Lady Luck and the Lombardi legend

How hard is it to win three straight NFL title games? Well, consider this: no less a legend than Vince Lombardi accomplished this singular feat thanks to a serendipitous lift from Lady Luck.

 

It's a rather compelling historical consideration during a season in which New England finds itself attempting to rewrite NFL history by joining the 1965-67 Packers as the only teams to win three straight NFL championship games.

 

(One other team in NFL history has won three straight championships: the 1929-31 Packers. But those Packers, under Earl "Curly" Lambeau – yes, the man for whom the field is named – did not play in a single championship game. The league title in those days was simply handed to the team with the best record at the end of the season. Click here for more on the difficulty of winning multiple championships in football.)

 

Of course, the 1967 Packers got a lucky break that New England simply did not get – and will not get. And here's what it is: Lombardi and the 1967 Packers were the sole and unintended beneficiaries of the most radical realignment in the history of the league.

 

The NFL's realignment in the 1967 season:

Here's how it all went down...

 

From 1920 to 1932, the NFL had no divisions or conferences and simply handed its championship to the team with the best record (though there was an unscheduled "tie-breaker" championship game following the 1932 season).

 

The league went to a two-conference (Eastern and Western), no-division alignment in 1933:

It was under this simple, two-conference format that Lombardi's Packers won five conference titles (1960, 1961, 1962, 1965 and 1966) and four NFL championships (the Packers lost to Philadelphia, 17-13, in the 1960 championship game). Green Bay played just seven postseason games on its way to its four championships in those six seasons. A modern NFL team, by comparison, would need to play at least 15 postseason games to accomplish the same feat – five title game appearances – as Lombardi's 1960-66 Packers.

 

Here's how the league's 15 teams stacked up in 1966, the last season in which the NFL fielded a simple two-conference, no-division format, and the year in which Green Bay won the second of its three straight championships. Take a particularly close look at Green Bay's 1966 Western Conference rivals.

 

With no playoffs in 1966, conference champions Dallas and Green Bay squared off in the NFL title game, where the Packers captured a 34-27 victory. And as the league champion, the Packers represented the NFL that year in the very first Super Bowl (then called the AFL-NFL championship game), where they destroyed the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.

 

In 1967, the NFL adopted a radical new format – the league's first realignment since going to a two-conference format in 1933 – and no team benefited more than the Green Bay Packers.

 

It was in 1967 that the league welcomed its 16th team, the New Orleans Saints. Instead of simply adding New Orleans to the Western Conference, which fielded seven teams in 1966, the league split into four divisions. It also added, for the first time in its entire history, a playoff. The four division winners would make the postseason tournament and compete in a two-round playoff to determine the NFL champion who would represent the league in Super Bowl II.

 

Here's how the league looked in 1967.

 

 

As division winners, Dallas, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Green Bay appeared in the NFL's very first postseason tournament. Dallas bested Cleveland in the Eastern Conference title game, while Green Bay shocked Los Angeles, the league's most dominant team in 1967, in the Western Conference title game, 28-7.

 

The win over 11-1-2 Los Angeles was arguably Green Bay's most impressive and inspiring victory in the Lombardi Era. But not its most famous victory. That happened one week later, when Bart Starr scored a last-second touchdown to give Green Bay a 21-17 win over Dallas in the famous "Ice Bowl." The Packers then advanced to Super Bowl II, where they destroyed Oakland, 33-14.

It all ended quite gloriously for the Packers Dynasty. But here's where Lady Luck made it all possible. If you look at the 1967 standings closely, one thing immediately jumps out: if the league had let its historic two-conference format linger for just one more year, Green Bay would not have made the playoffs.

 

In fact, the Packers would have finished just third in their conference behind the two most dominant teams in football that year. Baltimore and Los Angeles, Green Bay's Western Conference rivals just one season earlier, each finished with an 11-1-2 mark in 1967 – but in the Coastal Division, not in Green Bay's Central Division.

 

It's an interesting historical exercise to consider what the 1967 standings would have looked like if the league continued to use its historic, two-conference format. (We added 1967 expansion team New Orleans to the Western Conference because, in 1966, the west had just seven teams to eight for the east.)

 

 

If the alignment and rules of 1966 were still used in 1967, Los Angeles and Baltimore would have squared off in a one-game playoff to determine who would represent the Western Conference in the NFL championship game. Green Bay, which went 0-2 against L.A. and Baltimore in 1967, wouldn't have gotten a sniff at the playoffs.

 

But that's not what happened. Under new tie-breaking procedures, the Rams were handed the Coastal Division title by virtue of a greater point differential in their two head-to-head meetings with the Colts. So, Baltimore sat at home following their 11-win season, while three nine-win teams (Dallas, Cleveland and Green Bay) appeared in the NFL's very first playoff tournament. To this day, the 1967 Colts boast the best record of any team in league history that failed to make the playoffs are one of just two one-loss teams that missed the postseason. (The 1944 Eagles went 7-1-2, but finished second to the 8-1-1 Giants in the east.)

 

The Packers lost to both L.A. and Baltimore in the 1967 regular season (in the old format, up until 1966, Green Bay would have played each conference rival twice), as they stumbled to a 4-3 finish in the second half of the season. Green Bay's struggles as its dynasty limped to an end are famously chronicled in the book "Instant Replay," written by Hall of Fame guard Jerry Kramer with sportswriter Dick Schaap.

 

Since 1933, 15 teams have attempted to win three straight NFL titles. Only one has succeeded. And now you know why.

 

It may be sacrilege to our spiritual leaders, the Football Gods, but the facts in this instance are as cold and as hard as the famed "frozen tundra" of Green Bay: Lombardi and the Packers were lucky to make the 1967 playoffs, lucky to win three straight titles, lucky to play in the famous "Ice Bowl" that sent them to Super Bowl II, and lucky to have the name of the coach etched on the trophy handed to the NFL champion at the end of each season.

 

Put most simply, without the realignment of 1967, none of these signature moments in professional football history ever would have happened.