The season and the game, in order
The NFL’s 1967 season ended in two stages. The league’s own championship was decided on 31 December 1967 in the Ice Bowl at Green Bay. The title game against the American Football League’s champion, played on 14 January 1968 and later numbered Super Bowl II, took place in Miami. The season is therefore recorded as 1967, although the final game fell in 1968, which explains the title’s “1967-1968” form.
Sixteen teams, four divisions
The 1967 season was the first with sixteen teams. The New Orleans Saints joined as an expansion club, a year after the Atlanta Falcons had arrived, and the league used the larger field to rearrange itself. Instead of two conferences with a single winner each, the NFL now split each conference into two divisions of four:
| Conference | Division | Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern | Capitol | Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans |
| Eastern | Century | Cleveland, New York Giants, Pittsburgh, St. Louis |
| Western | Central | Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota |
| Western | Coastal | Los Angeles, Baltimore, San Francisco, Atlanta |
The four division winners entered a playoff. Each conference held a championship game, and the winners met for the NFL title. That added a round to the old arrangement, in which the conference leaders met directly. With only division winners qualifying, some strong teams with good records could miss out, since there were no wild cards yet.
The Saints
New Orleans was awarded its franchise in November 1966, a few months after the NFL and AFL had announced their merger agreement in June. The team opened its first season with a kickoff return for a touchdown against the Los Angeles Rams, which is often remembered as the highlight of the year. The Saints lost that game and finished with a poor record, winning only a few games, as most expansion teams of the period did. Among their early players was running back Jim Taylor, who had spent his career with Green Bay before moving south.
Green Bay’s path
The Packers under Vince Lombardi entered 1967 as two-time defending champions and winners of Super Bowl I, played after the 1966 season. They were not at their strongest. Their regular-season record was a modest 9-4-1, good enough for the Central Division, and injuries and retirements were wearing at a veteran roster. In the Western Conference title game, played in Milwaukee on 23 December, they beat the Los Angeles Rams 28-7. The Rams had the better regular-season record but could not stop a running game that was still effective.
In the East, Dallas beat Cleveland 52-14 the next day, setting up a rematch of the previous year’s NFL championship game, which Green Bay had won.
The Ice Bowl
The league championship came on 31 December at Lambeau Field, in extremely cold weather, with the temperature reported at around minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit. Dallas led late in the fourth quarter, and the Packers scored the winning touchdown in the final seconds when quarterback Bart Starr kept the ball himself and pushed across the goal line on a sneak. The final score was 21-17. The game has its own place in football lore as the Ice Bowl. In terms of the season, it was the third consecutive NFL championship for Green Bay and the fifth in seven years under Lombardi.
Oakland and the AFL
The AFL side was led by the Oakland Raiders, who finished 13-1 and beat the Houston Oilers in the league championship game. Oakland’s quarterback was Daryle Lamonica, known for throwing long. The AFL had its own stars, among them New York’s Joe Namath, but the NFL champions were still widely expected to win the interleague game, as they had in the first one. The NFL and AFL agreed in 1966 to merge by 1970, and 1967 was the first year in which their teams shared a common draft, held in March.
Super Bowl II
The game was played at the Orange Bowl in Miami on 14 January 1968. At that stage the official name was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, and the “Super Bowl” label, and the numbering of the first two games, came into use afterwards.
Green Bay won 33-14. Starr was named most valuable player. Kicker Don Chandler made four field goals, and cornerback Herb Adderley returned an interception for a touchdown. The Raiders scored twice but never seriously threatened. For many observers the game confirmed that the AFL still had ground to make up, a view that changed within a year when the Jets won Super Bowl III.
It was also Lombardi’s last game as Packers head coach. He announced in February that he was stepping down from the sideline, though he stayed on as general manager for a time, and defensive coordinator Phil Bengtson took over as head coach. Lombardi returned to coaching with Washington in 1969. The NFL’s championship trophy was named after him following his death in 1970.
What the season changed
Several developments of 1967 shaped what came next. The sixteen-team, four-division layout set a template for the merged league. The Super Bowl was already becoming an annual national event, and the money football could earn from broadcasting was rising, partly because of the spread of color television and the growing market for football television rights. Meanwhile, rivalries with the AFL pointed toward a single league from 1970.
On the field, the Packers’ dynasty was ending. They did not play in another Super Bowl until the late 1990s, and the years that followed belonged to teams such as the Colts, Jets, Chiefs and Cowboys. Out west, some clubs in the new Coastal Division, such as John Brodie’s San Francisco 49ers, were hovering around the middle of the table, waiting for their own turn.