In 1969, Vince Lombardi made the surprising move to join Washington as its new head coach and general manager. With his unique brand of leadership, the legendary Lombardi planted seeds that would set in motion a turnaround for the Burgundy & Gold. Get Your Commanders Tickets Here: https://bit.ly/3SpwKU3
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
From around the late forties to the late sixties. Times
were hard for Washington, hard in a way they had
never been before. Losing season after losing season, back to
back one win seasons, a far cry from the juggernaut
(00:28):
it was. During those earliest NFL years, Washington's front office
was desperate to turn the situation around, and in those days,
if winning was the goal, there was one man you
wanted leading your team. This is hail tales stories from
(00:56):
Washington football history. The Lombardi year. Let's be clear, Vince
Lombardi to Washington shouldn't have even been on the table.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
This is David Marenis. I'm the author of When Pride
Still Mattered, the biography of Vitz Lombardi.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
The green Bay Packers head coach, had already cemented himself
as perhaps the greatest ever. He never had a losing
season as head coach in the NFL, brought Green Bay
five NFL championships in seven years, including the league's first
two Super Bowls. In his eyes, it was time to
move on.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Lombardi retired as a coach for the Packers after the
second Super Bowl in early nineteen sixty eight, and for
the next year he was only the general manager of
the team.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The pivot from coach to general manager was a challenging one.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
He couldn't stand not being with the players.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
He would make so much noise up in his place
next to the press box at Packer game that they
had to sound proof. He was very unhappy for that year.
It was also he wanted to get back into coaching.
It was also a time when the world of professional
football was changing. The players were getting more power, and
(02:16):
Lombardy wanted to figure out how to deal with that.
And he was also frustrated in that he wanted to
have some part of ownership and he couldn't get that
with the Packers because, wonderfully, in my opinion, there was
no owner of the Packers. It was owned by the community.
So that combined with the fact that in Washington, the
(02:36):
owner of the Redskins, Edward Bennett Williams, believed in what
he called competition living, and to him, the patron saint
of that form of life was Vince Lombardi. They were
both Catholics, they both loved to win. Williams would do
anything to get Lombardy to be the coach.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Of course, Edward Williams seriously managing partner of the Redskins
organization at the time was always full of surprises.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Mike Bragg punter for Washington from nineteen sixty eight to
nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And he was a great speaker, a great salesman, a
great attorney in the courtroom obviously, and you know he
talked Coach Lombardi out of retirement. My first year in
nineteen sixty eight, we played the Packers at home, and
I remember coming on.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
The field to warm up.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Vince Lombardi was then the general manager and he was
sitting in the owner's box at RK. I come on
the field and I look up and I see the
owner's box and there's Bence Lombardi with his camel hair
overcoat on his fedora and those glasses.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Ever.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I'm going, so wow, there's the old man. I had
no idea that the next year he was coming out
of retirement coming to coach us.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
In early nineteen sixty nine, Vince Lombardi became the head
coach and executive vice president of Washington and was given
a five percent stake in ownership.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
That's the proudest moment of my life with the Redskins
to present.
Speaker 7 (04:15):
To you.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Vince Lombardi.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
He got to Washington that spring, he was kind of
the toast of the town. It was actually early spring
and Nixon had just been inaugurated as president, but Vince
Lombardi was the most popular guy in town. There's a
scene in my book where he's with Williams walking into
Duke Ziebert's restaurant on Connecticut Avenue.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Which was kind of a place where, you.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Know, sort of power brokers met, and they all rose
to their feet and gave Lombardi a standing ovation. David Broder,
the great political reporter for the Post, said, of all
the people in town, it was Lombardi, not Nixon, who
was the toast of the town that winter in spring.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
I'm very happy to he believe me, most happy to
be a Washington redskin.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
And he was very humble in front of the cameras
and the press, and he says, well, if possible, we'd
like to have our winner our first year. Okay, coach, yeah.
Speaker 8 (05:14):
Webby or Cable win the first year of a second
I'd like to have a winn of the first year,
if possible.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
He'd have a lot of work to do. Fullback Chuck Mercine,
who was with Washington for two separate periods in the
nineteen sixties. Remembers what the team vibe was in his
pre Lombardy stint well.
Speaker 9 (05:33):
I was zerk first. It was kind of an old
pals that kind of thing. Everybody would go out breaking
and we go fourth together. Sonny was kind of the ring leader,
Sonny Jurgison. You could tell that it wasn't a really
greatly disciplined change.
