TBT
The Sorry Years
Packer Nation, do you know truly how good you've had it the past 23 seasons? Meet the Green Bay Packers of the 1970s and '80s, the inglorious years between Lombardi and Holmgren, Starr and Favre, when the Packers won just one playoff game and became the laughingstock of the NFL.
No offense to Packer Nation, but it's easy to be a Green Bay Packers fan these days. The team has been one of the NFL's most consistent winners for nearly a quarter-century.
Sure, there have been a few bumps in the road — a T.J. Rubley here, a Colin Kaepernick there — but Packers fans haven't had their faith tested very often lately. Expectations being what they are in Green Bay, they may grumble about a loss here or there. That is a far cry from wallowing in the depths of despair.
In fact, fans younger than 30 pretty much know only winning. Seventeen post-season appearances in the last 22 years (including an NFC Divisional Round game next Sunday at Lambeau Field). Eleven division titles since 1995. Three trips to the Super Bowl. Two quarterbacks, both headed to the Hall of Fame.
Yes, Packers fans
have it pretty good. After all, they could have been born in Oakland or Cleveland. Worse yet, they could be stuck with Jay Cutler.
"I think us as Packer fans are spoiled rotten," said Michael Hunt, who played linebacker for Green Bay from 1978 to '80 and lives in Merrill.
"I don't think fans understand how hard it is to (win) year after year, and have a chance to go to the Super Bowl every year," said Gary Ellerson, a Packers running back for two years in the mid-'80s.
They have a point. Perhaps many Packers fans take success for granted. Maybe there's a growing sense of Titletown entitlement, a smidgen of smugness, an undercurrent of complacency that has ever so slightly dulled passions.
If so, a reminder of the past is in order.
From 1968 through 1991, the Packers had four winning seasons. They qualified for the post-season twice and won exactly one playoff game. They went through more than 30 quarterbacks, some of whom seemingly had no idea how to throw a forward pass.
There were terrible trades and forgettable draft picks. The franchise lacked direction at the top, leadership in the locker room, talent on the field.
"There was chaos in the organization," Dave Begel said of the three years (1978-'80) he covered the team for The Milwaukee Journal. "It was a time of chaos. They were a lousy team. They were a terrible football team."
The Packers sank so low that Bob Harlan, who spent 37 years with the organization and now is chairman emeritus, wondered if they ever would find a way out of the abyss.
"I used to go to Super Bowls in the '70s and '80s and I'd see those big (inflatable) helmets on the field and I would think, 'I'm not sure we're ever going to have this again,'" Harlan said. "It seemed we just could not find a way to be successful."
The slide started when Lombardi stepped aside as coach after the 1967 season and turned over an aging roster to Phil Bengtson, his defensive coordinator. Three years later, Bengtson resigned with a 20-21-1 record and the Packers hired University of Missouri coach Dan Devine to replace him.
Devine got the team to the playoffs in 1972 with a 10-4 record, but the Washington Redskins exposed the Packers' weakness at quarterback by loading the box and holding 1,000-yard rusher John Brockington to nine yards in 13 carries in a 16-3 victory.
After Jerry Tagge, Jim Del Gaizo and Scott Hunter combined to throw for just 1,480 yards in 1973, Devine mortgaged the future by trading five high draft picks to the Los Angeles Rams for 34-year-old John Hadl.
"We sold the farm with the trade for Hadl," said Chester Marcol, the Packers' kicker from 1972-'80. "Stuff like that hurts for a long time."
Devine didn't have to worry about it. He resigned after the 1974 season and took the coaching job at Notre Dame.
Starr was an iconic figure, but with just one year of coaching experience and a roster bereft of talent, he was in over his head. Years later, he would admit he was unprepared to be a head coach.
Early on, it showed. In 1977, the Packers went 4-10 for a second time under Starr and scored 134 points, or an average of 9.6 per game. They scored more than 16 points in a game just once that year.
