Preseason During The Lombardi Era

There was no Wednesday practice for the Green Bay Packers. The next preseason game is at Lambeau on Saturday against the Buffalo Bills. The schedule has been pretty kind to the Packers so far. They've been able to spend all of training camp in Green Bay, and don't have to travel away until the August 28th game at Arizona.

I was reading my advance copy of That First Season by John Eisenberg and he wrote about the awful preseason schedule that the Packers had during Vince Lombardi's first season as the head coach back in 1959. From page 120:

"The Packers' remaining five exhibition games would all be played either on the road or at a neutral site, in San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Bangor, Maine; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Minneapolis, Minnesota...

The schedule afforded the Packers just a few days at home in the month before their regular-season opener on September 27, but it wasn't unusual for NFL teams to barnstorm through the exhibition season...

The NFL's owners sent their team on barnstorming trips before the season in hopes of attracting new fans in out-of-the-way places and cities without franchises."