Speaker 10 (05:45):
When Auto Graham was the coach, the players who would
have a.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Pool Tommy McBean, longtime equipment manager for Washington, they'd.
Speaker 10 (05:53):
All put in ten dollars or five dollars or whatever,
and they'd count how many times on would clap after
the play. Good play, three claps, and I have a
chart and they would give me twenty dollars to keep
track of how many times he hit the clipboard with it.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
When Lombardi joined, Washington had just wrapped up its ninth
losing season in eleven years.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Lombardi was accustomed to coming into a situation like that.
When he'd come to the Green Day Packers in nineteen
fifty nine, they'd have several losing seasons in a row.
The year before, they'd won only one game, he immediately
turned them round and created a winning season, and he
thought he could do the same with the Redskins. So
there's no trouble at all for Lombardi. He liked starting over.
(06:42):
He knew that the Redskins, like the Packers of nineteen
fifty nine, had some raw talent.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
He just needed to be put into shape.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The players knew that everything was about to change.
Speaker 11 (06:56):
Unbelievably over the top, crazy, mad, screaming, yelling, cussing.
Speaker 9 (07:03):
Very disciplined, very tough guy, a guy who wasn't going
to be your best French for sure, but you know as.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
A leader like Chuck Mercine. Quarterback Mike Bass had had
some experience under Lombardi. Bass was originally drafted by the
Packers in nineteen sixty seven, but was sold to the
Lions before the start of the season.
Speaker 8 (07:23):
And so I knew exactly what to expect, and from
Chris Hanberger to.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
The rest of him asking me, what was he like?
What can we expect?
Speaker 8 (07:32):
It was going to be a different team all the time.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Lombardi was a tough coach, and you know, the mythology
revolves around us saying attributed to you know, winning isn't
everything it's the only thing. It wasn't true. He wasn't
like that. A lot of coaches after Lombardi tried to
pretend they were Lombardi and they were tough guys, but
they didn't understand the other part of it, which was
(07:59):
to Lombardy understood his players that they might sort of
hate him on a daily basis, but loved him on
a larger scale, and the love side was actually stronger
than the hate side. So his you know, like Sonny
Jurgen said, who was the quarterback of the Redskins, then
called up Paul Horning, who was the star for the Packers,
(08:20):
and said, how am I going to deal with this guy?
Paul said to Sonny, Sonny, You're gonna love him because
he cares about his players, and he knows how to win,
and he has that balance of books.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Sonny Jurgensen got in the best shape of his life.
Ahead of Lombardi's first season, All Pro linebackers Sam Huff
came out of retirement to play for the coach. There
was a different feeling in the air in Washington. Work
was underway to get that winner. Lombardi's first year.
Speaker 12 (08:52):
The Lombardi era begins at high noon today for the Redskins.
A total of sixty seven veterans and rookies are scheduled
to arrive in Harlyisle, Pennsylvania for the opening of training camp.
They will draw equipment and meet their new boss tonight
at the first team meeting.
Speaker 13 (09:08):
He was humorous to me in many ways.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Former linebacker Chris Hanberger, a six time All Pro who
played fourteen seasons with Washington from nineteen sixty five to
nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 13 (09:20):
He was very strict on not many rules, but very
strict about the ones that he had. And I mean,
if he said a meeting started at eight o'clock and
he walked in at ten minutes of, and then you
walked in at five minutes of, you're late and you're
going to get fined.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
They called it Lombardi time.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
You didn't want to be late, by his definition of
the word. You didn't want to find yourself on the
wrong side of something he was strict about.
Speaker 13 (09:48):
I remember one player, we're in the meeting and this
other player, this player, he got injured I think in
the morning practice and training camp. He didn't show up
evidently for Tree meant when he should have before the
afternoon practice. So we're in the meeting and Coach Lombardi
walks in. He's walking up the island and he starts
(10:10):
talking and he mentioned the player's name, and he said,
you report to the Norfolk Neptunes by such and such.
He fired me right then and there for not showing
up for treatment.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Lombardi was all about accountability. He was eagle eyed.
Speaker 10 (10:28):
So one day at Lombardy he told the coaches, I'll
see inside.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I want to talk to Tommy.
Speaker 10 (10:32):
Put his arm around me and we started continuing to
walk across the street and he says, Tommy, is there
something you want to tell me.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I said, well, what do you mean, coach? He says,
you didn't take communion this morning. There's something you want.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
To tell me, I said, coach, Coach, we scrimmaged in
the point down rain at the high school last night.
