Super Bowl XLV Overview
By Bruce Marshall
There is something fitting about any Super Bowl featuring Green Bay and Pittsburgh. That’s probably because they’ve each been involved in so many of them. Indeed, in the first 44 "Supes," Packer or Steeler teams were featured in more than one-quarter (12) of them. Although, for such prominent pro football franchises, they do not have much of a history against one another.
In all of our publishing years, there are only a handful of meetings between the teams that stand out in our memories, and none of them particularly significant. The teams would only occasionally duel in the days of the pre-merger NFL, with Green Bay playing in the old Western Conference, and Pittsburgh in the old Eastern alignment. And since the Steelers never appeared in a playoff or championship game until after the 1970 merger, there has never been a title game matchup between the two.
Interestingly, one previous meeting serves as a little-known footnote in NFL history. Few probably realize that the last team to beat a Vince Lombardi-coached Packer side was actually Pittsburgh. And we’re not talking about the Chuck Noll Steelers, either. No, this was the pre-merger Pittsburgh, lovable loser of the NFL, the Chicago Cubs of the gridiron (hard as that might be for some modern-day fans to fathom), the poor sisters of the league who would absorb heavy beatings almost every year. And the late ‘60s were a particularly desolate period of time for the Steeler franchise, playing those days in old Pitt Stadium after spending many seasons cramped into the Pirates’ old Forbes Field, which was essentially just down the street at the edge of the Pitt campus.
After posting a couple of winning records in 1962 & ‘63 under HC Buddy Parker, staying in the hunt for the Eastern Conference title until the final day of the regular season in the latter year, the Steelers went into a steep decline despite the move from Forbes Field to Pitt Stadium, a real football facility, in 1964. Parker’s trade of top WR Buddy Dial to the Cowboys, however, would inadvertently wreck the offense that year, as rookie replacement Paul Martha (who played his college ball at the same Pitt Stadium) was a bust as a wideout before later becoming a serviceable defensive back. The Steelers slipped to 5-9 in 1964, but that was good compared to what happened in 1965. That year, Parker resigned just two weeks before the beginning of the season, famously stating, "I can’t win with this bunch of stiffs." Promoted assistant Mike Nixon then oversaw a brutal 2-12 campaign in which young QB Bill Nelsen, playing on a sore pair of knees, took unspeakable punishment behind a sieve-like offensive line, while top RB John Henry Johnson, a 1000-yard rusher the previous year, was sidelined almost the entire season by a bad knee.
Bill Austin, who had coached on Lombardi’s Green Bay staffs in the early ’60s and most recently on Harland Svare’s Rams staff in ‘65, was hired to replace Nixon and turn things around in 1966. But despite the presence of a couple of promising young weapons on the offensive side (TE John Hilton and punishing RB Willie Asbury) and an occasional ability to light up the scoreboard, the Steelers continued to lose, posting a 5-8-1 mark in ‘66. It was more of the same in ‘67, as the Steelers limped home at 4-9-1, with QB Nelsen again limited by knee problems, forcing Austin to use former TCU QB Kent Nix as the starter. Nelsen, in a fortuitous bit of luck for him, was traded to the contending Browns the following year for QB Dick Shiner, who would share duties with Nix in ‘68. Thus liberated from Pittsburgh, Nelsen would soon blossom as a top-flight NFL QB, supplanting Frank Ryan as the Cleveland starter and leading the Brownies to back-to-back NFL title games.
The Steelers, however, continued to lose, although they maintained their reputation as a no-nonsense bunch that preferred the physical nature of the sport as opposed to the more chic passing game that was being popularized around the league. One of the noted toughs from the Pittsburgh defenses of that era was ornery LB Bill Saul, a rugged, toothless bruiser from Penn State who was featured in one of NFL Films’ first memorable specials. Saul was so tough that he would chide opponents such as the Browns and their QB Frank Ryan to play some "real football" and quit throwing the ball around the yard. That rugged reputation of Steeler teams is one thing that has endured from the dark ages of Pittsburgh football. But the days were indeed dark in the late ‘60s, especially ‘68, when the team collapsed to another 2-12 mark and prompted the dismissal of Austin, with one of Don Shula’s trusted aides from Baltimore, Chuck Noll, the next coach to get the assignment of rebuilding the Steelers franchise.
