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NFL Greats
Jerry Kramer, Green Bay
by Sam Monson
21/10/2007
Jerry Kramer is a man who personifies the problems with the NFL Hall of Fame selection committee structure. The 5 time All-Pro, member of the 1960s All-Decade Team, member of the NFL’s 50th Anniversary Team, and member of the Green Bay Packers’ Hall of Fame has appeared on the list of finalists 10 times since becoming eligible, but has yet to be inducted to the Hall. He’s been snubbed each time.
 Kramer played Offensive Guard and was instrumental in leading the power rushing game of Vince Lombardi’s Packers. He was one of the key players in the famous ‘packer sweep’, pulling from his place on the line of scrimmage and lead the running back on the sweep to devastating effect. Kramer’s blocking helped Jim Taylor average over 5 yards a carry for 3 years in Green Bay, and become the only rusher to lead the league other than Jim Brown during Brown’s career.
Jerry Kramer came out of the University of Idaho where his number 64 is now retired and was selected in the 4th round of the 1958 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers. The Packers struck gold with the 1958 draft, also selecting Jim Taylor in the 2nd round, and Ray Nitschke in the 3rd, Hall of Famers both. Their first round pick, Dan Currie, was also an All-Pro and Pro-Bowler during his career. Despite all this talent coming in 1958, the next season Green Bay posted a 1-10-1 record, bottom of the NFL, and in January 1959 hired a new Head Coach, a Mr. Vince Lombardi.
Lombardi brought a ruthless level of discipline and organisation to the struggling Green Bay team and the results were immediate, with their record improving to 7-5 in Lombardi’s first year. The power sweep play that Lombardi developed while he was the Offensive Coordinator in New York to take advantage of Frank Gifford’s skills was perfected and used to devastating effect in Green Bay. Whether it was Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor, or even later, Jim Grabowski running the power sweep, they all found the same man out in front of them, clearing the holes: Jerry Kramer. “He was the best guard during that whole era, not only on the Packers, but he was the best right guard in the business at that time. He defined his position for over 10 years as the best. Said teammate Paul Hornung, already a Hall of Fame member.
 Kramer’s career wasn’t without its struggles though. He was a dominant force on the Packers O-line until 1961, when he suffered a broken ankle midway through the season. The Packers won their first championship in 17 years that year with Jerry Kramer watching from the sidelines. He bounced back the next season and earned All-Pro honours, and in the 1962 NFL Championship game Kramer showed off one of his lesser known talents kicking scoring 3 FGs and an extra point in Green Bay’s 16-7 victory over the New York Giants. Kramer in fact took over place kicking duties for all of 1962 and 1963, and stepped in for part of 1968.
1964 was to be a turbulent year for Kramer. Early in the season he underwent surgery to remove an inflamed abscess from beneath his stomach, but it wasn’t until later that year, in the off-season, that doctors discovered some wood splinters lodged in his abdomen. These had been stuck in his body since an accident Kramer had as a teenager in 1953. He was hit by infection, and he nearly didn’t survive. Despite losing 30lbs over the course of the ordeal, Kramer vowed to play in 1965. Despite Lombardi sending him home, Kramer stayed through training camp, and received help in the unlikely figure of Packers kicker, Don Chandler. Chandler pulled Kramer through the training camp by making up the difference between what Kramer could manage, and what the team was doing. Kramer began to get his strength back, and get back into playing shape, so that by the time the first exhibition game rolled around, Lombardi felt confident enough to put him in the game late, and the ovation from the crowd proved just what a popular player Kramer had become.
The seasons of 1961 and ’64 were to be the only seasons in which Kramer would miss games due to injury, which is remarkable when you learn that he had 22 surgeries over his 11 NFL seasons. Emmit Smith once said there’s a difference between playing hurt, and playing injured, you can play through hurt, but when you’re injured, it’s time to come out. Jerry Kramer didn’t recognize that distinction, he played until he couldn’t stand anymore.
Kramer was also involved in one of the most famous moments in NFL history. At the end of what became known as ‘the Ice Bowl’ the 1967 NFL Championship Game vs. the Dallas Cowboys, with only 13 seconds left on the clock, Jerry Kramer and centre Ken Bowman cleared out Dallas DT Jethro Pugh to allow Bart Starr to sneak up the middle for the championship-winning TD.
Kramer was never your typical football player and has authored several bestselling books about the Packers. In 1967 Kramer kept a diary, which included tapings made whilst he was involved in day to day life with the Packers, which he later turned into a book with help from Dick Schaap, called Inside Replay. He was also responsible for the release of Inside the Locker Room, a CD set that includes Vince Lombardi’s final locker room address as head coach of the Green Bay Packers. This was taped by Kramer as he was collecting material for his first book, without the knowledge of the rest of the team or the coaches.
“I used to think I would take the tape and make a copy for the guys one day. I knew they would like it,” Kramer said as to why he saved it in the first place. “But that was it. I never thought I would go public with it. So I threw it in the trunk. And then, lo and behold, 38 years passed. I never had a dreamin’ idea it would become anything. But who the hell could have foreseen Lombardi becoming the icon he has? Who could have envisioned the Super Bowl becoming what it has?”
 Today, Jerry Kramer is heavily involved along with past greats such as Mike Ditka, Willie Davis, Gale Sayers and Harry Carson, with the fight to support former NFL players who may be suffering from the effects of the game, yet receive little or no support from the present day NFL they helped to create. They set up the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund which can be found at www.gridirongreats.org to provide financial and support services to retired players in dire need of it. To further these projects Jerry Kramer auctioned off his replacement SuperBowl I ring to raise funds. Kramer took off the ring he won for winning the first Superbowl on an airline flight in 1981 to wash his hands, but left it in the airplane bathroom. By the time he realized what had happened, it had been taken. The ring was missing for 25 years before it surfaced on an online auction website. Having given the ring up for lost Kramer had a duplicate made and had been wearing it ever since. Though the duplicate was identical, having been made from the very same mould as the original, it wasn’t imbued with the memories that made the original what it was, and makes it so special to everybody that wins one. Kramer says the ring he had returned was a symbol of all my experiences and all my emotions from that era of my life.”
Jerry Kramer is a man who dominated the gridiron for a decade, fighting through a multitude of injuries to do so, refusing to quit when the Godfather of NFL coaches told him to, and has yet to be recognized by the Hall of Fame for it. His playing career was as good as any NFL O-lineman’s has ever been but that wasn’t enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Kramer has moved on though, and is concerning himself with the things in football that matter, not the individual accolades, but the thousands of great players who sacrificed their bodies to help build the multi-billion dollar empire that is the modern NFL, only to see that empire turn its back on them. Kramer battered his way through NFL Defenses for a decade, now he’s trying to batter his way through NFL beaurocracy.
Learn More about past NFL greats in our History Archive
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