The equipment was so muddy that shoes, the uniforms.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I had to wash everything. I says.
Speaker 10 (10:59):
We were working until two thirty in the morning.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
He said, that's a.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Hell of excuse, and he wanted his guys to know
he was always watching.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
He came up and said, uh, glad to have your
training camp.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
We're going to have a great year. That's it.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
I saw him thinking, wow, So that was it.
Speaker 14 (11:16):
And then we go on to the field that afternoon,
like an hour and a half or two hours later,
and he's watching me punt and I hit one that wasn't.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
So good, you know, off the side of the foot
a little bit.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
He says, what the hell was that? And I'm going, Oh.
He used to ride around on a golf cart and
ride right up and put that golf cart which was
almost in your way, and he would sit there and wait,
and you said, Okay, I better not get another one
like that.
Speaker 15 (11:43):
I better hit a good one.
Speaker 14 (11:44):
So he had a way that, you know, he could
get inside your head and put pressure on you.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
He did it to everybody.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
John Jacoa played safety for Washington from nineteen seventy to
nineteen seventy two. During his rookie year, he kept a
diary of his time at training camp and remembers Lombardi's
attentiveness and the psychological effect that had.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
Lombardi seems to be everywhere and see everything. He watched
me make a good play and shouted, that's the way
to play football, son, and I felt about ten feet tall.
Then later I was beaten on a pass pattern, and
he was on the other side of the field watching
a different drill, and I'm sure his back was turned
to our drill, but he roared who was that defensive back?
My coach yelled who was Joqua? And he yelled, that's
(12:27):
no way to play football.
Speaker 8 (12:28):
Sun.
Speaker 7 (12:29):
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying my damness
to be inconspicuous.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
He loved to push his team. There was undeniably a
brutality to the environments he oversaw.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
So I have.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Some wonderful memories former Washington offensive lineman Ray Shonkey remembers, but.
Speaker 11 (12:48):
I also have some really tough times when I saw
how the sky could drive you and you had to
learn to play hurt.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
When though that happened to me. Yeah, with to call
the Hamburger.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Drill former Washington tight end Pat Richter.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
And it was a offensive person blocking against the linebacker,
and I had a single bar on the face mask
and as elbow came up and hit me in the nose,
and I realized that quite quickly and busted my nose,
and the other took a couple more blocks and were
(13:24):
fairly successful a couple of blocks, and he mentioned one
of the coaches back. Took a lot of guts for
the kid to do that.
Speaker 11 (13:31):
I played with knees so banged up, you know, and
he would scream at you, call your names if you
weren't tough enough. But you found out you could play.
I played with a separated ribcage and hall I caught
hard a breed and the pain was just excruciating.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
But I played with.
Speaker 11 (13:47):
That sucker that was his top lineman. I mean it
was it was crazy, but he was an inspiration.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
This once in a generation coach had players wanting to
put their body on the line. He was clear about
how much he cared about them as ballplayers and as men.
Speaker 11 (14:03):
When we were coming back from Dallas, and remember he
came up to me and he started rubbing my shoulders
and telling me how proud he was of.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Me and how excited he was.
Speaker 11 (14:12):
He's looking forward to playing again with me next year,
you know. And I was just you know, like this is,
you know, like God blessing you.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
He also had a humanity part, where you say, even
though you put yourself at risk, take it easy to
make sure that you protect yourself in that regard, even
though you've done something that was a little bit off
the wall, so to speak. So he was a great
relationship that we had the players. The coach. I demanded
(14:40):
very much everything that you had. Yeah, you realize that,
Yet here was an opportunity for me be successful, to
win games we had not went in the past.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
When they did. Lombardi's presence had an immediate effect, as
Washington would put together it's best season in two decades,
and you could just see.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
The difference in the team, the toughness of the team.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
And I think everyone realized that he was turning that
franchise around.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
He saw that there was enough talent there.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I just needed to be organized and motivated, and those
are two things that Lombardy was the best thing.
Speaker 10 (15:17):
The discipline completely changed under coach Lombardi. Coach Lombardi demanded
excellence and precise.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Dedication.
Speaker 10 (15:28):
And he used to say, is what you're doing about
to do bringing you any closer term mein objective winning
and winning isn't just football winning.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
His life, the lessons Lombardi imparted on his players went
far beyond the football field.