Adding injury to insult, promising quarterback Lynn Dickey suffered a severely broken leg when he was tackled as he threw a dump-off pass on the final play of a 24-6 loss to the Rams in Milwaukee on Nov. 13.
Dickey missed the rest of the season and was sidelined all of 1978, as well. Though Ellerson called him "probably the best deep passer in the history of the Green Bay Packers," Dickey wrestled with doubt.
"The early years there I wanted to win so bad and I knew that I had to be perfect," he said. "If I wasn't perfect, we probably weren't going to win.
"I got to thinking, 'Maybe you need someone else to do this. I can't do this week after week after week.' No one could. I wanted a situation where I had a running game and I had a defense."
Just a decade removed from the 1960s Glory Years, the Packers had become the laughingstocks of the NFL.
"We certainly didn't do anything to earn respect," Marcol said, "because we stunk."
A standing joke around the league was that coaches could motivate players to perform better by threatening to trade them to Green Bay.
"Back then the perception of playing for the Green Bay Packers was not a real good one," Dickey said. "Coaches would threaten to send their players to Green Bay, like that's the bottom of the well, the end of the earth."
The fans, too, were losing their patience.
"I heard from a lot of them in mail and phone calls," Harlan said. "I would say the main thing was that they thought we'd never again play at a high level, that maybe the league had gotten too big for Green Bay."
With Dickey out in '78, the Packers started 6-1 but went 2-5-1 over their last eight games and missed the playoffs again.
"It seemed like we peaked at the wrong time," Hunt said. "We peaked at the beginning of the season and just lost track of our goals. It's a hard thing to explain."
After going 5-11 in 1979, Starr drafted defensive tackle Bruce Clark of Penn State in the first round of the 1980 draft to fill a huge need. But Clark spurned the Packers and instead signed with Toronto of the Canadian Football League.
"Who goes to Canada?" Dickey said. "No one goes to Canada, but he did."
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The 1980 season started with Marcol catching his own blocked field goal and scoring a touchdown in overtime to beat the Chicago Bears, 12-6. Thirteen weeks later, on Dec. 7 — Pearl Harbor Day — the Bears won the rematch, 61-7.
The Packers were outscored, 105-13, by their final three opponents.
"We totally fell apart and lost our confidence," Hunt said. "At some point you have to put some blame on the coaching staff."
Said Begel, "Bart really did step into a tough situation, no doubt about it. But he didn't do anything to make it better. He made things worse. He was never good at taking responsibility for what happened."
Begel became public enemy No. 1 among Packers fans. Didn't they appreciate the brutal honesty of his reporting?
"I had absolutely no sense of that," Begel said. "The fans were concerned about the Packers but the last person in the world they wanted to blame was Bart Starr. They looked for something to take their anger out on and I happened to be a convenient target. Some people think Bart Starr engineered that. He made me the enemy so people would not focus on him."
Things got so bad that the newspaper hired a security guard to sit outside Begel's house at night.
"It was out of control," said Begel, who added that he "made peace" with Starr years later. "The whole place was out of control."
File photos
Starr finally got the Packers to the playoffs after the strike-shortened 1982 season. After beating the St. Louis Cardinals, 41-16, in Green Bay they went to Dallas and lost, 37-26.
"We were better than we had been," Dickey said. "But we kind of knew we didn't have all the pieces we needed to be a championship team."
The Packers finally had an exciting, prolific offense, with Dickey throwing to future Hall of Fame receiver James Lofton, John Jefferson and tight end Paul Coffman. Running backs Eddie Lee Ivery and Gerry Ellis were solid players.
Dickey threw for 4,458 yards and 32 touchdowns in 1983, both franchise records at the time.
Unfortunately, the defense couldn't get off the field.
"I had quality players to throw to in Lofton, Jefferson and Coffman," Dickey said. "Yeah, we had some quality players. But it seemed like every year in camp we would get so many of our defensive linemen hurt and it just put us behind the 8-ball.
