It had been a slow, plodding, excruciating decline into irrelevancy. In the early 1960s, the Green Bay Packers were not just the best team in the NFL; they were one of the most dominant NFL dynasties in league history. Under legendary coach Vince Lombardi, they won five NFL championships and their first two Super Bowls. By the beginning of the ’90s those days were long gone. The once-proud franchise was a shell of its former self. After the Packers won Super Bowl II in 1967, they had just five winning seasons throughout the next 24 years and made the playoffs only twice. The hallowed grounds of the Packers’ stadium, Lambeau Field, had turned into the home of the downtrodden.
In November 1991, just over halfway through what would be another losing season, the Packers, in an attempt to revitalize the franchise, hired Ron Wolf as their new general manager. Wolf was known as one of the best talent evaluators in the game. A real “football man,” he was well-respected and considered shrewd and creative. But the local press and the fans had no reason to be optimistic. The franchise had seen five head coaches since the Lombardi years, and around the same amount of people in charge of personnel. Each of these individuals, at one point, convinced the Packers faithful to believe in him, but, in the end, it was always the same—failure and mediocrity.
Wolf knew that, to turn the franchise around, he needed a championship-level coach, a difference-making franchise quarterback, and to upgrade talent on the roster using every possible means. Moreover, he wanted it all to be done as quickly as possible. Somehow, he accomplished his objectives in warp speed. In just five years, Wolf would help the Packers bring the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay.
The Packers’ return to glory was set into motion by three seminal transactions, completed within a span of just over a year: (1) hiring head coach Mike Holmgren, (2) acquiring quarterback Brett Favre, and (3) signing free agent defensive end Reggie White. Each move was initially met with some skepticism, pushback, and derision.
“HIRING MIKE HOLMGREN LOOKS LIKE A LATERAL MOVE” (1991)
The Packers closed out their 1991 campaign with a 4–12 record, their ninth season in a row without making the playoffs. As soon as the season ended, Wolf immediately fired embattled coach Lindy Infante, who had only won 10 total games in the previous two seasons. To replace Infante, Wolf targeted San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Holmgren.
A Bill Walsh disciple, Holmgren was known as an offensive and quarterback guru who ran Walsh’s pass-heavy “West Coast Offense.” As an assistant coach at BYU, he had worked with quarterback Steve Young, and then at San Francisco with Joe Montana and Young again. The “hot” candidate of the coaching hire cycle, Holmgren had been interviewed by five other teams. On January 10, 1992, Holmgren reached an agreement with Wolf to become the Packers’ new head coach. The Packers gave a second-round pick to the 49ers to let him out of his contract with San Francisco.
The move was met with rave reviews by some. Others were underwhelmed. Joseph Dill, the sports editor of the Oshkosh Northwestern, thought Wolf shouldn’t have hired an offensive coordinator because he believed that “defense wins championships.” He also grumbled that Wolf should have interviewed the “two best candidates” for the job, defensive coordinators Richie Petitbon (Washington) and Wade Phillips (Denver). Petitbon and Phillips were both promoted to head coach by their respective teams a year later. Petitbon ended up being let go after one season after Washington finished 4–12. He never coached again on any level. Phillips was fired after only two years in Denver.
Some critics were skeptical about Holmgren because, on paper, he looked like a carbon copy of Infante. One doubter, Tom Silverstein, writing in the Milwaukee Sentinel, pointed out that, like Holmgren, “Infante was also a highly successful offensive coordinator and directed a complicated passing offense.” Former 49ers center Randy Cross, who played for Holmgren from 1986 to 1988, didn’t seem impressed, either. “In a lot of ways this looks like a lateral move,” he said. “They’re going from one offensive coordinator and quarterback coach to another offensive coordinator and quarterback coach.” Local columnist Tom Oates had similar reservations. “It was George Santayana who once said: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’” he wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal. “It appears the Packers will attempt to change history. That’s never an easy task.”