Speaker 9 (15:42):
I just had always had a feeling that you know,
you just never give up, never quit, you know that
kind of philosophy one hundred tempers that effort. You're going
to get knocked down, but get backed off. You know
that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
You knew that when you were doing with football. Whatever
you're doing, whether you're in banking or in police player, whatever,
people come to you for advice and counsel, and when
they do that, you got to give him their best
shot and not take a slovenly careless attitude because something
much more difficult than a football game.
Speaker 8 (16:16):
He's that father that you wanted to cuss out under
your breath, but at the same time you respected him
so much that just having him say good job and
say your name, you could.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Turn and just hould your chest.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
Coach Lombardi said something to me, and that was one
of the things that kept me wanting.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
To play pro football.
Speaker 8 (16:39):
After he cut me in Green Bay, he said to me, Mike,
you could play in this league, and that to this
day stays in my mind.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Let alone football being transformed, lives were being changed by
this man. In Washington. In less than a year with
Lombardi at the Helm, there was so much excitement about
the team's future, and then it all took a turn.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Washington Redskins coach Vince Lombardi had a two foot section
of his colon removed today after surgeons discovered a tumor
during an exploratory operation.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of coaling cancer.
Speaker 15 (17:22):
It was a strike that year, and so he was
at Georgetown Hospital and we were practicing together as a
team on the upper.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Fields at Georgetown University.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
So all of a sudden, we see this, this limousine
Cadillac coming across the driving across the upper field.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
I don't know how got out there, and we're going like, what.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The heck is this.
Speaker 13 (17:48):
We were getting ready to run the before practice exercises
like Coach Lombardy would have us do.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
He's got on his hospital gown, but he's got on
his wristband and you know, like some tubes.
Speaker 14 (18:04):
Out of him and all that. And he got out
of the car and said, I'm glad you were practicing together.
Whatever you do, stick together.
Speaker 13 (18:17):
That He just got back in the car and left,
and that's the last time I ever saw him.
Speaker 7 (18:23):
Sunday, August ninth, we had the day off with films.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
This evening.
Speaker 7 (18:27):
I spent a while talking with Jerry Smith.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Today.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
He talked a lot about Vince Lombardi and about what
a truly great person he is. Jerry said that Lombardi
had been given last rites. He also said that he
had been taking cobalt treatments for cancer for over two
years and that he knew he only had a short
time to live before he took over the Redskins.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Vince Lombardi passed away on September third, nineteen seventy at
Georgetown University Hospital.
Speaker 15 (19:00):
Flew up to New York to go to his funeral
at Saint Patrick's Cathedral.
Speaker 9 (19:05):
I remember the funeral at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. I was
there with the rest of the Redskins and the packers
and it.
Speaker 12 (19:12):
Was wall to wall.
Speaker 9 (19:13):
It was completely packed and out on to Fifth Avenue.
It was amazing. It was quite something, and you know,
sad moment, sad moment. He was only fifty seven years old.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
That's who knows what Lombardy would have done with that
team if he'd lived. You know, it's a cliche to
talk about football culture, but he definitely changed the whole
sensibility of football in Washington, made it something that players
wanted to play for that team again. He set a
standard that had to be met and was for most
(19:48):
of the time for the next few decades. So he
turned things around.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
To come out of retirement to come to coach our
team was a great thrill and opportunity to be around
a great man. You see why he was successful with
That's something as you live with the rest of your life,
and all of us learned from in that regard. It
was just a great opportunity and transity lived.
Speaker 15 (20:20):
Excellence must be pursued.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
There must be wood, but all of one might, every
bit of effort that we have, and each day, the new.
Speaker 12 (20:27):
Encounter, each week is a new challenge.
Speaker 13 (20:30):
All of the display and all of the noise, and
all of the glamour, and all of the color, all
of the.
Speaker 10 (20:36):
Excitement, all of the rings, and all of the money,
these are the things that really linger only.
Speaker 7 (20:43):
In the memory, but the spirit, the will to excel,
the will to wind, these are the things that endure.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Like subscribe, comment and stay tuned for more Hailtales episodes
this summer. This episode of Haletals was narrated, produced, and
researched by me Hannah Liechtenstein, senior copywriter for the Washington Commanders.
It was produced and edited by Jason Johnson, edited by
Nick Lianos. Executive producers are Ryan Yoakum and Kevin Klein.
(21:25):
Additional voiceover help comes from Bram Weinstein Graphics designed by
Zach Osborne and Matt Cashman. Thank you to our guests
for their contributions, and thank you for listening.