We all know what followed, although success didn’t come overnight. Noll’s first team in 1969 finished 1-13, bringing Pittsburgh’s 5-year mark at the end of the ‘60s to an odorous 14-54-2. It wasn’t until the merger, the bold move to the AFC with the Browns and Colts, and the opening of new Three Rivers Stadium in 1970 that the Steelers began to catch an updraft.
Owner Art Rooney was always gracious in defeat, however, with an attitude that "somebody has to lose games in this league." Which effectively endeared the Rooney family to a generation of football fans who were genuinely thrilled when the Steelers finally emerged as a force in the early ‘70s. If anyone deserved a taste of victory, it was Mr. Rooney.
Still, many pro football historians have forgotten Lombardi’s last regular-season game as Green Bay’s coach on December 17, 1967. The game essentially mean nothing to the Packers, who had already wrapped up the newly-created Central Division crown, and would be hosting the winner of that afternoon’s Colts-Rams game for the Western Conference championship the next week in Milwaukee. And it was that rock-bottom, late ’60s version of the Steelers, who we discussed previously, providing the opposition that day at Lambeau Field.
Ironically, the powerful Packers would never even lead in that contest. Lombardi began the game with most of his starters in place, but QB Bart Starr, hit as he was throwing, was intercepted by Pittsburgh DE Ben McGee, who rumbled 21 yards for the game’s first score. Lombardi then began to substitute liberally, eventually letting San Diego State rookie Don Horn, the Pack’s third-string QB, play from midway in the 2nd Q onward. But a 22-yard TD run by Steeler RB Earl Gros put Pittsburgh up 14-3 in the 2nd Q. Then, late in the 3rd Q, another Steeler defensive lineman, this time DT Chuck Hinton, would score another TD on a 27-yard fumble return to put the Steelers up 24-10. Horn tried to rally the Pack, and despite a couple of TDs from rookie RB Travis Williams, Green Bay ran out of time.
Lombardi would thus enter his last postseason on the heels of a 24-17 defeat to a 4-9-1 team whose QB, the aforementioned Kent Nix, passed for only 72 yards on 12 completions, with the likes of RBs Earl Gros and Cannonball Butler doing most of the Pittsburgh damage on the ground. It was a collection of Steelers hardly to be confused with the distinguished Colts, Browns, Rams, or Cowboys sides of the era. Although Lombardi had yet to announce his future intentions at that point (he would wait until after the Super Bowl vs. the Raiders to step down as head coach and remain as general manager, with assistant Phil Bengston promoted to replace him on the sidelines), most unsuspecting fans would hardly have guessed that Lombardi lost his last regular-season game as Packers coach to a team as bad as the ‘67 Steelers. And to this point, that’s probably been the most eventful meeting in the long history between these two storied franchises.
Although this Super Bowl XLV matchup has a definite old-time NFL feel to it, we are again denied the added intrigue of rekindling the long-ago AFL-NFL feud, something we haven’t been treated to in the Super Bowl since the Giants and Patriots squared off three years ago. And as much as the Super Bowl has become a cultural phenomenon, the modern-day editions of the game lack some of the mystery of the first four meetings prior to the merger, days when the AFL-NFL rivalry really boiled.
