Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I can't help but read this (below) and think of the Lombardi era Packers. Imagine the Packers complaining of being asked to do too much. Fuzzy Thurston, "Geez, he wants a THIRD title in a row? Wish he'd just give it a rest".

“I think he just pushed guys too far," Boone said. "He wanted too much, demanded too much, expected too much. You know, ‘We gotta go out and do this. We gotta go out and do this. We gotta go out and do this.’ And you’d be like, ‘This guy might be clinically insane. He’s crazy. ... I think that if you’re stuck in your ways enough, eventually people are just going to say, ‘Listen, we just can’t work with this.'”

JohnR wrote:I can't help but read this (below) and think of the Lombardi era Packers. Imagine the Packers complaining of being asked to do too much. Fuzzy Thurston, "Geez, he wants a THIRD title in a row? Wish he'd just give it a rest".

“I think he just pushed guys too far," Boone said. "He wanted too much, demanded too much, expected too much. You know, ‘We gotta go out and do this. We gotta go out and do this. We gotta go out and do this.’ And you’d be like, ‘This guy might be clinically insane. He’s crazy. ... I think that if you’re stuck in your ways enough, eventually people are just going to say, ‘Listen, we just can’t work with this.'”

The major motif of Jerry Kramer's "Instant Replay" and the interviews Kramer gives to this day was Lombardi constantly demanding another title. "He kept calling for The Big Push every week."

Hmmm ... if Alex Boone was willing to work a little harder, maybe he'd get to the Pro Bowl. But we'll probably never know.

rhickok1109 wrote:Hmmm ... if Alex Boone was willing to work a little harder, maybe he'd get to the Pro Bowl. But we'll probably never know.

Hopefully, Alex isn't falling back on his old habits of throwing his career away by hitting the sauce.

Hate to say it, but I think Alex Boone is right. Jim Harbaugh is insane.

rockhawk wrote:Hate to say it, but I think Alex Boone is right. Jim Harbaugh is insane.

This is a game for madmen. - Vince Lombardi

This will be an unpopular opinion, but most of Vince Lombardi's famed quotes were overstatements.

Football is a game for athletes and strategists. Harbaugh has been successful despite being a megalomaniac.

rockhawk wrote:This will be an unpopular opinion, but most of Vince Lombardi's famed quotes were overstatements.

Football is a game for athletes and strategists. Harbaugh has been successful despite being a megalomaniac.

Your opinion is popular with me. Speaking of Lombardi, I'll repeat something I posted a while back.

Late in the 1967 season, an Esquire Magazine article depicted Vince Lombardi as a bullying, sadistic tyrant. Since the writer, Leonard Schecter, was a New Yorker, Lombardi hadn't expected it. The New York writers had always been friendly.

Jerry Kramer mentioned the Esquire piece several times in Instant Replay, about how "unfair it was to the Coach." An irony that completely escaped Kramer was the depiction in Esquire wasn't that much different from how Kramer portrayed Vince Lombardi in his own book.

Shecter, by the way, delighted in debunking sports figures. He was the co-author of Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" and wrote a Look Magazine piece in 1969 on Al Davis titled "The Most Hated Man In Football."

While Lombardi was "hurt" by a critical piece, it didn't bother Al Davis a bit.

Yeah, Lombardi was a megalomaniac. So is Belicheck. And any number of successful coaches.

rhickok1109 wrote:Yeah, Lombardi was a megalomaniac. So is Belicheck. And any number of successful coaches.

While running for President in 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy said something like: "Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important."