From around the late forties to the late sixties. Times
were hard for Washington, hard in a way they had
never been before. Losing season after losing season, back to
back one win seasons, a far cry from the juggernaut
(00:28):
it was. During those earliest NFL years, Washington's front office
was desperate to turn the situation around, and in those days,
if winning was the goal, there was one man you
wanted leading your team. This is hail tales stories from
(00:56):
Washington football history. The Lombardi year. Let's be clear, Vince
Lombardi to Washington shouldn't have even been on the table.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
This is David Marenis. I'm the author of When Pride
Still Mattered, the biography of Vitz Lombardi.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
The green Bay Packers head coach, had already cemented himself
as perhaps the greatest ever. He never had a losing
season as head coach in the NFL, brought Green Bay
five NFL championships in seven years, including the league's first
two Super Bowls. In his eyes, it was time to
move on.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Lombardi retired as a coach for the Packers after the
second Super Bowl in early nineteen sixty eight, and for
the next year he was only the general manager of
the team.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The pivot from coach to general manager was a challenging one.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
He couldn't stand not being with the players.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
He would make so much noise up in his place
next to the press box at Packer game that they
had to sound proof. He was very unhappy for that year.
It was also he wanted to get back into coaching.
It was also a time when the world of professional
football was changing. The players were getting more power, and
(02:16):
Lombardy wanted to figure out how to deal with that.
And he was also frustrated in that he wanted to
have some part of ownership and he couldn't get that
with the Packers because, wonderfully, in my opinion, there was
no owner of the Packers. It was owned by the community.
So that combined with the fact that in Washington, the
(02:36):
owner of the Redskins, Edward Bennett Williams, believed in what
he called competition living, and to him, the patron saint
of that form of life was Vince Lombardi. They were
both Catholics, they both loved to win. Williams would do
anything to get Lombardy to be the coach.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Of course, Edward Williams seriously managing partner of the Redskins
organization at the time was always full of surprises.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Mike Bragg punter for Washington from nineteen sixty eight to
nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And he was a great speaker, a great salesman, a
great attorney in the courtroom obviously, and you know he
talked Coach Lombardi out of retirement. My first year in
nineteen sixty eight, we played the Packers at home, and
I remember coming on.
Speaker 5 (03:31):
The field to warm up.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Vince Lombardi was then the general manager and he was
sitting in the owner's box at RK. I come on
the field and I look up and I see the
owner's box and there's Bence Lombardi with his camel hair
overcoat on his fedora and those glasses.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Ever.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
I'm going, so wow, there's the old man. I had
no idea that the next year he was coming out
of retirement coming to coach us.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
In early nineteen sixty nine, Vince Lombardi became the head
coach and executive vice president of Washington and was given
a five percent stake in ownership.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
That's the proudest moment of my life with the Redskins
to present.
Speaker 7 (04:15):
To you.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Vince Lombardi.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
He got to Washington that spring, he was kind of
the toast of the town. It was actually early spring
and Nixon had just been inaugurated as president, but Vince
Lombardi was the most popular guy in town. There's a
scene in my book where he's with Williams walking into
Duke Ziebert's restaurant on Connecticut Avenue.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Which was kind of a place where, you.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Know, sort of power brokers met, and they all rose
to their feet and gave Lombardi a standing ovation. David Broder,
the great political reporter for the Post, said, of all
the people in town, it was Lombardi, not Nixon, who
was the toast of the town that winter in spring.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
I'm very happy to he believe me, most happy to
be a Washington redskin.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
And he was very humble in front of the cameras
and the press, and he says, well, if possible, we'd
like to have our winner our first year. Okay, coach, yeah.
Speaker 8 (05:14):
Webby or Cable win the first year of a second
I'd like to have a winn of the first year,
if possible.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
He'd have a lot of work to do. Fullback Chuck Mercine,
who was with Washington for two separate periods in the
nineteen sixties. Remembers what the team vibe was in his
pre Lombardy stint well.
Speaker 9 (05:33):
I was zerk first. It was kind of an old
pals that kind of thing. Everybody would go out breaking
and we go fourth together. Sonny was kind of the ring leader,
Sonny Jurgison. You could tell that it wasn't a really
greatly disciplined change.
Speaker 10 (05:45):
When Auto Graham was the coach, the players who would
have a.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Pool Tommy McBean, longtime equipment manager for Washington, they'd.
