The Year The Packers Came Back

The 1972 Green Bay Packers were not expected to challenge for a playoff spot, or even to top their four victories from the season before. But the players were an eclectic group of over-achievers, 20 of whom were brand new to the team. Despite disheartening decisions by a questionable head coach, they gelled almost immediately and by season's end became the only Packers team throughout the 1970s to earn a division title. This book details how they succeeded beyond all expectations and tells one of the great stories in pro football history.

The 1972 Green Bay Packers were not expected to challenge for a playoff spot, or even to top their four victories from the season before. But the players were an eclectic group of over-achievers, 20 of whom were brand new to the team. Despite disheartening decisions by a questionable head coach, they gelled almost immediately and by season's end became the only Packers team throughout the 1970s to earn a division title. This book details how they succeeded beyond all expectations and tells one of the great stories in pro football history.

DIVSince its establishment in 1919, the Green Bay Packers football organization has stood proudly as the United States’ only community-owned professional sports team. Its fans are renowned for their unrivaled die-hard dedication, with Lambeau Field season tickets sold out since 1960 and a waiting list stretching decades into the future—tickets so coveted, they are often bequeathed in family wills. These are not quiet fans. Fortunately, The Packers Experience is not a quiet book./divDIV/divDIVThe ultimate guide to the Green Bay Packers, The Packers Experience takes readers year by year through every single season of the franchise’s storied history. Award-winning sportswriter Lew Freedman describes each season’s key moments, and his stories are accompanied by detailed stats and glorious images. Additional feature articles highlight the legendary players and coaches who have made the Packers one of the most successful organizations in the NFL: Curley Lambeau, Don Hutson, Paul Hornung, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Vince Lombardi, Willie Davis, Herb Adderley, James Lofton, LeRoy Butler, Reggie White, Brett Favre, Donald Driver, Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews, and many others./divDIV/divPhotos from the team’s history are accompanied by rare memorabilia and mementos. This premier-quality book is the perfect keepsake for Packers fans of all generations—an essential addition to the Packers library and as timeless as that indomitable Packer pride.

The story of a team, a town, and a leader: Vince Lombardi’s first year as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, and how he turned them into a powerhouse. The once-vaunted Green Bay Packers were a laughingstock by the late 1950s. They hadn’t fielded a winning team in more than a decade, and were close to losing their franchise to another city. They were in desperate need of a savior—and he arrived in a wood-paneled station wagon in the dead of winter from New York City. In a single year, Vince Lombardi—the grizzled coach who took no bull—transformed a team of underachievers into winners and resurrected a Wisconsin city known for its passion for sport. He would lead them to championship to championship, and bring out the best in players including Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Willie Davis, Forrest Gregg, and many more. From an award-winning sportswriter, That First Season is “a compelling read about perhaps the most compelling coach ever to stride an NFL sideline” (Washington Times). “Richly detailed in seamless prose, this is historical sportswriting at its finest.”—Lars Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of The Mannings: The Fall and Rise of a Football Family

In the golden years of professional football, one team and one coach reigned supreme: the 1960s Green Bay Packers, and the fiery Vince Lombardi. Run to Daylight! is Lombardi’s own diary of a week at the helm of that magnificent club. Together with legendary sports-journalist, W.C. Heinz, Lombardi takes us from the first review of game films on Monday right through the final gun on Sunday afternoon. We see the planning, the plotting, the practice and the pain as forty-plus men come together to form that precision unit that makes for winning football. Lombardi gives us his views on life, the game, coaching, success, family, and the famed “Lombardi Sweep.” Now, in this anniversary edition, with a special foreword by David Maraniss, we are once again reminded of the passion and power behind America's greatest game. Written in W.C. Heinz’s inimitable style, Run to Daylight! is part diary, part philosophy text, part coaches manual. Here, is professional football at its best.