It wasn’t just that Holmgren and Infante’s resumes were so similar. Infante’s pass-heavy offenses didn’t thrive in Green Bay, and some felt that, given the often-freezing conditions in northeast Wisconsin, there should have been more of a run-pass balance. Chris Mortensen, in the Sporting News, asked, “Can anyone explain the difference between the pass-oriented offenses of [Infante]… and Holmgren? Wasn’t Infante fired because [Ron] Wolf believed the Packers must run the football to win crucial late-season games in those harsh Wisconsin conditions?” On that same note, an anonymous NFL official told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, like Infante, Holmgen’s pass-oriented West Coast Offense might hit snags in Green Bay. “In that division, you’ve got to play smash-mouth football,” the official said. “You’re not playing half your games indoors or in great weather… And it’s not like they have a Joe Montana.”
What Anonymous didn’t know was that the Packers were about to get their version of Joe Montana, and that he would have a similar impact.
RON WOLF ZEROES IN ON HIS FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK (1991)
When Wolf said he wanted to move fast on the rebuild, he wasn’t kidding. On December 1, 1991, five days after his introductory press conference and the first day he was officially on the job, Wolf had already homed in on his franchise quarterback. In the press box at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, while the Packers were warming up to play the Falcons, Wolf told team president Bob Harlan that he was going to find a way to trade for Atlanta’s languishing third-string quarterback, Brett Favre.
Wolf had been smitten with Favre for almost a year. During the 1990 season, while he was a personnel director with the New York Jets, Wolf took a trip to the University of Southern Mississippi, where Favre was a senior in college, to scout and watch his films. He came back extremely impressed, especially with Favre’s strong arm and overwhelming confidence.
Favre was relegated to third on the Falcons’ depth chart during his rookie season in 1991. He only played in two games and had a grand total of four pass attempts. Much of that had to do with his off-the-field antics, which were kept under wraps by the team. His excessive drinking and partying put him in head coach Jerry Glanville’s doghouse. “Favre was always late for meetings, drinking a lot,” recalled then–Falcons general manager Ken Herock. “[He] couldn’t even run the scout team, they were telling me.”
A few days after the Atlanta game, Wolf met with the Packers’ Executive Committee to explain his idea to pursue Favre. Since the Packers are a community-owned franchise, the team does not have an individual owner. Instead, it is owned by a publicly held, nonprofit corporation. A seven-member Executive Committee elected by the team’s Board of Directors governs the corporation. “[The Executive Committee] had no idea who I was talking about,” Wolf told author Rob Reischel in 2015. “But they were all for it.” At least that’s what they told Wolf. Who knows what they said when he left the room. “I sure would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when I walked out,” Wolf said during a 2019 podcast interview. “Because I’m sure that those guys looked at each other and said, ‘My word, what do we do here? We got an idiot in here.’”
“THE PACKERS SHOULD [DRAFT] DAVID KLINGLER. BUT FOR SOME REASON, THEY’RE SOLD ON BRETT FAVRE AS THE ANSWER” (1992)
Negotiations between Wolf and Herock about a deal for Favre went on for two months. On February 10, 1992, the teams settled on the Packers giving the Falcons one of the two first-round picks they held for the upcoming draft, the 17th overall selection. Favre was unknown to most NFL fans. Team president Harlan recalled that day in the press box in Atlanta, when Wolf told him about Favre: “I thought his name was Fav-ray.” Wolf would sometimes have to clarify to reporters who were interviewing him that it “rhymes with Carve.”
Packers fans weren’t sold on Wolf or Favre. “Some of the worst mail I ever got was when Ron made that trade for Favre,” Harlan remembered. “Who is this Wolf guy you hired? Giving up a [first-round pick] for a third-string quarterback?” People thought Wolf was nuts. “I’ll never forget one seven-page letter I got from an attorney somewhere who said I killed the Packers franchise and I would be fired in three years,” Wolf recalled. According to Mark Scheifelbein, who was the assistant PR director for the Packers at the time, another attorney sent Wolf a greeting card, “You open it up and there is a middle finger and the message ‘What the fuck are you doing?’” Locals called in to the Green Bay Press-Gazette to voice their displeasure. “We… made a stupid trade for that Brent Favor!” said one.
The trade even had members of Holmgren’s own coaching staff and players a bit puzzled. When Jon Gruden, Holmgren’s new quality-control coach, heard about the deal, his first thought was, “Why would we give up a first-round pick for that guy?” Packers safety Chuck Cecil was also stunned. “Who the hell is [he]?” he said.
