The origins of the most storied franchise in the history of the NFL, the Green Bay Packers, date back in many respects to 1895 when the Green Bay Town team, an aggregation of local atheletes, played other Town Teams from communities surrounding Green Bay. In the stretch of time between 1890 - 1950 hundreds of Town Teams or 'elevens" as they were known, came and went across the Midwest but as noted in the excellent book "Before they were Packers" in the absolute sense of the term the last remaining Town Team is the Green Bay Packers.

 
It was an inglorious beginning with a mere three victories in the first two years of competition. During each game, the team manager passed the hat among the spectators, asking for donations for the players, and after the game, the two teams divied up the take. Thus, these teams were among the first "professional" football teams in the United States.

 

While these origins of the Green Bay Packers are particularly interesting for those fans who have a keen sense of history, it's generally regarded that the great saga of this club began in August 1919, when the Indian Packing Company agreed to sponsor a local pro football team under the direction of Earl (Curly) Lambeau.

    As noted by Larry D Names "The truth of all this is the Green Bay Packers are legendary, and like all legends, their beginnings must be clouded in mystery and intrigue. If they weren't, the Packers would be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers."

    The players held their first practice on Sept. 3, 1919 and played their first game on Sept. 14, against the Menominee North End A.C. Green Bay won that game, 53-0. Green Bay's one-sided victory over Menominee in its first game was the first of 10 consecutive triumphs in a season that saw Green Bay out score its opponents 565-6. Green Bay's only loss in that first season came in its last game, on Nov. 23, at the hands of a team that curiously called itself the Beloit "Fairies". The Green Bay Gazette reported the next day "Capt. Lambeau's team was robbed of victory by Referee Zabel of Beloit." Apparently, Lambeau scored three touchdowns that were called back on illegal motion penalties by Mr. Zabel. (It's the stuff of legends isn't it?)

    In 1921, the "Packers" as they had become known, were granted a membership in the newly formed National Football League. Today the Packers rank as the third oldest team in pro football.

    Until more recent years, the long and much celebrated history of the Green Bay team was one of struggle, for both financial survival off the field and playing stability on the field. As a consequence the Packers' record has been punctuated with periods of both the highest success (The "GLORY Years") and the deepest depths of defeat (The "GORY Years"). [Click here for a small but nice photo gallery of these early years.]

    While many great football players have taken the field for Green Bay over the years including 17 Hall of Famers - two coaches, Lambeau and Vince Lombardi, stand out in particular as the most dominant figures in Packers' history.
 

Between the two of them, Lambeau and Lombardi brought the Packers 11 NFL championships and two record strings of three straight titles, including the first in 1929, 1930 and 1931. Their combined record stands at an inspiring 310-136-25.	Bart Starr in action
Curly at Rockwood Lodge	During the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Lambeau-led Packers were annual championship contenders. They won four divisional crowns and NFL titles in 1936, 1939 and 1944.

   With the departure of Lambeau the Packers struggled. From 1950-58 the Packers went 32-72-2 under three different coaches. The team had become pro football's provincial joke.

   In 1958 in his only year coaching the Packers, "the nicest guy who ever coached", Raymond "Scooter" McLean had established a new standard of ineptitude, compiling the worst record in team history, 1-10-1, a mark that New York sportswriter Red Smith, who had grown up in Green Bay, later immortalized with the phrase: "The Packers underwhelmed ten opponents, overwhelmed one, and whelmed one."

   By that time Commissioner Bert Bell was being pressured by big-city owners to fix the Packers or bounce them from the league. The long-running love affair between the people of Green Bay and its football team had also soured. The miracle that such a small town (population 62,888) could sustain a professional club was not enough; it had to win championships, as it had in the twenties, thirties and forties.

Vince Lombardi	As fate would have it the answer presented itself in 1959 with the appointment of Lombardi.  The ensuing Packers' dynasty years of the 1960s under Lombardi's direction, began with Green Bay winning NFL championships in 1961 and 1962. It finally ended after their second string of three straight titles in 1965, 1966 and 1967.
After another bleak period in the 1970s & 80s the Pack commenced another resurgence in the 1990s this time under the direction of General Manager Ron Wolf and coach Mike Holmgren. With the key signing of Defensive End Reggie White and the blossoming of back up QB Brett Favre, the Packers became once again regular Play-off contenders and Divisional Champions.

