spokesperson for a Beloit, Wis., firm that sells pens, paintbrushes, pots and pans. “But I love these Packers too.”

Why did it take them 30 years to get back to the Super Bowl?

Says McGee: “After Lombardi left, they kept looking for another Lombardi. They finally realized that what they really need is a good man in the front office, and four years ago our CEO, Bob Harlan, found him, Ron Wolf. The next time I looked, Wolf’s three quarterbacks were Brett Favre, the NFL’s two-year MVP; Mark Brunell, now starting for Jacksonville, and Ty Detmer, now starting for the Eagles.”

*

Hall of Famer Paul Hornung, the Golden Boy who was the superstar of the 1960s Packers--as runner, receiver and even passer--is now a Louisville, Ky., businessman. He missed the first AFC-NFC game because of a shoulder injury, but saw it from the bench. And, commenting from Florida, where he is on vacation, he says, “Willie Wood’s interception turned things around.”

It happened in the third quarter, when Lombardi, leading by a mere 14-10, was beginning to worry.

“Four points,” McGee says. “And Lombardi wanted to win by 75.”

Kansas City Coach Hank Stram’s novel offense was making it close, Wood says, “with rollouts, bootlegs, waggles, delay plays and other things away from the flow.”

The Chiefs could get by with all that, Stram knew, because Lombardi frowned on blitzing defenses for a reason he verbalized many times: “The blitz is a sign of weakness.”

But nothing is forever. Lombardi, who frowned on passing too had eliminated Dallas with passes two weeks earlier. And now, pigeon-holing his principles again, he ordered Green Bay’s linebackers to blitz Kansas City quarterback Len Dawson whenever, Wood says, “the action was away from the flow.”

In good time, sure enough, there Dawson was, out on a naked bootleg. And reacting instantly, Green Bay linebacker Lee Roy Caffey was on him the moment he turned to throw.

“Lenny didn’t see Lee Roy in time to set up,” Wood says. “His pass just floated out there with nothing on it. It was an easy interception.”

And a long runback, 50 yards.

At last, Green Bay was in position to make it a rout.

*

The most famous Packer socializers were roommates Hornung and McGee, who spent the night before the first Super Bowl out on the town.

At 4 a.m., tiring, Hornung returned to the Packer hotel, where his wake-up call came at 6:15.

“At that ungodly hour,” Hornung said later, “McGee woke me climbing in the window.”

Neither expected to play. Hornung was hurt and McGee was an old man of 34.

During the first half, “We were sitting at the end of the bench planning the Golden Boy’s marriage and Las Vegas bachelor’s party,” McGee recalls. “Suddenly, someone shouted McGee. And I thought I recognized the voice.”

It was Lombardi’s.

“I figured he’d just heard that I overstayed curfew,” McGee says, “and had decided to fine me on national television.”

Instead, as starter Boyd Dowler limped off because of an injury, McGee trotted into a game that would immortalize him as the catcher of seven passes for the 138 yards that kept Green Bay moving to four touchdowns.

Scoring twice “was the easy part,” he says. “The hard part was getting Hornung up the next morning.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Identifying the Packers

Here are the identifications for the Green Bay Packers who prominently appear in the C1 photo illustration from top left, counterclockwise:

1. Boyd Dowler (uniform no. 86), split end.

2. Herb Adderley (26), left corner.

3. Jerry Kramer (64), guard.

4. Jim Taylor (31), fullback.

5. Elijah Pitts (22), halfback.

6. Ray Nitschke (56), middle linebacker.

7. Bart Starr (15), quarterback.