A faction of the local media was also skeptical. “What in the world are they doing?” thought Bill Jartz, a sports anchor at local Green Bay TV station WBAY-TV. The Commonwealth Reporter, a newspaper based in the town of Fond Du Lac, located about 70 miles from Green Bay, wasn’t ready to give Wolf the benefit of the doubt. “Prove it to us,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “Pardon our raised eyebrows… [but] Favre’s credits are five passes thrown, none caught by his side and two by the other side.”
Many other local writers also had their doubts. “So now we will find out if Ron Wolf is really the pro football genius we have been led to believe he is,” wrote writer Len Wagner in the Green Bay Press-Gazette. John Lindsay, writing for the Scripps Howard News Service, was more blunt. Describing what he thought the Packers should do in the upcoming NFL Draft, where they held the fifth overall pick, Lindsay wrote that “The Packers should take [University of Houston senior star quarterback] David Klingler. But for some reason, they’re sold on Brett Favre as the answer.”
By the beginning of April, there were rumors that Klingler, a 1990 Heisman Trophy finalist, who broke passing records during his time in college at Houston, and who was initially pegged as a top-10 pick, was going to fall below his projection. Some writers, like the Wausau (Wisconsin) Daily Herald’s Jay Lillge, were frustrated that the Packers no longer had the 17th pick it gave to Atlanta as part of the trade:
It’s pronounced Farv, which comes all too close to Farce or Barf, but that’s incidental… Now, just this past week, [Rochester Democrat and Chronicle] sportswriter Bob Matthews’ column came across with a tidbit saying Houston quarterback David Klingler’s stock has dropped to the point where he’s going to be a late first-round pick. Like, maybe he would have been around No. 17?
Klingler didn’t end up slipping to No. 17. He was drafted sixth overall by Cincinnati. His career, however, was forgettable. Now considered a huge draft bust, he had 24 total NFL starts (all for Cincinnati) and won four of them. He retired from the NFL before the 1998 season.
“A SECOND-YEAR OBSCURITY NAMED BRETT FAVRE REPLACED MAJKOWSKI, AND THE BENGALS MADE HIM LOOK LIKE BART STARR” (1992)
Favre wasn’t supposed to play much in 1992. But that changed at Lambeau Field during the first quarter of the Packers’ second game of the season. When starting quarterback Don Majkowski severely hurt his ankle, Holmgren replaced him with Favre. The rest is history. In his Cincinnati Enquirer game report, writer Tim Sullivan summed up how the day unfolded: “A second-year obscurity named Brett Favre replaced Majkowski, and the Bengals made him look like [former Packer, and Hall of Fame quarterback] Bart Starr.”
Favre didn’t look like Starr right away. In two-and-a-half quarters he was sacked five times and had four fumbles, three of them on consecutive plays. According to Favre’s wife Deanna, who was in attendance that day, it got so bad that fans were chanting for third-string quarterback, 1990 Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer, to take over. But by the fourth quarter, Favre found his groove. He led the Packers back from a 17–3 deficit late in the third quarter to a 24–23 comeback win, guiding the team on an 88-yard touchdown drive at the beginning of the fourth and a 92-yard drive in the final minute that was capped by a 35-yard, game-winning touchdown pass with 13 seconds left to wide receiver Kitrick Taylor.
Majkowski never took another snap for the Packers. Favre started every game for the franchise for the next 16 years (253 consecutive games total). By the end of the 1992 season, he had thrown for over 3,200 yards and 18 touchdowns, and the Packers finished with a 9–7 record. Green Bay barely missed the playoffs. Favre made many mistakes that season and frustrated Holmgren at times, but he had shown that he might be the franchise quarterback for which the organization had been searching for years.
“THE PACKERS HAVE THREE PEOPLE TO TRADE OR RELEASE…: FIRST… RON WOLF; A CLOSE SECOND… MIKE HOLMGREN;… THIRD… BRETT FAVRE” (1993)
The 1993 season began with Favre fully entrenched as the Packers’ starter, but as it went along, his on-field performance started to decline. He was inconsistent and ended up leading the league in both interceptions, with 24, and in turnovers, with 30. In some games, he was downright awful. Both Holmgren and Favre were subjected to intense criticism throughout the season.