"We had to try to outscore the other team. But when you score 30 and they score 35, it doesn't work."
The Packers were 8-7 in '83 and had a chance to again make the playoffs if they could beat the Bears in the regular-season finale. Green Bay led, 21-20, with time winding down and Chicago driving into field goal range. Once again, the defense couldn't get a stop.
Starr refused to use his timeouts and as a result, after Bob Thomas kicked a 22-yarder to give the Bears a 23-21 lead, there were only 10 seconds left in the game. Johnny Gray fumbled the ensuing kickoff and that was that.
Packers president Robert J. Parins fired Starr the next day.
Starr finished with a 52-76-3 record. Why didn't he succeed as a coach?
"I've been asked that before and I don't think I've changed my mind since I played for him," Hunt said. "It was the fact that he was just too nice of a guy and he lacked discipline in some areas. He let some things slide too much and didn't reprimand his players. He was too nice a guy."
"Forrest was very tough, very demanding," said Ellerson, now a radio personality on 105.7 FM The Fan. "I used to be literally scared of that guy. He could scream so loud he would put fear in your heart."
A snarling, menacing presence, Gregg almost became a caricature of himself during his four-year stint as the Packers' coach.
"We had this kid, Frankie Neal, who walked up to Forrest one day and said, 'Coach, why does your face always twitch like that?'" Ellerson said. "Everyone got real quiet. Forrest said, 'If you got head-slapped by Carl Eller as many times as I did, your face would twitch, too.'"
Gregg's teams did not lack fight, but they lacked discipline, especially when they played the Bears. There was no love lost between Gregg and Bears coach Mike Ditka, and the rivalry was intense and marred by cheap shots.
The low point came in 1986, when defensive lineman Charles Martin grabbed Bears quarterback Jim McMahon from behind and slammed him to the Soldier Field turf a full three seconds after McMahon threw an interception.
"The Bears had gone after Lynn Dickey a game or two back," Ellerson said. "I know the defense was talking about, 'Hey, if they throw a pick we're going to go after McMahon like they went after Dickey.' I think Charles took it a little bit too far."
For his part, Dickey never did see eye-to-eye with Gregg.
"I told him, 'I can't be 35 out of 40 with four touchdowns and no interceptions every week,'" Dickey recalled. "He just said, 'You need to play better.' I wanted to say, 'Well, we've got lots of other positions here. Why don't you ask them to play better, too?'
"He and I did not get along well. There was a clash there. He just thought, 'You don't care.' I don't care? Really?"
After two 8-8 seasons, the Packers went 4-12 in 1986, thus becoming the first team in franchise history to lose 12 games in a season. Gregg resigned after the team went 5-9-1 in 1987.
Lindy Infante, who had coordinated Gregg's offense in Cincinnati, was hired in 1988 and the Packers went 4-12 again. The next year, led by quarterback Don Majkowski, they won 10 games for the first time in 17 years.
But the euphoria did not last long. In Infante's final two seasons Green Bay went a combined 10-22.
"There were just so many areas where we couldn't get settled," Harlan said. "Look at the years between Lombardi leaving and (Mike) Holmgren arriving (in 1992). We had five head coaches and each one had a lower winning percentage than his predecessor. We just kept going downhill.
"We had to find a way to change our culture."
"We hadn't been doing that," Harlan said. "We had to get out of his way and let him do his job. I had to promise Ron that. I think one of the only reasons we got him was we promised him it was his team to run and we'd leave him alone."
Over the final few weeks of the '91 season, Wolf had a chance to observe and evaluate Infante, his assistants and the players at practice and during games.
"Ron made some dramatic moves," Harlan said. "He decided within a couple days that he was going to go after Brett Favre (then a rookie quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons) and he was going to let Lindy Infante go.
"He said, 'I want to trade for Favre. What do you think?' I said, 'Ron, it's your team. Do what you think is right.' As it turns out, it probably was the best trade this franchise ever made."
