I found this chapter to be neatly constructed, and it gets to the heart of an essential question in football: which matters more, talent or coaching? If David Maraniss makes one thing clear in this chapter, it’s this: the Packers had the best of both worlds.

Under Lombardi, the Packers had one of the great coaches of his time, if not the very greatest. We’re 14 chapters in, so if you’d missed that point it bears repeating. Lombardi knew what he had to do to get the best out of his team.

But it was only thanks to Jack Vainisi, the near-mythical talent scout, that he had such a promising ball of clay to work with. Maraniss bookends this chapter with a discussion of Vainisi’s life and untimely death, leaving the middle portion to show how the Lombardi/Vainisi partnership was realized on the field.

I think the important point in that partnership is this: Lombardi understood what Vainisi had been doing. Over his nine years with the Packers, the “boy wonder” had put together thousands of pages of scouting information. And, just as importantly, he had accurately cataloged and stored that information so he could use it. What I wouldn’t give for access to the “18 thick blue canvas, three-ringed notebooks” Maraniss mentions in this chapter — between that and Lombardi’s Bible of football notes, you basically have the football equivalent of the Library of Alexandria.

Anyway, Lombardi did what his predecessors couldn’t and put Vainisi’s information — and players — to work. He properly understood the value Vainisi offered and used his information advantage to get a leg up on the rest of the NFL. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t include the Philadelphia Eagles, at least not in the 1960 NFL Championship. If you’re into that kind of thing, you can watch the Packers lose a title match here.

Interesting Notes

• The Vainisi home at 1017 Reed Street is quite charming!

• The small world of football: Vainisi had played for Lombardi’s old Fordham coach Hugh Devore at Notre Dame.

• More on the idea of Lombardi getting buy-in from guys: paying Paul Hornung’s fine in the event of George Halas coming after him for throwing a ball into the stadium.

• You can get The Pros: A Documentary of Professional Football in America if you want it.

• Starr standing up to Lombardi defining point in his career

• Lombardi scripted the first few plays of the game.

• Some things never change: it was apparently difficult to get “unity of purpose” among NFL owners regarding the league’s television rights. Imagine that! Just getting owners to agree is a challenge!

• There’s some awful symmetry of Lombardi and company losing the 1960 NFL Championship because he went for it deep in the Eagles’ territory instead of taking the points while Mike McCarthy and company lost the 2014 NFC Championship while taking the points instead of running.

• Check out what’s missing from the Packers’ uniforms during the 1960 NFL Championship: no G on the helmet! It’s jarring to see, but it didn’t come about until 1961.