Anderson Scored

موضوع: Anderson Scored الخميس سبتمبر 11, 2014 11:39 am

COWBOYS’ GREEN CONFIRMS ANDERSON SCORED BEFORE STARR’S QUARTERBACK SNEAK

By Tom Andrews
Packer Report

After 42 years, re-hash after re-hash, hundreds of stories and ‘stories behind the stories,’ you’d think we have all heard and seen all there is to hear and see about perhaps the most fabled game in NFL history - the 1967 NFL Championship Game, the Ice Bowl.

Well, you’d be wrong.

It gives you shivers just thinking about it. Thirteen degrees below zero with howling gusts creating an insane -46 degree wind chill. The tundra at Lambeau Field certainly never more frozen, yielding a playing surface akin to jagged concrete. Two outstanding teams, Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers and Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys, waging a titanic struggle for 59 minutes and 44 seconds before Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak brought it all to a climax.

All these years, Packer running back Donny Anderson has tried to say “the right thing” and to keep certain other thoughts about this legendary game quietly to himself. Anderson and several of his teammates, including Boyd Dowler, Ken Bowman, Jerry Kramer and Dave Robinson were invited to Madison recently for a very special Ice Bowl Reunion event to raise money for Buckets for Hunger, a charity dedicated to helping the needy have enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.

The former Packers were joined by three members of the Cowboys, including defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, cornerback Cornell Green and Hall of Fame cornerback Mel Renfro. The whole group got together for dinner the night before the charity event and that’s where the fun started.

As history records the Packers’ final scoring drive, they marched 68 agonizing yards in 12 plays. However, three plays before Starr’s winning sneak, Anderson took a handoff, burst over the center of the lines and found himself over the goal line – he thought.

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]
Packer halfback Donny Anderson (44) plunges into the end zone for apparent winning touchdown as Cowboys' Cornell Green (34) looks on.

“I knew I scored,” said Anderson with a soft smile. “Half of my body was across the goal line so that’s a yard, three feet. But they (referees) were not going to make a mistake or make a call that they weren’t certainly clear about and so they didn’t make the call.”

The refs credited Anderson with a first down, but not a touchdown. There was no Instant Replay. No red flag and coach’s challenge.

As the former rivals shared dinner, tall tales and plenty of laughs, Anderson says one of the Cowboys made a startling confession. “We were talking about that last night and Cornell Green told Jethro, ‘He scored. He scored!’ He said the Cowboys were totally surprised that the referee picked up the ball and moved it to the six-inch line or whatever it was. ‘Why aren’t they raising their hands up?’ Green persisted. ‘My God, they’re not going to give it to him!’ I had never heard a Cowboy comment about it so that’s another support base other than me.”

Sporting a devilish grin, Green confirmed Anderson’s story. “I had a better view than anybody because I was playing corner and they were in a tight situation,” Green explained. “I came across the line and Donny Anderson had a dive off tackle and he went into the end zone. He scored. As far as I was concerned, the game was over then. I saw the ref (move the ball back) and everybody was telling me, ‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’ but I’m saying, ‘Hey, he scored!’ I was mad because he scored. But they set the ball down so let’s go again.”

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]

Left to right: Former Dallas Cowboys Mel Renfro, Jethro Pugh and Cornell Green share a few laughs at the "Ice Bowl Cometh" reunion in Madison, WI.

You might buy into the old adage that ‘time heals all wounds.’ You’d be wrong again.

Though the Cowboys have certainly come to terms with the game’s outcome, some players like Mel Renfro still insist they had the better team. “I think Don Meredith could stand up to Bart Starr any day,” said Renfro. “At wide receiver we had Bob Hayes, the World’s Fastest Human. We had Don Perkins at fullback, we had the Doomsday Defense. The game showed that we did, regardless of the weather, we eliminated their ability to move the ball. Except for that last drive, we practically dominated the game. I felt like we were man-to-man the better team but the better team doesn’t always win.”

Renfro also believes the game should have been postponed. “We came down and realized that our advantage had been taken away by the weather,” he added. “I thought that was somewhat unfair because, in our minds, that game probably should not have been played. There were some things that happened during the game to us that nobody seems to talk about - the fact that the field froze. Why should the field freeze when they’ve got a mechanism in the ground that keeps it from doing that? It froze and the seating on the sideline was heated but, mysteriously, malfunctioned. Nobody wants to talk about that stuff.”