After the Packers lost their third game in a row to start the season 1–4, the heat started to crank up. “A confused rattled shell of a quarterback,” one writer wrote the next day. “The book on Favre appears to be simple: Put pressure on and he will fold.” One fan, writing to the Press-Gazette, had seen enough:
Unfortunately, once defenses figure out [Holmgren’s offensive system], that system is too complex to adapt. Brett Favre looks completely lost (yes, it worked for San Francisco, but the 49ers had Joe Montana)… Ron Wolf has spent a fortune hiring a losing team. In the business world, he would be fired for nearly bankrupting his corporation with no results.
A month later, after Favre threw three interceptions and lost two fumbles during a loss to the Chiefs on Monday Night Football in Kansas City, the noise increased. It was a winnable game, and Favre couldn’t get it done. Some fans wanted Detmer to replace him. “At least [Detmer is] a proven winner,” said one fan in a call to a local paper’s sports line. Another fan derided his local paper, the Daily Herald, for printing too many positive columns about Favre, who he believed was the worst quarterback in football. “Stick Ty Detmer in and they’ll start winning,” he added. Another wrote a letter to the Wisconsin State Journal, which listed a three-step plan to get the Packers on track: “The Green Bay Packers have three people to release or trade at the end of the season. The first to go should be Ron Wolf. A close second to go should be Mike Holmgren. Finally, the third to go should be Brett Favre.”
Local scribe Chuck Carlson was also concerned about Favre’s play. “[Favre] is struggling—badly—and his problems have dragged the Packers down with him,” he wrote in his Post-Crescent column. “For the first time, there are more questions than answers about Brett Favre.”
A little over a month later, the Packers saw their playoff hopes suffer. They lost 21–17 to Minnesota, failing to score the go-ahead touchdown after having first-and-goal on the 2-yard line with two minutes left. Later that week, Racine, Wisconsin–based columnist Gary Woelfel slammed Holmgren in the Journal Times. According to Woelfel, the second-year head coach’s play-calling defied all logic. “Why are some members of the Wisconsin media so infatuated with Holmgren?” he asked. “Is it because some so-called objective reporters thoroughly despised… Infante?”
Green Bay still was able to win nine games and squeeze into the 1993 Playoffs. They won their first matchup, a road game in Detroit, 28–24, after Favre, with 55 seconds left, and the Packers down by 3, rolled left and threw a bomb to the opposite side of the field to a wide-open Sterling Sharpe in the end zone for a 40-yard game-winning touchdown. It was Favre’s first playoff win and the first for the Packers in 11 years. The streak would end there though, as Green Bay was eliminated from the playoffs the following week in Dallas after losing 27–17 to the Cowboys.
TWO MVPS AND A SUPER BOWL (1993)
That summer, the Packers signed Favre to a five-year, $19 million contract extension. It was worth every penny. The following four seasons, Favre went on a run that ranks as one of the greatest stretches by a quarterback in league history. During that time, not including the playoffs, he threw for 145 touchdowns to only 56 interceptions. He developed a strong rapport with Holmgren and became more disciplined on and off the field. After 1993, the Packers made the playoffs again the following two seasons, but were eliminated by Dallas each time. Not all was lost, though. In 1995, Favre won his first MVP award.
Going into the 1996 season, Brett Favre was, in many people’s eyes, the best player in the NFL. However, he had yet to reach a Super Bowl. That changed when the Packers strung together what was probably the franchise’s best season in the post-Lombardi era. Finishing the regular season 13–3, Green Bay was dominant on both sides of the ball. Their offense led the league in points scored and the defense led in fewest points allowed. Favre won his second straight MVP. After dominating their first two playoff games, the Packers dispatched the Patriots 35–21 at Super Bowl XXXI in New Orleans and brought the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay. Favre threw two touchdown passes in the game, including a 54-yarder to Andre Rison on the second play of the game and an 81-yarder to Antonio Freeman in the second quarter. He also had one rushing touchdown.
The Packers once again finished 13–3 in 1997, and Favre claimed his third straight MVP title. They made it back to the Super Bowl and were heavily favored, but were upset by John Elway and the Broncos.