The rival leagues, of course, did not meet until the first Super Bowl on January 15, 1967 at the L.A. Coliseum, featuring the AFL champion Chiefs and the NFL champion Packers. (Ed. Note: That game was indeed referred to as the "Super Bowl" in almost all media outlets, although it would be a few years before the name would be officially attached to the game.) But we have always believed the real flashpoints of the old rivalry came in the subsequent preseasons of 1967, ‘68, and ‘69, when interleague action highlighted the summer schedule. This past August, we ran a detailed recounting of those "little Super Bowls" in the late ‘60s. It’s worth noting that the late ‘60s Steelers were a willing participant in preseason matchups vs. AFL teams in those days, although the Packers, completely of Lombardi’s doing in 1967 & ‘68, disdained those summer interleague matchups in a display of haughty arrogance. Even George Halas’ Chicago Bears participated, although they might have wished they hadn’t when getting routed by the Chiefs, 66-24, in the AFL’s biggest win in the summer of ‘67. By 1968, AFL teams had forged an advantage over their NFL rivals in the summer series that hardly resembled the scripted, sterile preseason games we have become used to over the past several decades. And there might not have ever been a more-hyped preseason game than the 1969 Jets-Giants game that took place at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, the first time the Big Apple rivals ever squared off on the gridiron. The buildup to the game was almost Super Bowl-like, which suited Joe Namath and the Jets just fine after their shock win over the Colts 7½ months earlier in Miami. As they did against Baltimore the preceding January, the Jets struck a blow for the AFL and a broadside hit to the NFL establishment when routing the G-Men, 37-14. Those who recall the late ‘60s remember those preseason interleague games with fondness, even if it was beneath Lombardi’s Packers to participate.
Super Bowls have entered a more exciting era since the mid ‘90s after an extended period of one-sided results that were mostly dominated by the NFC champions. From the 1984 thru 1996 seasons, NFC teams won every Super Bowl, many of them by lopsided margins. Blowout results were so expected in Super Bowl games during most of that era that oddsmakers were forced to adjust pointspreads just to address the phenomenon. Hard as it is to believe, the biggest pointspread of the entire 1994 NFL season came in Super Bowl XXIX, when the price on the favored 49ers ballooned to 18½ over the underdog Chargers. When San Francisco ended up covering that game more handily than the 49-26 final might suggest, it also marked the an end of an era when routs were the rule, rather than the exception, in Super Bowl games. In the 16 years since, almost every Super Bowl has been competitive and filled with varying degrees of drama, save for perhaps Denver’s comfy win over Atlanta in XXXIII, Baltimore’s romp past the Giants in XXXV, and Tampa Bay’s cruise past Oakland in XXXVII.
Having been around for all of the Super Bowls (with the first one, in January 1967, the only one I attended in person), we thought that we were as qualified as anybody to "rate" the past Super Bowl games. Which we finally did five years ago, updating the story to account for new Super Bowls in every year since. Interestingly, and echoing our previous point about the games becoming more exciting since the mid ‘90s, our top five all-time Super Bowl games were each contested in the past decade, with the only "older" Super Bowls in our top ten including those pair of Steelers-Cowboys gems in the late ‘70s, and San Francisco’s late 20-16 win over Cincinnati in January of ‘89. We'll have an updated version of our Super Bowl list next week.
The recent trend of competitive Super Bowls is reflected in improved performance of the underdogs, who have now covered 7 of the last 9 in the "Supe" after an extended run of chalk-dominated results prior. Overall, SB favorites still lead underdogs by a 22-19-2 count (with one pick ‘em in SB XVI between the 49ers and Bengals), although that chalk edge has been shrinking in recent years. And even though we have been treated to a number of thrillers in recent Super Bowls, remember that half of them (22 of 44), including last year’s 31-17 Saints win over the Colts, have still been decided by 14 points or more, which relates to many historical results in pre-Super Bowl title games when lopsided scores were also commonplace. Championship-game blowouts didn’t begin with Joe Montana’s ‘84 49ers or the Super Bowl Shuffle ‘85 Bears; their frequency extends back to the earliest days of the league, with several eras featuring more of them than others (such as the mid ‘50s, when a succession of NFL title games featured scorelines of 56-10, 38-14, 47-7, and 59-14). Note, too, that the all-time NFL blowout occurred in the 1940 title game, when George Halas’ Bears overwhelmed the Washington Redskins, 73-0, in a game that featured eight interceptions by Chicago defenders!