The trio of Wolf, Holmgren and Favre led the Packers out of the Dark Ages. And the team's success has continued under GM Ted Thompson, coach Mike McCarthy and quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Packers fans will be upset, and understandably so, if the team is bounced from the playoffs over the next couple weeks. Nothing less than a return trip to the Super Bowl will make them happy.
"Fans under 35, they don't know any better," Ellerson said. "But sometimes that's good. It keeps the organization on its toes."
The Packers have strong leadership, stability and a culture of success. There is no reason to believe they will hit the skids anytime soon.
But that's probably what fans thought in the mid-1960s, too.
"It's a cyclical game," Harlan said. "Our fans are used to winning. They're not going to handle it well if we have tough times again."
The moral of the story?
Don't take winning for granted. And enjoy it while it lasts.
Mossy Cade: On Aug. 3, 1987, the cornerback was sentenced to two years in prison, having been found guilty of second-degree sexual assault. Cade epitomized some of the questionable characters brought in by head coach Forrest Gregg.
Rich Campbell: The quarterback from Cal with the unorthodox throwing motion was a first-round pick in 1981 but never quite panned out. He played in seven games over four seasons, completing 45.6% of his passes for 388 yards, with three touchdowns and nine interceptions.
Bruce Clark: By 1980, downtrodden Green Bay was viewed by most players as an unattractive place to play. So much so that Clark, the team's first-round draft pick, shunned the Packers and signed instead with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League.
Maurice Harvey: Coach Bart Starr released the safety on Sept. 30, 1983, for "having a lousy attitude." Perhaps the same could have been said about the entire defense, which gave up 6,403 yards and 439 points, both team records.
Brent Fullwood: The running back from Auburn, a first-round draft pick in 1987, missed 18 practices before signing and then underwhelmed by rushing for 274 yards and a 3.3 average. He finished with 1,702 yards in his career.
Ezra Johnson: A fine defensive end, Johnson makes the list for eating a hot dog on the bench during a preseason game in 1980. The incident led to the resignation of defensive line coach Fred vonAppen, who felt Starr did not mete out appropriate punishment.
Mark Koncar: Miffed by criticism from Starr during a team meeting, the veteran tackle went AWOL before the Packers' sixth game of the 1981 season, against Tampa Bay. He returned the following Monday, after Green Bay's 21-10 loss.
Tony Mandarich: The No. 2 overall pick in 1989 ranks among the biggest busts in the history of the NFL draft. The Packers could have taken eventual Hall of Famers Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas or Deion Sanders but instead went with "The Incredible Bulk," a massive tackle from Michigan State who couldn't play a lick and years later admitted to having used steroids in college. To his credit, Mandarich did salvage some respect as a serviceable lineman with the Indianapolis Colts.
Charles Martin: The Packers-Bears rivalry, marked by venom and cheap shots during the Forrest Gregg-Mike Ditka era, reached its nadir in 1986 thanks to Martin. Three seconds after Bears quarterback Jim McMahon was intercepted, the Packers' defensive lineman picked him up from behind and body-slammed him to the Soldier Field turf, damaging McMahon's shoulder and earning an ejection.
Patrick Scott: Little more than a footnote in Packers history, the wide receiver makes the list for holding out for more money before his rookie season in 1987 – as an 11th-round draft pick. He went on to play in 24 games over two seasons, catching 28 passes for 358 yards and one touchdown.
Sure, there have been a few bumps in the road — a T.J. Rubley here, a Colin Kaepernick there — but Packers fans haven't had their faith tested very often lately. Expectations being what they are in Green Bay, they may grumble about a loss here or there. That is a far cry from wallowing in the depths of despair.
In fact, fans younger than 30 pretty much know only winning. Seventeen post-season appearances in the last 22 years (including an NFC Divisional Round game next Sunday at Lambeau Field). Eleven division titles since 1995. Three trips to the Super Bowl. Two quarterbacks, both headed to the Hall of Fame.
