’68 Packers slogged through the mud at County Stadium
When the Green Bay Packers came to Milwaukee’s County Stadium to play an exhibition game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Aug. 31, 1968, new Packers coach Phil Bengtson wasn’t too worried about winning.
“The overall preparation is the most important thing in these games,” Bengtson told the Milwaukee Sentinel’s Bud Lea in an Aug. 30, 1968 story.
Unexpected talk in Packerland, considering Bengston had just stepped into the shoes of Vince Lombardi, who had won five NFL championships and two Super Bowls in the previous seven years.
Oh, and Lombardi — the guy known (inaccurately, it turns out) for saying “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” — was still Bengtson’s boss.
On Feb. 1, 1968, Lombardi announced that he was stepping down as coach but would remain general manager of the Packers. Bengtson, his longtime defensive coach, was his anointed successor.
“I can’t see why anybody would want to change what Vince has done,” Bengtson said at the press conference announcing his promotion, according to a front-page story in the Sentinel on Feb. 2. “… Our relationship has been very close. I’m certain there will not be any interference, so to speak. I’m sure Vince will have his hands full (with being general manager).”
In the 1968 preseason, the Packers started off slow, beating the College All-Stars but losing to the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears (the latter at County Stadium). The Pack then beat the Dallas Cowboys, in Dallas, 3127, giving Green Bay momentum into its game in Milwaukee with the Steelers.
“We expect a good game from them,” Bengtson told Lea. “I’m sure they will be a lot more effective than last week when they were upset by the (Cincinnati) Bengals.”
Pittsburgh came into the game with a lot of injuries and a young, inexperienced team. With a roster of players averaging about 30 years old — not young in pro football terms — the Packers were much more experienced, and confident of the outcome.
They ended up getting a lot of help from the weather.
Per usual for Packers games in Milwaukee, County Stadium held a soldout crowd of 47, 265 people. According to Milwaukee Journal sportswriter Terry Bledsoe, few of them stayed till the end.
The Steelers scored first, on a 31yard field goal by Bill Shockley. The Pack and Pittsburgh traded touchdowns — Green Bay on two touchdown passes from Bart Starr to receiver Carroll Dale, the Steelers on an interception of a Starr pass by linebacker John Campbell — making the score at the half 14-10 Green Bay.
Donny Anderson, the Packers’ young halfback, scored a touchdown on a 1-yard run in the third quarter, pushing the team’s lead to 21-10.
Then the fourth quarter came, and with it a deluge. The skies opened up, and thunder rocked County Stadium.
“The rain quickly converted the skinned part of the field, the baseball infield, to a surface the consistency of gruel, and the Steelers fumbled twice trying to run their way out of it,” Bledsoe wrote.
When the rain finally stopped, the Steelers started up again, adding another touchdown and bringing the score to 21-17. But the Packers chewed up most of the time remaining and held on for the win.
Bengtson told the Sentinel’s Lea that the game was “pretty sloppy,” but he wasn’t referring to the weather.
“There are certain things we have to sharpen,” he said, in Lea’s story on the game in the Sept. 2 Sentinel. “We know we are capable of playing good football.”
But Steelers coach Bill Austin, noting his team had a lot of its front-line players injured and unavailable to play, saw some problems ahead for the green and gold.
“Take away those two long passes to Dale,” Austin told Lea, “and there was nothing terrific from Green Bay. They still come at you on offense and dare you to stop them. But they’ve been much sharper in the past.”
Austin wasn’t the only one. Oliver E. Kuechle, The Journal’s veteran assistant sports editor, wrote in a Sept 6 column that there was “something mildly disquieting” in the Packers’ play in the preseason.
Citing the team’s shaky ground game, ailing defense and aging roster, Kuechle wrote: “There is the feeling in all of this … that this is a team which will still have a little more trouble than was anticipated.”
That turned out to be an understatement. After starting the regular season with a big win over the Philadelphia Eagles, the 1968 Packers, showing their age and hindered by injuries, scuffled to a record of 6-7-1 — Green Bay’s first losing season since 1958, which was Lombardi’s first year as coach. (The Pack lost two of its three regular-season games at County Stadium that year, including a 26-13 drubbing by the Minnesota Vikings on Sept. 22.)
Lombardi left Green Bay after the 1968 season to become head coach of the Washington Redskins. A few months after finishing his first season in Washington, Lombardi was diagnosed with cancer; he died on Sept. 3, 1970, at age 57.
Bengtson continued as the Packers coach through 1970, resigning at the end of the season. His three-year record as coach: 20-21-1. He died in 1994 at age 81.