Lambeau? Brrrring it on
Johnette Howard
January 16, 2008
Worried about Eli Manning's ability to play effectively in the cold during the NFC Championship Game on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers? Admitting it is your first mistake.
"With Vince Lombardi, it was never cold here," said former Packers All-Pro Fuzzy Thurston, who played guard for Green Bay from 1959-67. "Before games, he'd just say something like, 'Men, it's a little blustery out there today.' Blustery, see? Then he'd say, 'It's our kind of day! Now get your asses out there and strut around like it's the Fourth of July."'
Thurston is 74, and he's outlasted throat cancer and endured two hip replacements. He said this marked the first time in nearly five decades he's missed a game at hallowed Lambeau Field. The Giants haven't played a playoff game there since 1961, Lombardi's third season, and it's been 40 years since the legendary coach patrolled the Packers' sidelines in his trademark overcoat, barking at officials in his best Brooklynese. But within the magical space of Lambeau itself, and the surrounding little town of Green Bay, it can often feel like not a lot has changed.
It's not just the snow or terrible cold that gives playoff games at Lambeau a flashback feel. When the Packers return from an important road game, win or lose, the townspeople still leave their porch lights on for the team as a show of support. When a heavy snowfall hits the area in the days before a game, the Packers' front office - as it did yesterday, for the fifth time this season - puts out an announcement asking volunteers to show up at Lambeau and grab a shovel. For $8 an hour, citizens come by the dozens to clear the stands.
"And if we announce we want people here at 8 o'clock, they start lining up outside at 4 a.m. because they want to be a part of it," says Bob Harlan, the Packers CEO and chairman of the board. "A lot of people bring their children, too, because they say, 'I can't get tickets and I know this is the only way my children will ever see the inside of the stadium.' At the current pace, the wait is 40 years."
Visitors from far and wide still stop by Lambeau and ask to be shown the exact spot in the south end zone where, in the 1967 NFL Championship Game, better known as the Ice Bowl, Bart Starr made the 1-yard touchdown plunge that gave the Pack a 21-17 win over the Dallas Cowboys. Grainy black-and-white photos show Starr burrowing across the goal line with 13 seconds to play, his arms hugging the football as if he were protecting a newborn from the minus 46-degree wind chill.
Thurston's many vivid memories of that game include his undying gratitude about Lombardi's gamble of going for the win and running the ball on third down with no timeouts, rather than trying a game-tying field goal that would've only extended the agony. Not that he'd have admitted it then.
"It was like I had no hands, had no feet, and oh, gawd, the field was so hard it felt like hitting concrete," Thurston said. "But we were never allowed to use the word 'cold' around Lombardi. We would've had to find a new job. Cold was not in his vocabulary."
The Giants shouldn't utter the word this week, either. The current nattering about Manning's ineffectiveness in bad weather traces back just a few weeks to the Giants' Dec. 16 game at the Meadowlands. The Giants flubbed their way to a 22-10 loss against Washington while Manning completed only 18 of 52 passes into the teeth of a swirling, gusting wind.
The fact that the Giants coaches even asked Manning to attempt 52 passes under such conditions is far more worrisome to this week's outcome. The Elias Sports Bureau says Manning has a quarterback rating under 60 and a completion rate under 50 percent when the temperature is 39 degrees or below. But it's too bad Elias didn't get its super computer to run an over/under on how often Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride has persisted in calling 40 or more passes in squall-like weather.
If he or coach Tom Coughlin call 50-some throws again should a blizzard hit Sunday, can we agree the Giants players have permission to board the team plane and leave them shivering on the tarmac?
Harlan, with a lilt in his voice, said yesterday that the forecast for Sunday's game is "a high of about 7 or 8 above zero. Game time, it will probably be about 4 above, with the possibility of snow showers."
Then Harlan added, "If it's not windy, that's not that bad."
Told now that he sounded like those Palm Springs natives who insist the 120-degree days there aren't really hot because it's a "dry" heat, Harlan laughed and said, "Aw, you get used to this."
"Like hell you do," Thurston scoffed.
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