Oct. 26, 1964 - Upheaval in the NFL is complete. The league has been shaken from the middle and turned inside out. The first-place teams are new, and so are the last-place teams. In the middle, a dynasty may be disintegrating.
Cleveland leads the Eastern Division; Baltimore leads the West. The teams that finished first last year, New York in the East and Chicago in the West, are last in their respective divisions. Green Bay wallows in the mediocrity of a 3-4 record, and not even coach Vince Lombardi has much hope.
“Are you kidding?” Lombardi snapped yesterday when asked to assess his team’s title chances. It may have been the wrong time to ask. The Packers had just lost, 27-17, to the Los Angeles Rams. The three-time Western Division champs (1960-62) trail four teams right now.
“We played a very flat ball game,” Lombardi said. “This is a game of emotions. The team that is emotionally ready plays good football. We weren’t emotionally ready; that’s all.”
What hurt most of all, perhaps, was the knowledge that the Packers had scored the first 17 points of the game. But the Rams scored 14 points before halftime and won the game later.
“This was the first time we really got beat all year,” Lombardi said. “We helped some of those other teams. This one we lost by ourselves, period. At least we didn’t lose by two or three points.”
Lombardi made several lineup changes late in the second half. He made extensive use of Elijah Pitts, Tom Moore, Marv Fleming, and Zeke Bratkowski. He explained that Fleming was replacing injured tight end Ron Kramer, and Bratkowski was replacing quarterback Bart Starr “only to try to give Starr a lift.”
Asked whether he would be using younger players more often this season, Lombardi said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to see.”
The Rams were able to bounce back in the second period as rookie Les Josephson sprinted 53 yards and Roman Gabriel hit Bucky Pope on a 53-yard pass play. In the third period, Ed Meador blocked an attempted field goal by Paul Hornung, and Bobby Smith ran 94 yards with the recovery. Two field goals by Bruce Gossett provided insurance as 46,617 fans watched in amazement at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Los Angeles had not beaten the Packers since Nov. 20, 1960.
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