Yes, Packers fans
have it pretty good. After all, they could have been born in Oakland or Cleveland. Worse yet, they could be stuck with Jay Cutler.
"I think us as Packer fans are spoiled rotten," said Michael Hunt, who played linebacker for Green Bay from 1978 to '80 and lives in Merrill.
"I don't think fans understand how hard it is to (win) year after year, and have a chance to go to the Super Bowl every year," said Gary Ellerson, a Packers running back for two years in the mid-'80s.
They have a point. Perhaps many Packers fans take success for granted. Maybe there's a growing sense of Titletown entitlement, a smidgen of smugness, an undercurrent of complacency that has ever so slightly dulled passions.
If so, a reminder of the past is in order.
After the glory
It wasn't always like this. It wasn't always Discount Double-Checks and Lambeau Leaps. There was a time when the Packers were a sorry excuse for an NFL franchise, an embarrassment to the memory of Vince Lombardi.
File photos
It was not fine with Devine and none of the Packers coaches between Lombardi and Holmgren ended up with a winning record in Green Bay. Clockwise from top left are Dan Devine, Bart Starr, Lindy Infante, Forrest Gregg and Phil Bengtson.
There were terrible trades and forgettable draft picks. The franchise lacked direction at the top, leadership in the locker room, talent on the field.
"There was chaos in the organization," Dave Begel said of the three years (1978-'80) he covered the team for The Milwaukee Journal. "It was a time of chaos. They were a lousy team. They were a terrible football team."
The Packers sank so low that Bob Harlan, who spent 37 years with the organization and now is chairman emeritus, wondered if they ever would find a way out of the abyss.
"I used to go to Super Bowls in the '70s and '80s and I'd see those big (inflatable) helmets on the field and I would think, 'I'm not sure we're ever going to have this again,'" Harlan said. "It seemed we just could not find a way to be successful."
The slide started when Lombardi stepped aside as coach after the 1967 season and turned over an aging roster to Phil Bengtson, his defensive coordinator. Three years later, Bengtson resigned with a 20-21-1 record and the Packers hired University of Missouri coach Dan Devine to replace him.
Devine got the team to the playoffs in 1972 with a 10-4 record, but the Washington Redskins exposed the Packers' weakness at quarterback by loading the box and holding 1,000-yard rusher John Brockington to nine yards in 13 carries in a 16-3 victory.
After Jerry Tagge, Jim Del Gaizo and Scott Hunter combined to throw for just 1,480 yards in 1973, Devine mortgaged the future by trading five high draft picks to the Los Angeles Rams for 34-year-old John Hadl.
"We sold the farm with the trade for Hadl," said Chester Marcol, the Packers' kicker from 1972-'80. "Stuff like that hurts for a long time."
Devine didn't have to worry about it. He resigned after the 1974 season and took the coaching job at Notre Dame.
Starr to the rescue?
The Packers then made an emotional hire, blindly putting their faith in Bart Starr, the efficient quarterback who had won five NFL titles under Lombardi and was the most valuable player in Super Bowls I and II.
File photo
In 1979, just midway through Bart Starr's tenure as coach, fans already were displaying their discontent.
Early on, it showed. In 1977, the Packers went 4-10 for a second time under Starr and scored 134 points, or an average of 9.6 per game. They scored more than 16 points in a game just once that year.
Adding injury to insult, promising quarterback Lynn Dickey suffered a severely broken leg when he was tackled as he threw a dump-off pass on the final play of a 24-6 loss to the Rams in Milwaukee on Nov. 13.
Dickey missed the rest of the season and was sidelined all of 1978, as well. Though Ellerson called him "probably the best deep passer in the history of the Green Bay Packers," Dickey wrestled with doubt.
