Green Bay Turns With The Tide

If you live in Green Bay, Wis. the chances are you make toilet paper and cheer for the Packers, who have lived in the National Football League longer than anyone but George Halas. Recently Packer backers have suffered lean years; after Vince Lombardi brought the team five NFL championships in seven seasons, the club fell on dolorous times.

Lombardi won his last title in 1967; under his successor, Phil Bengtson, the Packers spent the next three seasons becalmed around .500. Bengtson, a pleasant and competent coach, was dispatched at that point, and Green Bay then elected to do something that was considered downright shocking: they hired a college coach, Dan Devine of Missouri, to take over the team. That same month, January 1971, Tommy Prothro of UCLA was given the Rams' job, and subsequently Houston and Denver also hired college coaches, but until then no NFL team had gone to a major college for a head coach in 16 years. It was revolutionary.

Shortly after the Packers took on Devine they also drafted a new Alabama quarterback, hoping perhaps that they might have some of the same kind of luck that Lombardi had with his, who was named Bart Starr. Devine's Alabamian is Scott Hunter, a chunky, cheerfully confident young man who spent a good deal of time in college studying Starr on television. To complete the circle, Hunter's quarterback adviser—and Devine's newest assistant coach—is Bart Starr.

Last year Starr was still trying to come back from an arm injury, and his tentative playing status left the team confused. Hunter, an undisciplined rookie, threw 17 interceptions in 163 attempts, and the team finished last in the Central Division, winning only four games. Yet last Sunday Green Bay came into its game with Atlanta in undisputed first place, with four wins in five games, the surprise team of the year.

Notwithstanding a tremendous one-two running punch of John Brockington and MacArthur Lane, an extraordinary rookie placekicker named Chester Marcol and a suddenly solid defensive secondary, the Alabama alliance has been the prime ingredient in the Packer resurgence. Dave Hampton, the Atlanta running back who played with Green Bay last year, said before the two teams met last week, "One big reason for the improvement is having Starr on the coaching staff. The offense is more disciplined. No one knows the Green Bay system as well as Bart. With him on the sidelines, it's a source of confidence. Scott has all the tools to be a great quarterback, but now he has an extra tool in Bart."

Unfortunately, Sunday's game in Milwaukee, played on a rainy, muddy afternoon, was not a true all-round test for either team. Atlanta won 10-9 because Green Bay could not make a single touchdown in the slop, scoring all its points on Marcol field goals. Hunter, under a heavy rush, completed six of 15 passes for 108 yards, which was respectable enough under the circumstances, but his Falcon counterpart, Bob Berry, went 14 for 25 and 143 yards—and was especially effective on third-down plays.

The real hero, though, was Hampton, who paddled for 93 yards in 30 carries. Just before the season opened, Hampton was traded by Devine to the Falcons ostensibly because he fumbled too much. This dismal afternoon he fumbled not once in the 30 times he ran the ball—and he was coming back from a dislocated elbow that had kept him out of Atlanta's last game.

Overall, the Packers outrushed the Falcons by five yards and could offer no real excuses for losing. Marcol's attempt at a fourth field goal with two minutes remaining was wide to the right from the 39, and just before the first half ended he missed a chance at another, shorter, kick when the Packers could not call time-out fast enough after a long Hunter to Carroll Dale pass completion.

Atlanta's victory, which dropped the Packers into a first-place tie with Detroit, kept the Falcons just half a game behind Los Angeles—a team they clobbered 31-3—in the NFL West. It seems as if both young teams will succeed, though. " Green Bay is a team very much like the Falcons," Atlanta's George Kunz explained before the game. "Just one difference: they have to overcome an old reputation and we have to build a new one."

The teams are similar in many ways, especially in the sweeping changes in player personnel made in the last couple of years. Devine has seven new starters on offense and defense—including Malcolm Snider, an excellent offensive guard who came in the trade for Hampton—and the Falcons have fewer new faces this season only because they added 12 rookies last year. Since most of the newcomers were from small schools, it became known as the Brand X draft and, in response, the Atlanta rookies began wearing a small x on their helmets.