Favre never earned another Super Bowl trip, but he did continue to bring great success to the Packers organization. He played in Green Bay a total of 16 seasons before announcing his retirement in March 2008. At the time, he was the NFL leader in victories by a starting quarterback, touchdown passes, and passing yards. But after a few months, feeling like he had a little more gas in the tank, Favre reneged on his retirement plans. In August, the Packers, at Favre’s request, sent him to the Jets.
After one year with the Jets, he signed with the Packers’ rivals, the Minnesota Vikings, where he played two seasons. In 2009, he had one of the best seasons of his career, leading the Vikings to the NFC Championship game, where they lost a heartbreaker to the Saints in overtime. He retired for good after the 2010 campaign. In total, Favre played 20 seasons. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.
Favre’s departure from Green Bay in 2008 was messy. It took seven years before he returned in a non-professional capacity. Time, however, heals a lot of wounds, and the Packers retired his jersey in a 2015 ceremony at Lambeau Field.
“WHY WOULD A PLAYER GO TO GREEN BAY UNLESS HE HAD TO GO?” (1993)
Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre didn’t bring the Packers back all by themselves. While they were the foundation on which the revived teams were built, they still needed more talent, especially on defense. Fortunately, the spring of 1993 was the perfect time to get the ball rolling.
Prior to 1993, NFL players were, for the most part, confined to the same franchise for the entirety of their careers unless the team traded them or elected not to keep them around. Players had few avenues available to leave the team by which they were drafted. This changed dramatically in the first months of 1993, when a group of NFL players won a lawsuit that paved the way for unrestricted free agency. As a result, qualified veterans whose contracts had expired could freely talk to and sign new contracts with any other team in the league. The first period of unrestricted free agency began on March 1, 1993.
Free agency in the NFL had been years in the making. By the mid-1980s, players were becoming increasingly frustrated with their limited ability to be able to move to other teams. In 1989, feeling the pressure of an ongoing antitrust lawsuit by the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), the owners adopted a “Plan B free agency” rule, where teams could protect 37 players (out of 47-man rosters) from becoming free agents. For a two-month period, beginning February 1 and ending April 1 of each year, the unprotected players were free to negotiate with, and sign with, any other team without the signing team owing any compensation.
The NFLPA did not believe the Plan B system was sufficient. Most of the top players on each team were still confined. In September 1992, after a group of players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league, a jury in federal court struck down the Plan B system. A couple of weeks later, Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Reggie White and two other players filed a class-action lawsuit against the league seeking free agency for all NFL players whose contracts expired at the end of the 1992 season (around 280 players in total). This led to a compromise between the NFL and the NFLPA, memorialized in the collective-bargaining agreement that allowed players who had completed five years in the league to be eligible for unrestricted free agency when their contracts expired, except for one player that each franchise could protect.
Prior to the settlement, the owners’ primary argument against free agency was that it would destroy the league’s competitive balance. At first, the concern was that large-market teams with more money would just outspend the small-market franchises for free agents, causing player salaries to astronomically rise, creating a sizable talent gap. However, as part of the settlement, the parties agreed to the creation of a salary cap, which established a ceiling of how much a team could spend each season. Based on the mechanics of the agreement, it was a near certainty that the salary cap would kick in for the 1994 season. Thus, teams had no spending limits for free agents in 1993, but they had to be cognizant of how any multi-year deals would affect their cap the following season and beyond.
Even with the upcoming salary cap, many of the owners were concerned that the best free agents would only sign with franchises located in the most traditionally desirable, warm-weather, or otherwise glamorous cities, like Los Angeles or Miami. During any discussion about which teams would be most significantly disadvantaged by free agency, the Green Bay Packers were almost invariably the first team mentioned.
On paper, as a small town with brutally cold and snowy winters, Green Bay was seemingly Exhibit 1 in the argument for competitive balance. One general manager contended that there were only 8 to 10 teams that players found attractive as free agents, and that Green Bay was at the bottom of the pile. “Players will go to the large markets and glamorous cities, more than other places,” said New York Giants general manager George Young in 1992. “Look at the dynasties, like Green Bay and Pittsburgh. Under a free agency system, those kinds of teams may not have a chance to flourish.”