"The early years there I wanted to win so bad and I knew that I had to be perfect," he said. "If I wasn't perfect, we probably weren't going to win.
"I got to thinking, 'Maybe you need someone else to do this. I can't do this week after week after week.' No one could. I wanted a situation where I had a running game and I had a defense."
Just a decade removed from the 1960s Glory Years, the Packers had become the laughingstocks of the NFL.
"We certainly didn't do anything to earn respect," Marcol said, "because we stunk."
A standing joke around the league was that coaches could motivate players to perform better by threatening to trade them to Green Bay.
"Back then the perception of playing for the Green Bay Packers was not a real good one," Dickey said. "Coaches would threaten to send their players to Green Bay, like that's the bottom of the well, the end of the earth."
The fans, too, were losing their patience.
"I heard from a lot of them in mail and phone calls," Harlan said. "I would say the main thing was that they thought we'd never again play at a high level, that maybe the league had gotten too big for Green Bay."
With Dickey out in '78, the Packers started 6-1 but went 2-5-1 over their last eight games and missed the playoffs again.
"It seemed like we peaked at the wrong time," Hunt said. "We peaked at the beginning of the season and just lost track of our goals. It's a hard thing to explain."
After going 5-11 in 1979, Starr drafted defensive tackle Bruce Clark of Penn State in the first round of the 1980 draft to fill a huge need. But Clark spurned the Packers and instead signed with Toronto of the Canadian Football League.
"Who goes to Canada?" Dickey said. "No one goes to Canada, but he did."
File photo
Despite the losing, there were sometimes reasons to cheer. The 1980 season opened with Chester Marcol catching his own blocked field goal and running it in for the winning TD in OT against the Bears. Three months later, however, the Bears trounced the Packers, 61-7.
The Packers were outscored, 105-13, by their final three opponents.
"We totally fell apart and lost our confidence," Hunt said. "At some point you have to put some blame on the coaching staff."
Said Begel, "Bart really did step into a tough situation, no doubt about it. But he didn't do anything to make it better. He made things worse. He was never good at taking responsibility for what happened."
Begel became public enemy No. 1 among Packers fans. Didn't they appreciate the brutal honesty of his reporting?
"I had absolutely no sense of that," Begel said. "The fans were concerned about the Packers but the last person in the world they wanted to blame was Bart Starr. They looked for something to take their anger out on and I happened to be a convenient target. Some people think Bart Starr engineered that. He made me the enemy so people would not focus on him."
Things got so bad that the newspaper hired a security guard to sit outside Begel's house at night.
"It was out of control," said Begel, who added that he "made peace" with Starr years later. "The whole place was out of control."
File photos
In the Packers' lone playoff victory between Lombardi and Holmgren, Green Bay beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 41-16, and stormed Lambeau Field. The "Diehard Packer Fan" said he had been fasting since the team's last playoff appearance in 1972.
"We were better than we had been," Dickey said. "But we kind of knew we didn't have all the pieces we needed to be a championship team."
The Packers finally had an exciting, prolific offense, with Dickey throwing to future Hall of Fame receiver James Lofton, John Jefferson and tight end Paul Coffman. Running backs Eddie Lee Ivery and Gerry Ellis were solid players.
Dickey threw for 4,458 yards and 32 touchdowns in 1983, both franchise records at the time.
Unfortunately, the defense couldn't get off the field.
"I had quality players to throw to in Lofton, Jefferson and Coffman," Dickey said. "Yeah, we had some quality players. But it seemed like every year in camp we would get so many of our defensive linemen hurt and it just put us behind the 8-ball.
"We had to try to outscore the other team. But when you score 30 and they score 35, it doesn't work."
The Packers were 8-7 in '83 and had a chance to again make the playoffs if they could beat the Bears in the regular-season finale. Green Bay led, 21-20, with time winding down and Chicago driving into field goal range. Once again, the defense couldn't get a stop.