Speaker 10 (05:53):
All put in ten dollars or five dollars or whatever,
and they'd count how many times on would clap after
the play. Good play, three claps, and I have a
chart and they would give me twenty dollars to keep
track of how many times he hit the clipboard with it.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
When Lombardi joined, Washington had just wrapped up its ninth
losing season in eleven years.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Lombardi was accustomed to coming into a situation like that.
When he'd come to the Green Day Packers in nineteen
fifty nine, they'd have several losing seasons in a row.
The year before, they'd won only one game, he immediately
turned them round and created a winning season, and he
thought he could do the same with the Redskins. So
there's no trouble at all for Lombardi. He liked starting over.
(06:42):
He knew that the Redskins, like the Packers of nineteen
fifty nine, had some raw talent.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
He just needed to be put into shape.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The players knew that everything was about to change.
Speaker 11 (06:56):
Unbelievably over the top, crazy, mad, screaming, yelling, cussing.
Speaker 9 (07:03):
Very disciplined, very tough guy, a guy who wasn't going
to be your best French for sure, but you know as.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
A leader like Chuck Mercine. Quarterback Mike Bass had had
some experience under Lombardi. Bass was originally drafted by the
Packers in nineteen sixty seven, but was sold to the
Lions before the start of the season.
Speaker 8 (07:23):
And so I knew exactly what to expect, and from
Chris Hanberger to.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
The rest of him asking me, what was he like?
What can we expect?
Speaker 8 (07:32):
It was going to be a different team all the time.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Lombardi was a tough coach, and you know, the mythology
revolves around us saying attributed to you know, winning isn't
everything it's the only thing. It wasn't true. He wasn't
like that. A lot of coaches after Lombardi tried to
pretend they were Lombardi and they were tough guys, but
they didn't understand the other part of it, which was
(07:59):
to Lombardy understood his players that they might sort of
hate him on a daily basis, but loved him on
a larger scale, and the love side was actually stronger
than the hate side. So his you know, like Sonny
Jurgen said, who was the quarterback of the Redskins, then
called up Paul Horning, who was the star for the Packers,
(08:20):
and said, how am I going to deal with this guy?
Paul said to Sonny, Sonny, You're gonna love him because
he cares about his players, and he knows how to win,
and he has that balance of books.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Sonny Jurgensen got in the best shape of his life.
Ahead of Lombardi's first season, All Pro linebackers Sam Huff
came out of retirement to play for the coach. There
was a different feeling in the air in Washington. Work
was underway to get that winner. Lombardi's first year.
Speaker 12 (08:52):
The Lombardi era begins at high noon today for the Redskins.
A total of sixty seven veterans and rookies are scheduled
to arrive in Harlyisle, Pennsylvania for the opening of training camp.
They will draw equipment and meet their new boss tonight
at the first team meeting.
Speaker 13 (09:08):
He was humorous to me in many ways.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Former linebacker Chris Hanberger, a six time All Pro who
played fourteen seasons with Washington from nineteen sixty five to
nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 13 (09:20):
He was very strict on not many rules, but very
strict about the ones that he had. And I mean,
if he said a meeting started at eight o'clock and
he walked in at ten minutes of, and then you
walked in at five minutes of, you're late and you're
going to get fined.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
They called it Lombardi time.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
You didn't want to be late, by his definition of
the word. You didn't want to find yourself on the
wrong side of something he was strict about.
Speaker 13 (09:48):
I remember one player, we're in the meeting and this
other player, this player, he got injured I think in
the morning practice and training camp. He didn't show up
evidently for Tree meant when he should have before the
afternoon practice. So we're in the meeting and Coach Lombardi
walks in. He's walking up the island and he starts
(10:10):
talking and he mentioned the player's name, and he said,
you report to the Norfolk Neptunes by such and such.
He fired me right then and there for not showing
up for treatment.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Lombardi was all about accountability. He was eagle eyed.
Speaker 10 (10:28):
So one day at Lombardy he told the coaches, I'll
see inside.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I want to talk to Tommy.
Speaker 10 (10:32):
Put his arm around me and we started continuing to
walk across the street and he says, Tommy, is there
something you want to tell me.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I said, well, what do you mean, coach? He says,
you didn't take communion this morning. There's something you want.
Speaker 10 (10:46):
To tell me, I said, coach, Coach, we scrimmaged in
the point down rain at the high school last night.
The equipment was so muddy that shoes, the uniforms.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I had to wash everything. I says.