The cold-weather teams were never afraid to bring up this issue. In 1987, Buffalo Bills general manager Bill Polian said that free agency would be “a decided disadvantage to the northern snow-belt teams.” That same year, Cleveland Browns general manager Ernie Accorsi mentioned that “The first words out of the mouths of a lot of players these days is ‘I want to play in California or someplace where it’s warm.’” Former Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm agreed. “The players… will gravitate towards the cities that have more to offer outside of football,” he said in 1991, “and that sure isn’t Green Bay.” Ironically, when Packers head coach Mike Holmgren was an assistant with the 49ers, he used to try to scare undisciplined or underperforming players by threatening to send them to Green Bay.
Some dismissed these concerns as hogwash. They argued that it made no logical sense to conclude that all the best quarterbacks, or all the best running backs, would gravitate to just a handful of teams. “Not everyone is going to break to the Rams or the Raiders or the 49ers,” Eagles running back Keith Byars said in 1992. “You think all the running backs are going to go to the same team?”
Another issue frequently mentioned about Green Bay was that its lack of diversity could be a big negative for many players. “It was… the whitest community in the NFL,” former Packers defensive line coach Greg Blache told Sports Illustrated in 2006. In 1989, Chicago Bears legendary Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers wrote a newspaper column about the effect free agency would have on small-market teams. He asked, “Why would a player go to Green Bay unless he had to go? It’s cold in Green Bay… and a minority player really wouldn’t find many minorities in the town.”
If players truly didn’t want to play in Green Bay, they weren’t showing it. From 1989 to 1992, the Packers signed more Plan B free agents than any other team in the league, and team executives had no problems getting players to visit.
“THE PACKERS NEED REGGIE WHITE LIKE A HORSE NEEDS FRENCH LESSONS” (1993)
Reggie White was the crown jewel of the inaugural NFL free agent class. White had spent his entire NFL career wreaking havoc on quarterbacks. In eight seasons with the Eagles, White totaled more sacks (124) than games played (121). At 6-foot-5 and 300 pounds, and incredibly strong and athletic, White overpowered offensive linemen and essentially controlled the game from the line of scrimmage. At 31 years old, he was still in his prime and one of the most dominant defensive players in the league. After his Eagles contract expired in January 1993, White was ready to test the free agent waters.
This was supposed to be a scary time for the Packers. They were now at risk of losing their best players to the wealthier, large-market teams, and they weren’t supposed to be able to woo star free agents like White.
That theory would be debunked in short order.
Just before the free agency period began, Wolf decided that he was going to make an all-out effort to sign White, who was being courted by seven or eight teams. It seemed like a long shot, but if Wolf was willing to offer big money (he was), the Packers had a chance. They were a dark horse candidate: good enough to compete, but not a glamorous choice. Harlan and others thought Wolf was out of his mind. “I didn’t think we had a prayer in the world,” Harlan recalled. Defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes, who was on board with the pursuit of White from day one of free agency, said people laughed when he suggested it.
White immediately made clear his most important selling points. He wanted to play for a team that was going to contend for a championship soon (he had yet to win a championship at any level), and he wanted to establish a Christian ministry in his new city and serve as a role model for inner-city youth.
The Reggie White free agency competition became a 37-day marathon courtship which included a seven-city tour, where he was wined and dined and treated like royalty at almost every stop. Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell gave Reggie’s wife Sara an expensive leather coat and had both the mayor of Cleveland and Browns legend Jim Brown call White to recruit him. In Atlanta, the Falcons set up a meeting between White and the Georgia governor. Falcons cornerback Deion Sanders told him (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) that he’d buy Reggie his own church if White signed with the Falcons. When White visited the Jets, he realized that their current quarterback situation was suspect at best and told management that the franchise would be more attractive if veteran Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason was there. A day later, the Jets completed a trade with Cincinnati for Esiason.
When he first visited the Packers, Green Bay was the furthest city from his mind. But his agent Jimmy Sexton suggested that he talk to them. The Packers were only finally able to arrange a visit because White had been in Detroit visiting the Lions, and Green Bay was close enough to make a stop on his way home to Knoxville, Tennessee. When he arrived in Green Bay, there were four inches of snow on the ground. His recruitment meal was a lunch at Red Lobster with Holmgren, Rhodes, and Wolf.