Starr refused to use his timeouts and as a result, after Bob Thomas kicked a 22-yarder to give the Bears a 23-21 lead, there were only 10 seconds left in the game. Johnny Gray fumbled the ensuing kickoff and that was that.
Packers president Robert J. Parins fired Starr the next day.
Starr finished with a 52-76-3 record. Why didn't he succeed as a coach?
"I've been asked that before and I don't think I've changed my mind since I played for him," Hunt said. "It was the fact that he was just too nice of a guy and he lacked discipline in some areas. He let some things slide too much and didn't reprimand his players. He was too nice a guy."
No more Mr. Nice Guy
Perhaps in response to that sentiment, the Packers turned to Forrest Gregg, another Lombardi player and like Starr a member of the Hall of Fame. Gregg had taken the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl and was anything but "too nice."
File photo
The Packers traded five high draft picks for QB John Hadl, who ended up playing two seasons for the Packers, passing for 3,167 yards with nine TDs, 29 interceptions and a 53.2 quarterback rating.
A snarling, menacing presence, Gregg almost became a caricature of himself during his four-year stint as the Packers' coach.
"We had this kid, Frankie Neal, who walked up to Forrest one day and said, 'Coach, why does your face always twitch like that?'" Ellerson said. "Everyone got real quiet. Forrest said, 'If you got head-slapped by Carl Eller as many times as I did, your face would twitch, too.'"
Gregg's teams did not lack fight, but they lacked discipline, especially when they played the Bears. There was no love lost between Gregg and Bears coach Mike Ditka, and the rivalry was intense and marred by cheap shots.
The low point came in 1986, when defensive lineman Charles Martin grabbed Bears quarterback Jim McMahon from behind and slammed him to the Soldier Field turf a full three seconds after McMahon threw an interception.
"The Bears had gone after Lynn Dickey a game or two back," Ellerson said. "I know the defense was talking about, 'Hey, if they throw a pick we're going to go after McMahon like they went after Dickey.' I think Charles took it a little bit too far."
For his part, Dickey never did see eye-to-eye with Gregg.
"I told him, 'I can't be 35 out of 40 with four touchdowns and no interceptions every week,'" Dickey recalled. "He just said, 'You need to play better.' I wanted to say, 'Well, we've got lots of other positions here. Why don't you ask them to play better, too?'
"He and I did not get along well. There was a clash there. He just thought, 'You don't care.' I don't care? Really?"
After two 8-8 seasons, the Packers went 4-12 in 1986, thus becoming the first team in franchise history to lose 12 games in a season. Gregg resigned after the team went 5-9-1 in 1987.
Lindy Infante, who had coordinated Gregg's offense in Cincinnati, was hired in 1988 and the Packers went 4-12 again. The next year, led by quarterback Don Majkowski, they won 10 games for the first time in 17 years.
But the euphoria did not last long. In Infante's final two seasons Green Bay went a combined 10-22.
"There were just so many areas where we couldn't get settled," Harlan said. "Look at the years between Lombardi leaving and (Mike) Holmgren arriving (in 1992). We had five head coaches and each one had a lower winning percentage than his predecessor. We just kept going downhill.
"We had to find a way to change our culture."
And then came Wolf
Harlan brought about that change by hiring Ron Wolf as general manager late in the 1991 season and convincing the board of directors and executive committee to give Wolf "total autonomy" over the team. No more meddling.
Old School
Memorable Packers moments from the '70s and '80s
- Oct. 22, 1974 The Infamous Hadl Trade
- April 2, 1976 Packers Acquire Lynn Dickey in Trade With Oilers
- May 2, 1978 Packers get James Lofton, John Anderson
- Sept. 7, 1980 Chester Marcol's Touchdown Run vs. Bears
- Oct. 17, 1983 Highest-scoring 'Monday Night Football' game
- April 23, 1989 The Mandarich Pick
- June 5, 1989 Bob Harlan Named President
- Nov. 5, 1989 Instant Replay Game
- Nov. 27, 1991 Ron Wolf's Hiring
- Jan. 11, 1992 Mike Holmgren's Hiring
Bob Harlan (right), Ron Wolf (center) and Mike Holmgren ushered in a new era for the Packers.
