For today’s “Super Sunday” entry, we have the original account of Super Bowl II, as it appeared in the next day’s Milwaukee Journal:
Packers and Starr Winners Again
By Chuck Johnson
The Milwaukee Journal
January 14, 1968
Miami, Fla. — Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers took the measure of the American Football League's best for the second straight year in the Super Bowl game here Sunday. The victims this time were the Oakland Raiders, and the score was 33-14. A year ago, in Los Angeles, the National Football League champions beat the Kansas Chiefs, 35-10.
Quarterback Bart Starr was adjudged the most valuable player and awarded a sports car by a magazine for the second straight year. He again injured his right thumb, however, and Zeke Bratkowski finished.
Don Chandler's contribution may have been overlooked. He kicked four field goals, and the third one, from 43 yards with one second left in the first half, may have been a turning point, if a 33-14 game has a turning point.
Now the Packers were ahead by nine points instead of six, and when Starr and his mates controlled the ball almost endlessly in the third quarter — the Raiders got six plays in the period — Oakland was suddenly all through. That fact was underscored when Chandler kicked his fourth field goal with two seconds left in the period, by bouncing a 31-yard "knuckleball" on the crossbar and over.
Besides Chandler's four field goals in four attempts — the earlier ones were from 39 and 20 yards, for a 6-0 lead — the Packers scored three touchdowns, by three different routes.
First, Starr caught Oakland in the wrong defense and pitched a pass to end Boyd Dowler for a ridiculously easy 62-yard scoring play. Dowler caught the ball alone on Oakland's 40, and had little trouble outsprinting two pursuers, neither of whom was the man who was supposed to cover him.
Second, halfback Donny Anderson burst over right tackle behind devastating blocking to score standing up from the 2-yard line. Starr's pass, on third down with a yard to go, to veteran end Max McGee, gained 35 yards and his subsequent passes to end Carroll Dale and Anderson set up the score.
And third, cornerback Herb Adderley leaped in front of the Oakland receiver and intercepted Daryle Lamonica's pass and raced back 60 yards, aided by blocks by tackles Henry Jordan and Ron Kostelnik and his own evasion of Lamonica, for the touchdown that made it 33-7 and removed what little doubt remained for the capacity crowd of 75,546 in the sunny but cool (for Florida) Orange Bowl.
After each touchdown, Chandler added the extra point, giving him 15 points for the day, one more than Oakland could score.
Lamonica threw for Oakland's two touchdowns, each to end Bill Miller and each time for 23 yards. The first score put Oakland in the game, briefly at least, but John Rauch's Raiders were soon out of it again, because Roger Bird fumbled one of Anderson's high, left-footed punts, rookie Dick Capp (just put on the roster by Lombardi Friday) recovered the ball and the Packers obtained position for Chandler's third field goal.
George Blanda, who once played quarterback for the Chicago Bears, kicked the two extra points. He was short on a 47-yard field goal when the issue was still in doubt. He did not, however, get a chance to try any more field goal, after leading the AFL in scoring this season with 116 points.
As Blanda himself phrased it, "Once Chandler kicked his third one, we weren't going for field goals any more."
Each Packer won $15,000, as compared with the $7,500 which accrued to each Raider's bank account, but this was not one of Green Bay's better games. In fact, it seemed that the Packers played just about as well as they had to.
Lombardi may have had the same impression. "The way we played was typical of this team in the last year and a half," he said. "We took a 13-0 lead and went on vacation."
As it was, this was Green Bay's 18th victory since competition started against the College All-Stars in Chicago last August, as compared with four defeats and one tie. Oakland, which has scored 11 straight victories, wound up with a 16-5 record, including 13-1 in the regular season.
The Packers now have run up a 68-24 scoring edge over the AFL in the Super Bowl, but this contest was slightly different from the first one. For one thing, the Raiders seemed to prove more opposition over the full 60 minutes than the Chiefs did a year ago. For another, the statistics this time were surprisingly close.
But Green Bay did what Green Bay had to do. Starr and his mates did not give the ball away at all. The Raiders lost the ball three times — once for seven points on Adderley's interception, once for three points on Bird's fumble, and once when Pete Banaszak, the running back from Crivitz, Wis., fumbled after catching a pass. Linebacker Dave Robinson picked up that fumble and ran it back 16 yards.
The Packers didn't make anything out of Robinson's recovery, but that was about the only time they didn't convert an opportunity into something meaningful.
Lombardi's Packers now have won two Super Bowls in a row, and five NFL titles in the last seven years, including the last three straight.
They will be hard pressed for an encore. But they'll probably think of something.