    In 1996, the Packers returned to the top of the pro football world when they won Super Bowl XXXI while in 1997 they were runners up in Super Bowl XXXII.

    The end of the 1998 season saw Mike Holmgren pack his bags and head to Seattle where he could finally take on a role as General Manager and Head Coach. Many other personal and position coaches followed Mike creating some big holes in the organisation.

In response Ray Rhodes, offensive coach with the Philadelphia Eagles was appointed as the Packers 12th Head Coach. However after a somewhat disappointing 8-8 season when the Packers failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1992 Ron Wolf acted quickly and sacked Rhodes. Go to story

Rhodes had joined "Scooter" Mclean with the distinction of only one coaching season with the Pack.

    "I relieved Ray Rhodes as head football coach of the Green Bay Packers," announced Executive Vice President/General Manager Ron Wolf at a packed news conference at Packers headquarters on Monday morning, 3 Jan 2000.

 "For whatever reason, our players did not respond to this program," said Wolf. "We will begin our search for a new coach at once."
 

Two weeks later Mike Sherman, offensive coach with Seattle Seahawks was introduced as Head Coach Number 13. Like Coach Rhodes, Sherman was also a former Packer's assistant coach (having left the Packers in 1998 with the Holmgren 'mass' exodus). This appointment also came at a time when the Packers organisation was faced with the challenge of seeking public funding of a renovated and expanded stadium.  Go to story

2000 turned out to be a year of positives. Under new coach Sherman the Pack finished a gallant 9 and 7 despite injury woes. And the renovations of Lambeau field were secured with a successful vote of confidence from the county. Then another bomshell hit and the end of the season.
 

It was generally considered that as long as the Green Bay Packers had Ron Wolf running their football operation, they had an advantage over almost every other franchise in the National Football League. Well that critical edge was lost in February 2001 when the 62-year-old Wolf stunned the football world by announcing his retirement to take affect at the end of the 2001 draft. Go to Story

Packers president Bob Harlan responded by handing Wolf's duties as general manager to head coach Mike Sherman. The move, which Harlan conceded wasn't without risk, returned the organization to the omnipotent-coach structure that flourished under Vince Lombardi from 1959-'67 and failed under Phil Bengtson, Dan Devine, Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg from 1968-'86.   In Ron Wolf's tenure as general manager, the Green Bay Packers had a 101-57 (.639) overall record. Some of the team's accomplishments in his nine seasons included:   • Back-to-back Super Bowl appearances (1996 and '97), and the franchise's first Super Bowl championship in 29 years (1996); • Three consecutive NFC Central Division championships (1995-'97); • The first string of four double-digit winning regular seasons for a Green Bay team since 1929-'32 (11-5 in 1995, 13-3 in both 1996 and '97, and 11-5 in 1998); • The first 16-victory season in the Packers' 82-year history (1996); and • The second-longest home-field winning streak in NFL history (25 straight regular-season games)

The Packers reworked the final three years on Wolf's contract to reflect the consulting role he took on. In the mean time Sherman in his first three seasons did not disappoint fans by winning more games (33) than any of his predecessors, including team founder Lambeau and the fabled Lombardi recorded in their first three years.

In January 2005 Packers President Bob Harlan named Ted Thompson as executive vice president, general manager and director of football operations. In hiring Thompson, Harlan made it clear that his new general manager had full authority over the football operation, including the right to fire the head coach. In fact, Harlan used the same written agreement the club had used to sign Wolf 13 years ago for the basis of Thompson's contract. In August 2005 a two-year contract extension with Sherman as executive vice prersident and head coach was agreed to.

While Season 2005 held plenty of promise the serious run of injuries to a number of central players such as Ahman Green coupled with the loss to free agency of key guards Marco Riveria and Mike Wahle saw the year turn into serious disappointmnet with the Packers finishing with a 4-12 record, their first losing season in the Brett Favre era and their worst season since a 4-12 mark in 1991. It also spelt the end for Mike Sherman despite his 59-43 career record which ranked fourth in team history in both victories and winning percentage (.578) and whose three division titles rank tied with Mike Holmgren for third in franchise history.

