NFL Americas Game: Green Bay Packers

In nine seasons as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi won five NFL championships. The last two came in 1966 and '67-the years of the first two Super Bowls. Nearly 30 years later, Mike Holmgren's Packers brought the Lombardi Trophy home again, and Green Bay was "Titletown" once more. In January, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Green Bay faced the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League in what was then called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, later renamed Super Bowl I. The '66 Packers were loaded with seasoned veterans like Bart Starr, Jerry Kramer, and Ray Nitschke. But Green Bay's victory in Super Bowl I owed much to an unlikely hero-a 34-year-old receiver named Max McGee, who had caught only four passes all season and had stayed out all night before the game. Lombardi's strategy was simple and predictable: here's the power sweep and the fly pattern-now try and stop us. It worked because Lombardi was relentless in his pursuit of perfection. The Packers' epic run through the '67 post-season was the final proof of their-and Lombardi's-greatness. A victory over Dallas in the legendary "Ice Bowl" secured a third-straight NFL title. Then, in Lombardi's final game with the Packers, they crushed Oakland in Super Bowl II. In the 1990s, head coach Mike Holmgren developed quarterback Brett Favre into an NFL MVP who could execute his west-coast offense in spectacular fashion. Holmgren's work paid off in 1996, when Favre's offense tied a franchise record for wins and led the league in scoring on the way to the Super Bowl. All-Pro defensive end Reggie White spearheaded a defense that gave up the fewest points in the NFL that year. But it was return man Desmond Howard who made the greatest impact against New England in Super Bowl XXXI.