Wolf and Holmgren didn’t really have a strong case in terms of Reggie’s plan for his inner-city ministry. White pointed out that Green Bay didn’t have inner-city problems, or even an inner city at all. But Holmgren and Wolf told Reggie that Milwaukee was 100 miles away and it had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. They assured him that the organization would support his plan to open a ministry there.
After Reggie’s visit to Green Bay, he had great things to say about the organization and the town. As a result, a small case of Reggie fever started to develop in Green Bay. But not everyone’s temperature was high. Chuck Carlson, a columnist for the (Appleton, Wisconsin) Post-Crescent didn’t get why a team would make such an investment. “It shouldn’t happen,” he wrote. “The Packers need Reggie White like a horse needs French lessons.” Carlson continued: “[Of course] Reggie White likes Green Bay… It’s a nice, quiet inoffensive little town… What other town lists Chuck E. Cheese’s as a four-star restaurant?” In Carlson’s mind, the real question was whether it was worth it for the Packers to mortgage their future for one player whose skills, he believed, would soon decline. He didn’t think it was. He thought they could use the same amount of money to sign several young players. “For the good of the Packers and their delicate uncertain future,” he pled, “let Reggie go somewhere else.”
Ed Meyer, a columnist covering the Cleveland Browns for the Akron Beacon Journal, thought along the same lines as Carlson when he wrote about why he thought the Browns should pass on White. Like Carlson, he thought that the money allocated to White could be used on five or six good players. “It would not make much sense,” Meyer wrote, “for the Browns to blow a wad on [him].”
New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica was incredulous at the amount of attention teams were giving to White. “When exactly did Reggie White become the greatest and most essential living football player?” he asked. “This silliness… is over the top, even for New York.” Also, like others, Lupica thought White was too old for this type of long-term financial commitment. “I do not believe Reggie White, at his age, with the mileage he has on him, is some kind of franchise-altering defensive presence,” he wrote.
Reflecting on it in 2020, Carlson remembers thinking that he didn’t believe White would sign with Green Bay. When all the writers on the Packers beat heard that White was visiting, they all kind of laughed about it. But when it started to leak about how much money was involved, it seemed crazy, which triggered his column. “To spend that kind of money,” he said, “at that point, it just didn’t make sense… There was no salary cap [yet], and free agency was brand-new.” Surprisingly he didn’t face much fan backlash for his negativity about White. It was actually the comment about residents considering Chuck E. Cheese a four-star restaurant that set off some people. “Taking shots at the city—I got more response on that.”
San Francisco became involved in the Reggie sweepstakes about halfway through the process. At one point, it appeared that the 49ers were a perfect fit. They were perennial contenders, located in a big city. White said one day near the end of that March that if he had to pick at that moment, he would pick San Francisco. However, he added that it wasn’t up to him. “I’ve got to go where God wants me to go,” he said. Upon reading about those comments, Holmgren left a message on White’s answering machine. “Reggie,” Holmgren said. “This is God. You ought to go to Green Bay.”
Messages from God aside, Wolf and Holmgren did an admirable job selling White on Green Bay. He came away impressed with the organization and felt the Packers were seriously committed to winning. White was attracted to a quiet, peaceful community like Green Bay. Rhodes and Holmgren even flew to Knoxville and visited White at his home there, a gesture that touched him. All of it played a role in bringing him to the Packers. But, ultimately, when it came down to brass tacks, the deciding factor was the financial package the Packers offered.
If it was mainly a championship White wanted, the 49ers were in the best position. They were coming off a 14–2 season in 1992 and had the reigning league MVP Steve Young at quarterback. A game changer like White could have been just the guy to put them over the top. The 49ers offered him a five-year contract worth $19.5 million. At that point, White recalled, “I was 99 percent sure that God was calling me to San Francisco.” However, the deal gave San Francisco an opt-out clause after three years. That, to Reggie, was a deal-breaker. He wanted a full commitment.