Speaker 10 (10:59):
We were working until two thirty in the morning.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
He said, that's a.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Hell of excuse, and he wanted his guys to know
he was always watching.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
He came up and said, uh, glad to have your
training camp.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
We're going to have a great year. That's it.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
I saw him thinking, wow, So that was it.
Speaker 14 (11:16):
And then we go on to the field that afternoon,
like an hour and a half or two hours later,
and he's watching me punt and I hit one that wasn't.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
So good, you know, off the side of the foot
a little bit.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
He says, what the hell was that? And I'm going, Oh.
He used to ride around on a golf cart and
ride right up and put that golf cart which was
almost in your way, and he would sit there and wait,
and you said, Okay, I better not get another one
like that.
Speaker 15 (11:43):
I better hit a good one.
Speaker 14 (11:44):
So he had a way that, you know, he could
get inside your head and put pressure on you.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
He did it to everybody.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
John Jacoa played safety for Washington from nineteen seventy to
nineteen seventy two. During his rookie year, he kept a
diary of his time at training camp and remembers Lombardi's
attentiveness and the psychological effect that had.
Speaker 7 (12:04):
Lombardi seems to be everywhere and see everything. He watched
me make a good play and shouted, that's the way
to play football, son, and I felt about ten feet tall.
Then later I was beaten on a pass pattern, and
he was on the other side of the field watching
a different drill, and I'm sure his back was turned
to our drill, but he roared who was that defensive back?
My coach yelled who was Joqua? And he yelled, that's
(12:27):
no way to play football.
Speaker 8 (12:28):
Sun.
Speaker 7 (12:29):
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying my damness
to be inconspicuous.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
He loved to push his team. There was undeniably a
brutality to the environments he oversaw.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
So I have.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Some wonderful memories former Washington offensive lineman Ray Shonkey remembers, but.
Speaker 11 (12:48):
I also have some really tough times when I saw
how the sky could drive you and you had to
learn to play hurt.
Speaker 6 (12:54):
When though that happened to me. Yeah, with to call
the Hamburger.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Drill former Washington tight end Pat Richter.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
And it was a offensive person blocking against the linebacker,
and I had a single bar on the face mask
and as elbow came up and hit me in the nose,
and I realized that quite quickly and busted my nose,
and the other took a couple more blocks and were
(13:24):
fairly successful a couple of blocks, and he mentioned one
of the coaches back. Took a lot of guts for
the kid to do that.
Speaker 11 (13:31):
I played with knees so banged up, you know, and
he would scream at you, call your names if you
weren't tough enough. But you found out you could play.
I played with a separated ribcage and hall I caught
hard a breed and the pain was just excruciating.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
But I played with.
Speaker 11 (13:47):
That sucker that was his top lineman. I mean it
was it was crazy, but he was an inspiration.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
This once in a generation coach had players wanting to
put their body on the line. He was clear about
how much he cared about them as ballplayers and as men.
Speaker 11 (14:03):
When we were coming back from Dallas, and remember he
came up to me and he started rubbing my shoulders
and telling me how proud he was of.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Me and how excited he was.
Speaker 11 (14:12):
He's looking forward to playing again with me next year,
you know. And I was just you know, like this is,
you know, like God blessing you.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
He also had a humanity part, where you say, even
though you put yourself at risk, take it easy to
make sure that you protect yourself in that regard, even
though you've done something that was a little bit off
the wall, so to speak. So he was a great
relationship that we had the players. The coach. I demanded
(14:40):
very much everything that you had. Yeah, you realize that,
Yet here was an opportunity for me be successful, to
win games we had not went in the past.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
When they did. Lombardi's presence had an immediate effect, as
Washington would put together it's best season in two decades,
and you could just see.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
The difference in the team, the toughness of the team.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
And I think everyone realized that he was turning that
franchise around.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
He saw that there was enough talent there.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I just needed to be organized and motivated, and those
are two things that Lombardy was the best thing.
Speaker 10 (15:17):
The discipline completely changed under coach Lombardi. Coach Lombardi demanded
excellence and precise.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Dedication.
Speaker 10 (15:28):
And he used to say, is what you're doing about
to do bringing you any closer term mein objective winning
and winning isn't just football winning.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
His life, the lessons Lombardi imparted on his players went
far beyond the football field.
