The Green Bay defense was stellar, limiting the Cardinals to 16 yards rushing and sacking quarterback Sam Etcheverry five times.
The Packers forced 5 turnovers, 3 fumbles, and 2 interceptions, giving them 12 after just two games.
Lemm singled out defensive tackle Henry Jordan, who was on his way to becoming a consensus All-Pro.
“That Jordan is everywhere and he does everything,” Lemm said.
“Willie Davis was hitting ’em before I got to ’em,” Jordan said after the game.
That season the Cardinals signed a rookie from the University of Wisconsin named Jim Bakken, who had been a quarterback with the Badgers. Bakken, who had been drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, also was an accomplished kicker and would go on to a seventeen-year career with the Cardinals. He was twice named All-Pro and played in the Pro Bowl four times. He was the first player in NFL history to kick 7 field goals in one game.
After Bakken was cut, the Packers contacted him and wanted to sign him. But since the Packers were the champion team, they had to wait to see if other teams put a claim on him. The Cardinals did and signed the native of Madison.
Recalling that Jerry Kramer booted 3 field goals in the 1962 title game, Bakken said, “That could have been me. I know if I would have been signed by the Packers I would have been their kicker when Hornung got hurt. It’s something I don’t dwell on, but it certainly crossed my mind.”
He very well could have been their kicker for three other championship teams and in the Super Bowl wins over Kansas City and Oakland had the Packers signed him in 1962. Green Bay eventually signed Don Chandler as their full-time kicker and punter in 1965.
“A sleepless night”
Packers 49, Bears 0
City Stadium
September 30
Lombardi had an inordinate amount of respect for Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas, not only for his contributions to the NFL but also because of what “Papa Bear” did when the Packers were searching for a coach following the 1958 season
It was Halas who strongly recommended to Packers President Dominic Olejniczak that he hire Lombardi, the Giants’ forty-five-year-old offensive coordinator.
Halas hated losing, especially to the Packers, but he respected Lombardi for how he turned around the Packers. Green Bay being relevant again helped the National Football League, which was important to Halas, who with others had helped create the league.
During the spring of 1962, he made the two-hundred-mile trip from Chicago to Green Bay to help roast Lombardi, who was being honored by the Green Bay Elks Club.
“We’re delighted to be part of this richly deserved tribute to Vince Lombardi,” Halas said that night. “Although my role is out of character. In the past when we have come to Green Bay it was not to praise Caesar. It was to bury him. But due to our notable lack of success in arranging the football demise of Vince Lombardi and the Packers, we know that his record will continue for quite some time.”
Lombardi was touched, and in his mind nothing could have been finer than to have Halas be part of his special night.
Almost six months later the Bears came to Green Bay for the first of two regular-season games with their most hated rivals with a 2–0 record and a banged-up team.
“Lombardi loved Halas for what he meant to the National Football League, but he also loved beating the Bears,” Hornung said. “I loved Halas, too.”
Chicago came into the game without linebacker Bill George, who was sidelined with a back injury. Halfback Willie Galimore was also injured and unavailable. Fullback Rick Casares, whom Hornung referred to as “one of the toughest sons of bitches I know,” was bothered with a heel injury. Defensive back J.C. Caroline was also hobbling. Had the Bears been at full strength they would have had trouble beating the Packers that day. Without several key players, they were defenseless.
After a scoreless first period the Packers rolled to a 49–0 win. The Green Bay defense was relentless, holding the Bears to 217 yards while recovering 1 fumble and intercepting 5 passes, the last returned 50 yards for a touchdown by Herb Adderley.
The offense was at the top of its game as well, totaling 21 first downs and 409 yards. Taylor needed just 17 attempts to rush for 126 yards. He scored on runs of 1, 2, and 11 yards. Elijah Pitts had his best game as a pro, scoring on a 26-yard run and finishing with 64 yards on 9 carries.
Bart Starr completed 9 of 12 passes, one a 54-yard scoring pass to tight end Ron Kramer. Starr also rushed for a touchdown.
Pitts played the entire second half after both Hornung and his backup, Tom Moore, were injured.
“When I came to the stadium today I figured I’d only be playing on platoons,” said Pitts, a second-year player, who was an alumnus of little Philander T. Smith College. “I had trouble hitting the holes in the first half. Then, all of a sudden, I was hitting them pretty well.”
In the end it was one of the worst defeats in Bears history.
“They were just too good for us,” Halas told reporters following the game. “That’s about all you can say. The Packers were just a great team out there today.”
A week earlier, when asked by a Los Angeles writer about his rivals to the north, Halas said, “The Packers do not yet walk upon water.”
Following the game he wouldn’t take the bait when asked how this Green Bay team stacked up against others in the history of the league.
“I never compare teams,” he said.
Lombardi was gracious in victory and careful not to say anything that would appear to demean Halas and the Bears.
“We’ve played good ball games before but everything seemed to work today,” he said. “Everything we tried worked.”
The only story that wasn’t related to the Packers-Bears game on the front of the Press-Gazette the next day was a story about the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, who were preparing to start a best-of-three series to decide the National League pennant. The Giants went on to win the pennant but lose the World Series to the New York Yankees, losing Game seven 1–0. Before he began his professional football career as a player-coach, Halas appeared to be a promising baseball player. He was promoted to the New York Yankees and played right field for twelve games before suffering an injury. A popular myth is that Babe Ruth replaced him in the lineup, but that’s not true. Ruth actually replaced Sammy Vick.
Lombardi was working with author W.C. Heinz on Run to Daylight, the classic book chronicling the 1962 season. The book came out in 1963, and in it Lombardi wrote that several hours after the game against the Bears, he woke up in the middle of the night, bothered by the whipping his team had inflicted on Halas’s club.
All week long there builds up inside of you a competitive animosity toward that other man, that counterpart across the field. All week long he is the symbol, the epitome, of what you must defeat and then, when it is over, when you have looked up to that man for as long as I have looked up to George Halas, you cannot help but be disturbed by a score like this. You know he brought a team in here hurt by key injuries and that this was just one of those days, but you can’t apologize.