To season's end 2004, Sherman's regular-season record of 53-27 ranked third among the 32 active coaches in winning percentage at .663. Sherman's Packers also won three straight NFC North Division titles and made the playoffs four straight years. Unfortunately a lack of playoff success soured an otherwise excellent record.

Despite only taking 78 Games to reach 50 victories [second-fastest behind Vince Lombardi (66)] Sherman's draft and free-agent signings were fraught with mistakes. His 2-4 record in the playoffs and 13-14 record at Lambeau Field from the playoff loss to Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2002, until the end of 2005 season were further compounded by Season 2005. In his sixth season Sherman's Packers shelf life had effectively expired. Just as new general manager Ron Wolf fired Lindy Infante after the '91 campaign so Wolf could hand-pick his head coach, Thompson chose to dismiss Sherman so he, too, could hire his own man.

Ted Thompson: "I felt like we needed to go in a different direction."

 

On 12 january 2006 Mike McCarthy was named the Packer's 14th Head Coach. At 42 McCarthy, became the league's youngest head coach, nearly three months younger than Tampa Bay's Jon Gruden and seven months younger than Jacksonville's Jack Del Rio.

Formerly the Packers QB coach in 1999, McCarthy was the Saints offensive coordinator (2000-04) presiding over the most prolific offensive era in that team's four decades. During season 2005 McCarthy was the 49ers offensive coordinator, which was coincidently a post also previously held by Mike Holmgren.

Mike McCarthy finished his first season, 8-8 but unlike Rhodes and "Scooter" Mclean McCarthy went on to face a second season as Packer's Head Coach.

If you back the Pack, you couldn't have asked for a better omen in Season 2 for McCarthy, than victories in the first four games. As we all know, slow starts in the NFL have been a Green Bay trend throughout the team's 86-year NFL history.This was only the ninth time in Packers history that the club has begun the season 4-0 with seven of those Packers teams going on to win an NFL championship (1929, '30, '31, '44, '62, '65, and 1966).

 

The 2007 season's 13-3 record matched for the third time the Packers' mark for most regular-season victories since the NFL went to a 16-game schedule in 1978. The other two were in 1996 and 1997, and both those years ended with them playing in the Super Bowl. Unfortunatly, however it wasn't to be this time around, with the Packers coming within an overtime defeat of advancing to the Super Bowl.

While they had clinched the NFC North title for the first time since 2004, and secured a first-round playoff bye, in what was one of the most unexpected, if not memorable, regular seasons in the franchise's 87-year history, the end was as equally disappointing. However after the frost had settled and the fans had gone home, the Packers had time to take stock and reflect on their 14-4 season, and while wondering what might have been they were also able to acknowledge the many good things that had occured.   By March 2008 however the sad news that Favre wouldn't be quarterbacking Green Bay for the first time since September of 1992, came as not only as a surprise to many but also ultimately as an almost ineviatble outcome to a season that ended with the overtime loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship. After giving so much to the team in a near MVP season and with nearly all of the meaningful QB records under his belt, Brett had finally made a decison to go out on his own terms while still on top of his game.   Three moths later however the rumor mill had moved up a notch and the liklihood of Brett changing is mind had become a reality. On 3 August Farve was reinstated to the roster and by 6 August it was announced that Packers had reached an agreement to trade the future Hall of Famer to the New York Jets. This saw Favre leaving Green Bay as the NFL's all-time leader in most major passing categories, his 253-game starting streak intact. After 16 seasons in a Packers uniform (1992-2007), he also matched Bart Starr (1956-71) for the longest tenure in team history among his 30 team records.   So while for not only the Packers leadership but also for millions of fams there will be for a time an almost inescapable void, the Packers will now move on to the Aaron Rodgers era. Where this will take us, time will only tell. Ahead of us all now is Season 2008 and all I have to say is.... stay tuned good reader.

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