Speaker 9 (15:42):
I just had always had a feeling that you know,
you just never give up, never quit, you know that
kind of philosophy one hundred tempers that effort. You're going
to get knocked down, but get backed off. You know
that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
You knew that when you were doing with football. Whatever
you're doing, whether you're in banking or in police player, whatever,
people come to you for advice and counsel, and when
they do that, you got to give him their best
shot and not take a slovenly careless attitude because something
much more difficult than a football game.
Speaker 8 (16:16):
He's that father that you wanted to cuss out under
your breath, but at the same time you respected him
so much that just having him say good job and
say your name, you could.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Turn and just hould your chest.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
Coach Lombardi said something to me, and that was one
of the things that kept me wanting.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
To play pro football.
Speaker 8 (16:39):
After he cut me in Green Bay, he said to me, Mike,
you could play in this league, and that to this
day stays in my mind.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Let alone football being transformed, lives were being changed by
this man. In Washington. In less than a year with
Lombardi at the Helm, there was so much excitement about
the team's future, and then it all took a turn.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Washington Redskins coach Vince Lombardi had a two foot section
of his colon removed today after surgeons discovered a tumor
during an exploratory operation.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of coaling cancer.
Speaker 15 (17:22):
It was a strike that year, and so he was
at Georgetown Hospital and we were practicing together as a
team on the upper.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Fields at Georgetown University.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
So all of a sudden, we see this, this limousine
Cadillac coming across the driving across the upper field.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
I don't know how got out there, and we're going like, what.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The heck is this.
Speaker 13 (17:48):
We were getting ready to run the before practice exercises
like Coach Lombardy would have us do.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
He's got on his hospital gown, but he's got on
his wristband and you know, like some tubes.
Speaker 14 (18:04):
Out of him and all that. And he got out
of the car and said, I'm glad you were practicing together.
Whatever you do, stick together.
Speaker 13 (18:17):
That He just got back in the car and left,
and that's the last time I ever saw him.
Speaker 7 (18:23):
Sunday, August ninth, we had the day off with films.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
This evening.
Speaker 7 (18:27):
I spent a while talking with Jerry Smith.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Today.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
He talked a lot about Vince Lombardi and about what
a truly great person he is. Jerry said that Lombardi
had been given last rites. He also said that he
had been taking cobalt treatments for cancer for over two
years and that he knew he only had a short
time to live before he took over the Redskins.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Vince Lombardi passed away on September third, nineteen seventy at
Georgetown University Hospital.
Speaker 15 (19:00):
Flew up to New York to go to his funeral
at Saint Patrick's Cathedral.
Speaker 9 (19:05):
I remember the funeral at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. I was
there with the rest of the Redskins and the packers
and it.
Speaker 12 (19:12):
Was wall to wall.
Speaker 9 (19:13):
It was completely packed and out on to Fifth Avenue.
It was amazing. It was quite something, and you know,
sad moment, sad moment. He was only fifty seven years old.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
That's who knows what Lombardy would have done with that
team if he'd lived. You know, it's a cliche to
talk about football culture, but he definitely changed the whole
sensibility of football in Washington, made it something that players
wanted to play for that team again. He set a
standard that had to be met and was for most
(19:48):
of the time for the next few decades. So he
turned things around.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
To come out of retirement to come to coach our
team was a great thrill and opportunity to be around
a great man. You see why he was successful with
That's something as you live with the rest of your life,
and all of us learned from in that regard. It
was just a great opportunity and transity lived.
Speaker 15 (20:20):
Excellence must be pursued.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
There must be wood, but all of one might, every
bit of effort that we have, and each day, the new.
Speaker 12 (20:27):
Encounter, each week is a new challenge.
Speaker 13 (20:30):
All of the display and all of the noise, and
all of the glamour, and all of the color, all
of the.
Speaker 10 (20:36):
Excitement, all of the rings, and all of the money,
these are the things that really linger only.
Speaker 7 (20:43):
In the memory, but the spirit, the will to excel,
the will to wind, these are the things that endure.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Like subscribe, comment and stay tuned for more Hailtales episodes
this summer. This episode of Haletals was narrated, produced, and
researched by me Hannah Liechtenstein, senior copywriter for the Washington Commanders.
It was produced and edited by Jason Johnson, edited by
Nick Lianos. Executive producers are Ryan Yoakum and Kevin Klein.
(21:25):
Additional voiceover help comes from Bram Weinstein Graphics designed by
Zach Osborne and Matt Cashman. Thank you to our guests
for their contributions, and thank you for listening.
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