Over the final few weeks of the '91 season, Wolf had a chance to observe and evaluate Infante, his assistants and the players at practice and during games.
"Ron made some dramatic moves," Harlan said. "He decided within a couple days that he was going to go after Brett Favre (then a rookie quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons) and he was going to let Lindy Infante go.
"He said, 'I want to trade for Favre. What do you think?' I said, 'Ron, it's your team. Do what you think is right.' As it turns out, it probably was the best trade this franchise ever made."
The trio of Wolf, Holmgren and Favre led the Packers out of the Dark Ages. And the team's success has continued under GM Ted Thompson, coach Mike McCarthy and quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Packers fans will be upset, and understandably so, if the team is bounced from the playoffs over the next couple weeks. Nothing less than a return trip to the Super Bowl will make them happy.
"Fans under 35, they don't know any better," Ellerson said. "But sometimes that's good. It keeps the organization on its toes."
The Packers have strong leadership, stability and a culture of success. There is no reason to believe they will hit the skids anytime soon.
But that's probably what fans thought in the mid-1960s, too.
"It's a cyclical game," Harlan said. "Our fans are used to winning. They're not going to handle it well if we have tough times again."
The moral of the story?
Don't take winning for granted. And enjoy it while it lasts.
File photo
The Packers beat the Minnesota Vikings, 27-7, in the 1991 season finale at the Metrodome, but it would be the final game for coach Lindy Inante (left) and safety Mark Murphy (not the current Packers president) and mark the beginning of a new era in Packers football.
Boneheads and Busts
Ten players from the '70s and '80s who made their mark with the Green Bay Packers for all the wrong reasons:Mossy Cade: On Aug. 3, 1987, the cornerback was sentenced to two years in prison, having been found guilty of second-degree sexual assault. Cade epitomized some of the questionable characters brought in by head coach Forrest Gregg.
Rich Campbell: The quarterback from Cal with the unorthodox throwing motion was a first-round pick in 1981 but never quite panned out. He played in seven games over four seasons, completing 45.6% of his passes for 388 yards, with three touchdowns and nine interceptions.
Bruce Clark: By 1980, downtrodden Green Bay was viewed by most players as an unattractive place to play. So much so that Clark, the team's first-round draft pick, shunned the Packers and signed instead with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League.
Maurice Harvey: Coach Bart Starr released the safety on Sept. 30, 1983, for "having a lousy attitude." Perhaps the same could have been said about the entire defense, which gave up 6,403 yards and 439 points, both team records.
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Brent Fullwood
Ezra Johnson: A fine defensive end, Johnson makes the list for eating a hot dog on the bench during a preseason game in 1980. The incident led to the resignation of defensive line coach Fred vonAppen, who felt Starr did not mete out appropriate punishment.
Mark Koncar: Miffed by criticism from Starr during a team meeting, the veteran tackle went AWOL before the Packers' sixth game of the 1981 season, against Tampa Bay. He returned the following Monday, after Green Bay's 21-10 loss.
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Tony Mandarich
Charles Martin: The Packers-Bears rivalry, marked by venom and cheap shots during the Forrest Gregg-Mike Ditka era, reached its nadir in 1986 thanks to Martin. Three seconds after Bears quarterback Jim McMahon was intercepted, the Packers' defensive lineman picked him up from behind and body-slammed him to the Soldier Field turf, damaging McMahon's shoulder and earning an ejection.
Patrick Scott: Little more than a footnote in Packers history, the wide receiver makes the list for holding out for more money before his rookie season in 1987 – as an 11th-round draft pick. He went on to play in 24 games over two seasons, catching 28 passes for 358 yards and one touchdown.
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