The Packers sealed the deal with a four-year, $17.6 million offer, which, at the time, was the largest contract ever given to a defensive player in NFL history. No opt-outs. The total amount was nice, but the clincher was the guaranteed money, and that he would receive a substantial amount up front, as soon as he signed the deal. The Packers gave White a $4.5 million signing bonus and $4.5 million in salary his first year. His second year, he would get a salary of $3.1 million. White was getting $9 million total in his first year, and $12 million total by the end of his second year.
“I HEARD THE LORD SAY… REGGIE, I WANT YOU TO GO TO GREEN BAY” (1993)
Even though Green Bay was known to be very much in the running for White, the announcement that he had signed with the Packers still came as a surprise to many. “It was an amazing day,” Carlson remembered. “Everybody who covered the Packers was just dumbfounded that that actually happened.”
And what about God, who, according to White, at first, clearly told him to go to San Francisco? Four years later, in his autobiography, he explained that it was all a misunderstanding:
As I listened for the Lord’s voice, I heard a question in my thoughts: Reggie, where did the head coach, defensive coordinator, and the offensive coordinator of the Packers come from before they went to Green Bay? Instantly, I remembered… San Francisco, from the 49ers.
In my mind, I heard the Lord say, And what do the reporters call Green Bay?… and Green Bay’s offense? And it came to me: They kept calling Green Bay ‘the San Francisco of the East,’ and the offense ‘the West Coast Offense.’
Then aloud I said, ‘Huh! So that’s the ‘San Francisco’ that You have been talking about!’ And again, in my thoughts, I heard, That’s right. Reggie, I want you to go to Green Bay. That’s the ‘San Francisco’ I was talking about.
“[THE [EAGLES] WERE RIGHT IN THE SENSE THAT [REGGIE WHITE’S] BEST DAYS ARE BEHIND HIM” (1993)
After seeing how much the Packers paid, some thought the teams that passed on him had made the right play. “From a business point of view, [the Eagles letting White go] was a shrewd and calculating move,” wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bill Lyon. “They felt he did not have four good years left, and they were right in the sense that his best days are behind him.”
After Reggie signed, the Packers would continue, each season, to sign more key players from free agency. Standout defensive end Sean Jones signed the following year. In his three seasons with Green Bay, Jones had 24.5 sacks. In the summer of 1996, they brought in wide receiver and return man Desmond Howard, and in mid-season the same year signed wide receiver Andre Rison. Both Howard and Rison, along with defensive tackle Santana Dotson, another free agent signee, were key factors in Green Bay’s Super Bowl triumph over the Patriots in 1997. Rison scored a touchdown and Howard had 244 combined punt and kick return yards, including a kick return for a touchdown that thwarted New England’s gaining momentum after the Patriots had scored a touchdown to cut the Packers’ lead to six late in the third quarter. Howard was named the Super Bowl MVP. White’s former Eagles teammate, linebacker Seth Joyner, joined White for the 1997 season.
On the field, White didn’t just live up to his billing—he was better than advertised. Including the playoffs, he had 76.5 sacks in six seasons in Green Bay, including 15 sacks in 1993. It was in October of the ’93 season, during a must-win game in Denver, when he truly announced his presence as a Packer. Green Bay had lost three out of their first four games and, up to that point, White had made minimal impact. In the fourth quarter, he sacked John Elway twice on back-to-back plays to preserve a 30–27 Packers win. In Green Bay’s XXXI Super Bowl victory over the Patriots, Reggie sacked Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe three times, still a Super Bowl record.
In 1993, many were sure that White didn’t have much mileage left and that his best days were behind him. They were wrong. In 1998, his final season in Green Bay, Reggie White, at age 36, had a whopping 16 sacks and was named the Associated Press NFL Defensive Player of the Year. He passed away in 2004 at the age of 43 after succumbing to cardiac arrhythmia. His legacy still lives on.
White is still considered by most as the best free-agent signing in NFL history, not only because of his on-field impact, but because it instantly weakened the owners’ long-standing position that quality free agents would avoid signing with cold-weather and small-market teams.
In 1992, while the free agency issue was still being heard by the US District Court in Minneapolis, Kansas City Chiefs president Carl Peterson ironically posed a rhetorical question: “You ask a guy whether he wants to play in Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Los Angeles, where do you think he’s going to choose?” A year later, he had his answer.