..Jim Taylor....one tough fullback.
Posted on 01/15/2007 6:27:30 AM PST by yankeedame
Vince Lombardi coaching a team quarterbacked by Bart Starr. Has there ever been a better football team, ever? I didn't think so.
These are always fun discussions and involve a lot of subjective judgement when comparing teams from different eras, but I think a case can be made that the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s were the greatest team of all time -- and the 1989 team in particular stood out above them all.
My memory of this comes from the goal line stand keeping Dallas out. Worth a mention in the irony class, the first Dallas pro team was the Dallas Texans, owned by Lamar Hunt. The team cratered both financially and on the field. Lamar packed up in high dudgeon and went to Kansas.
The 9ers were good, and Joe Montana was one of the best. But Bart Starr and Lombardi were not only great, they defined greatness in the NFL.
And as for any given team, I think the Cowboys' 72 team, which had Packer great Forrest Gregg, Bears great Mike Ditka, Chargers great Lance Alworth, plus the usual stars (Lilly, Renfro, Staubach, Calvin Hill, Duane Thomas, Bob Hayes) was as great a team as there ever was, including the Miami Dolphins of the following year.
Television coverage of Super Bowl I was blacked out in Southern California, so we had to listen to the game on the radio. However, dics jockeys on the rock station KRLA--a music station at 1110 kilocycles on the AM band, not the present-day conservative talk station at 870 kc.--and its rival, "Boss Radio" station KHJ, were giving out instructions as to how to make a "Super Bowl antenna" from coat hangers so as to pick up a televised broadcast of the game from San Diego.
They were #6 in total offense (#2 in scoring offense), #1 in total defense (#1 in scoring defense), and had about 12-15 Pro Bowl caliber players on their roster. And all the silly nonsense surrounding William (The Refrigerator) Perry overshadowed the fact that this may have been the finest defensive front seven ever to play in the NFL.
..Jim Taylor....one tough fullback.
LS said "Bah. The Dallas Cowboys have been in more Super Bowls (eight) than anyone and won as many as anyone (five). You define greatness by the test of time. Lombardi had a good Packer team, but sucked when he went elsewhere. And the Pack took 20 years to recover from his loss."
Here are the facts:
Most Seasons League Champion
12 Green Bay, 1929-1931, 1936, 1939, 1944, 1961-62, 1965-67, 1996
9 Chi. Bears, 1921, 1932-33, 1940-41, 1943, 1946, 1963, 1985
6 N.Y. Giants, 1927, 1934, 1938, 1956, 1986, 1990
Your Cowboys have a long ways to go....
Wow!
I was born in the early '60s and just missed the Packers era. My first football memory is O'Brien kicking the winning field goal for the Colts against the Cowboys in Super Bowl V. By the early '70s the Super Bowl had grown into an extravaganza.
It's hard to argue. The only competition is the Steel Curtain.
As a Pats fan, I'm biased, but... The Pats have to be the best team of the salary-cap era (post 1994). What Belichick and Pioli have done with a rotating cast of players is astounding.
True, but the success of the Patriots in the salary cap era says a lot about just how bad the NFL has become. By my reckoning, the 1999 St. Louis Rams were probably the last Super Bowl team in the NFL that would have been any better than 9-7 in the pre-cap days.
FYI: the first pro team in Dallas was the 1952 Dallas Texans, which folded and went on to become the Baltimore Colts. They were not owned by Hunt.
Hunt founded the AFL and did indeed own the 1960 Dallas Texans, who moved to KC after the '62 season.
The Packers of the 60s won five NFL championships and the first two Super Bowls in a seven-year span.
What the Steelers did in the 70s and the Niners in the 80s was good, but does not compare to that record of domination over the greater part of a decade. As a Cowboys fan, it pains me to admit it, but I believe the 60s Packers were the greatest pro football dynasty of all time.
I think the only competition might come from the Browns of the late 40s and early 50s.
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&displayDate=1/15&categoryId=leadstory
http://tinyurl.com/y3er8v
On this day in 1967, at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the first-ever world championship game of American football.
In the mid-1960s, the intense competition for players and fans between the National Football League (NFL) and the upstart American Football League (AFL) led to talks of a possible merger. It was decided that the winners of each league's championship would meet each year in a single game to determine the "world champion of football."
In that historic first game--played before a non-sell-out crowd of 61,946 people--Green Bay scored three touchdowns in the second half to defeat Kansas City 35-10. Led by MVP quarterback Bart Starr, the Packers benefited from Max McGee's stellar receiving and a key interception by safety Willie Wood. For their win, each member of the Packers collected $15,000: the largest single-game share in the history of team sports.
Postseason college games were known as "bowl" games, and AFL founder Lamar Hunt suggested that the new pro championship be called the "Super Bowl." The term was officially introduced in 1969, along with roman numerals to designate the individual games. In 1970, the NFL and AFL merged into one league with two conferences, each with 13 teams. Since then, the Super Bowl has been a face-off between the winners of the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) for the NFL championship and the coveted Vince Lombardi Trophy, named for the legendary Packers coach who guided his team to victory in the first two Super Bowls.
Super Bowl Sunday has become an unofficial American holiday, complete with parties, betting pools and excessive consumption of food and drink. On average, 80 to 90 million people are tuned into the game on TV at any given moment, while some 130-140 million watch at least some part of the game. The commercials shown during the game have become an attraction in themselves, with TV networks charging as much as $2.5 million for a 30-second spot and companies making more expensive, high-concept ads each year. The game itself has more than once been upstaged by its elaborate pre-game or halftime entertainment, most recently in 2004 when Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" resulted in a $225,000 fine for the TV network airing the game, CBS, and tighter controls on televised indecency.
When the AFL first started, an interviewer asked Lamar's father what he thought about his son investing in such an uncertain thing as a pro football team.
His reply, "Well, everyone should have a hobby."
Interviewer: "But sir, this hobby could wind up costing a lot of money for your son."
Hunt: "What do you call a lot of money?"
Interviewer: "Your son could lose upwards of one million dollars a year."
Hunt was very thoughtful and finally said, "Well, that means that in 500 years the family will be broke."
Much of the Bears' strength that year was NOT just their terrific defensive players, but a radical defensive scheme by Buddy Ryan that the league had not caught up to. If you notice, however, the league did catch up to it pretty quickly.
Sorry, that was prehistoric times. We're talking since the merger. Real world. Not Otto Graham stuff. No serious person really counts those games.
One more thing about the greatness of the Dallas Cowboys. They are THE ONLY franchise to have woa a Super Bowl in each of its ten year cycles. Super Bowls 6, 12, 27,28 & 30. They will have eight more shots at the 40's after this next one. I have a sneaking suspension they will accomplish that.
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