Is Renfro suggesting the Cowboys were somehow sabotaged?

“Oh, no, never,” said Renfro (wink, wink). “It’s just mysterious and the commissioner wasn’t available to comment on the situation, either. Where was he? He was unavailable.”

For the record, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was in Oakland that day, watching the Raiders defeat the Houston Oilers for the AFL championship. He later told reporters that he would have preferred playing the NFL title game in a warmer climate on a neutral field. The Dallas Times Herald quoted him as saying that, “Under the conditions it was played, the game is unfair to both teams.”

If any Cowboy has a right to hang on to hard feelings about the Ice Bowl, it’s Jethro Pugh. Every time they replay the winning touchdown, you see big number 75 getting pushed back by Jerry Kramer with double team help from Ken Bowman. Starr scores. Game over.

“It was a great game and a lot of people ask me about it,” said Pugh. “It’s
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]shown on ESPN Classic and you’ve got young people in their 20s and 30s that ask me about it. It’s very interesting and sort of nice to be part of history. It was tough but the thing that helped me was that the coaches didn’t blame me, my teammates didn’t blame me and that’s the only thing that really mattered. That was a big comfort to me. We went on to win and I was on five Super Bowl teams so that healed the wound.”

The Ice Bowl may not have been the greatest game ever played but you can certainly argue that it was the greatest game ever played under such extreme conditions. Boyd Dowler, who scored two touchdowns in the early going when it appeared the Packers were on their way to a rout, believes this game stands the test of time for many reasons.

Ken Bowman (left) and Jerry Kramer (right) pose with Cowboys DT Jethro Pugh as they relive the block that led Bart Starr to the winning touchdown.

“It was a test of character and nobody can slight the Dallas Cowboys,” said Dowler. “I say it was a test of character but that doesn’t mean our character was any better than theirs because they came up out of Texas to play us in Wisconsin. You know, until 16 seconds were left in the game, they were ahead. We got ahead early but they were ahead. If we don’t do things right down there in the end, we lose and they win.”

Of course, discussions about the Ice Bowl inevitably turn to Lombardi. His relentless determination. His insatiable will to win. That’s what carried the Packers on their date with destiny.

“I think about that final drive and I think about all of Lombardi’s principles, all of his fundamentals, all of his talking about believing in yourself, trusting your teammates,” said Jerry Kramer. “Prior to that drive, we had 10 series, 31 plays for minus 9 yards. Obviously we know what the situation is. We know if we don’t score now, we lose. So you reach down and I’ve always wondered what we got. There hasn’t been a name for it, just something deep down inside you that you reach for when you try to do something like that. What we got was Lombardi. What we got was his preparation, his consistency, his intensity, his discipline – all of the things he represented. Because of the training, the attitude and the belief in ourselves, we were able to score and go down that 68 yards when we really had to do something. To me, that validates Lombardi’s philosophy, his coaching principles and what he was all about.”

“Over time, the thing that I’ve come to appreciate more than the game itself is talking to Cowboys like the guys here tonight and getting their side of things,” added Dave Robinson. “The Cowboys were a great team, a great bunch of guys. You don’t get to know them that well when you’re hitting each other. I may feel a little remorse that the Cowboys weren’t a little better represented. I’m glad they lost but I feel bad about it.”

And Donny Anderson? He got something a little extra at this special reunion, a bit of satisfaction from hearing the Cowboys admit that he scored a touchdown that wasn’t counted. “A few days later in a film session, Lombardi told me, ‘Well, young man, they took one away from you there.’ In my heart, I know that I did score but you take the history from it, and there are millions of stories behind the story. Jerry (Kramer) and (Ken) Bowman wouldn’t have had the double team block. Bart Starr’s the Super Star of the Green Bay Packers, so I think it turned out correctly. Would it be as big a deal to see Donny Anderson score the winning touchdown every year in the Ice Bowl? I don’t think so. I’ve lived 40 years with it so I’m not going to worry about it.”

موضوع: رد: Anderson Scored الجمعة سبتمبر 12, 2014 2:22 am

Great post, Dr. Bop! The Cowboys had a good team and we had a good team And with Landry and Lombardi it did not get any better. This vindicates any super slo mo which argues that Kramer actually had minutely flinched for what could have been a false start. The important fact is that this team reached the highest pinnacle and it stands for the ages.