Frank Mestnik

There were essentially two eras of the Vince Lombardi dynasty in Green Bay.

The first was all about ascension. Lombardi implemented his vision in Green Bay, then made three championship games in a row, losing the first then winning his next two.

The latter was all about dominance. From 1965 through 1967, Lombardi’s Packers won three straight titles, including the first two Super Bowls, and showed that his system worked even with aging greats.

Between those two eras, though, came two disappointing seasons.Twice the Packers finished second in the NFL’s West Division despite having a top five offense and defense both years. Untimely injuries and losses were just enough to keep them from championship contention, and as a result, the Lombardi dynasty has what amounts to two lost years smack in the middle.

And during one of those two years, the Packers got a brief visit from a player who in retrospect seems like he was purpose-built to make a cameo during a pair of down years in Green Bay.

That player was Frank Mestnik, a rugged fullback who played 11 games for the Packers during the 1963 season. Big and raw-boned at 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, he’d only be a bit light for the position in modern football, and he made his living doing two things: grinding out hard yards and playing fast and loose on special teams, especially as a member of the kickoff cover team, which Green Bay media called the “kamikaze squad” in its coverage at the time.

Mestnik got his start playing college football at Marquette University. The Milwaukee-based Jesuit institution only fielded a football team through 1960, and Mestnik was there nearly until the end, lining up for three varsity seasons from 1957 through 1959. And oddly enough, his Packers connections already began to bud during his time in college ball. His coach for the first two years of his football career was Johnny Druze, who played with Vince Lombardi at Fordham in 1936, while Lisle Blackbourn took over for the 1959 season — fresh of a stint as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. Of course, he was only available for 1959 because Vince Lombardi was the new coach of the Packers that year.

Mestnik wasn’t particularly noteworthy as a college player, though he did lead Marquette in rushing during two of his three seasons there. He was good enough that he was drafted by both the NFL and AFL, and spent his first two years with the Cardinals during their first two seasons in St. Louis.

After a year on the Giants’ “taxi squad” in 1962, Mestnik arrived in Green Bay as something of an oddity: he was a free agent. In modern football, people wouldn’t bat an eye at a free agent coming to training camp, but of the more than 50 players in Green Bay for training camp that summer, Mestnik was one of just two veteran free agents, the other being Urban Henry, a defensive lineman.

Mestnik had a rough camp, to put it lightly. Not only did he have what he described as a “torn muscle” in his thigh, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, but he was last in the pecking order on a fairly established ballcarrier depth chart, which included legends and solid players alike. To put it bluntly, he wasn’t likely to steal many carries from Jim Taylor, the reigning NFL MVP.

Somewhat predictably, Mestnik didn’t make the Packers’ initial roster. He was cut loose at the end of camp, but re-signed with the team in October, ultimately appearing in 11 of the Packers 14 games that year.

Mestnik didn’t have much of an impact in any of those 11 games, but he did complete something you might call the “role player speedrun” through a series of minor, and at times humorous, actions. He carried the ball exactly one time, gaining four yards against the St. Louis Cardinals. He injured an official when the head linesman got tangled up in a pile as Mestnik dove to recover a fumble. And he carved out a role on the kickoff team, throwing his body into row after row of headhunting blockers.

It was in that capacity that Mestnik made his most noteworthy contribution: recovering an onside kick a bit too early. In a mid-November loss to the Bears, Mestnik dove on an onside kick attempt before it went out of bounds — and also before the ball had traveled the requisite 10 yards for an onside kick to work. The recovery technically cost the Packers a chance to come back in that loss, but they were already down 26-7 and Mestnik’s error came with just over four minutes to go in the game. And for that matter, the ball was heading out of bounds, anyway.

The Packers didn’t lose another game the rest of the 1963 season, finishing 3-0-1 to end the year. Unfortunately, their loss to the Bears and that tie in the season’s final month was enough to put the Packers in second place in the NFL’s West Division and prevent them from going for Vince Lombardi’s much-desired three-peat. They’d have to wait for another shot at winning three titles in a row.

Mestnik wouldn’t be there, though. He never appeared in another NFL game after 1963, ultimately moving south and living out his life in Georgia. But although he wasn’t there at its height, he still appeared in 11 games during the Lombardi dynasty. Plenty of other players attempted such a feat and failed. Even if Mestnik didn’t nail the onside kick recovery, he still made his mark under one of the NFL’s most demanding taskmasters.