That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set it on the Path to Glory by John Eisenberg

From the Publisher

In the late 1950s the once vaunted Green Bay Packers were a laughing stock. They hadn't fielded a winning team in more than a decade and were very nearly in jeopardy of losing their franchise to another city. The ultimate low came in 1958, when, with 7 future Hall of Famers on the team, they went a lousy 1-10-1 under a too-soft coach, Scooter McLean. They were desperately in need of a savior, and he arrived via wood-paneled station wagon in the dead of winter from New York City.
 
THAT FIRST SEASON chronicles Vince Lombardi's remarkable first year as head coach with the franchise he would reinvent and etch forever in football history. In a single year, as the grizzled coach who took no bull, he would transform a team of underachievers into winners and reignite a city known for its passion for its sport. Based on exhaustive new research and interviews, THAT FIRST SEASON is the seldom-studied prequel to a football career marked by greatness.  Eisenberg pushes away the mist that surrounds the Lombardi legend to bring readers the real story of how the seeds of a football dynasty were sown.  He also brings alive an incredible ensemble tale of a team, a town and their leader.

Publishers Weekly

When Vince Lombardi took over as head coach for the moribund Green Bay Packers in 1959, both parties had much to prove, as Eisenberg, a former Baltimore Sun sports columnist, makes clear in this bio. Lombardi, a longtime assistant in college and pro football, hadn't been a head coach in more than a decade, and that was for a New Jersey high school. The Packers were perennial losers, with players who had become accustomed to lazy coaching and good times. Lombardi's arrival was pivotal, as his attitude and discipline inspired the Packers, who became a football powerhouse during the 1960s, while allowing for the emergence of future Hall of Famers like offensive juggernaut Paul Hornung and quarterback Bart Starr. Eisenberg is at his best detailing the players' response to Lombardi's unforgiving approach, especially in training camp, which some veterans treated as vacation. Unfortunately, the author's account gradually loses steam, as too much space is reserved for detailed game recaps that detract from Lombardi's work in constructing a champion team. Still, the book is a brisk, sometimes revealing look at Lombardi's early days in Green Bay and is a nice complement to the existing works on the legendary coach. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Lombardi arrived in Green Bay in 1959 to take over a desperate franchise. He led the Packers to their first winning season in 12 years with mostly the same personnel that was on hand when he arrived. Eisenberg aims to get at the root of that seemingly miraculous transformation by focusing on the changes wrought in that first season. From the ample written record and roughly three dozen new interviews, he presents a detailed retelling of the very beginning of Lombardi's iconic Packers career, from the misery of training camp to the unfolding of the regular season, game by game. He provides some new insights, but he is mostly treading on familiar territory. And the frequent use of imagined dialog among players and coaches is distracting. A good plan for a book here gets fumbled in the execution. For Packers fans.—J.M.

Kirkus Reviews

The exciting chronicle of Vince Lombardi's pivotal first season as head coach of the Green Bay Packers. Former Baltimore Sun sports columnist Eisenberg (The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle, 2006, etc.) looks back at 1959, a year that witnessed one of the more momentous turnarounds in NFL history. In his first season as a head coach, Lombardi took the one of the worst football teams ever and led it to its first winning season in more than a decade. Having sunk to 1-10-1 under Scooter McLean the year before, the 1959 Packers were expected to win no more than three or four games, but Lombardi righted the ship, steering them to a 7-5 record that year and initiating their run to six championships during his nine-year tenure as head coach. How the stout, brash Brooklyn native was able to transform a directionless assemblage of players into a gridiron behemoth is as much the subject of Eisenberg's exhaustively researched account as his thrilling description of each game. Relying on period articles and interviews with key players from the Lombardi dynasty, the author convincingly shows that the coach's fierce work ethic, militaristic-style training camps, perfectionist tendencies, belief in fitness and ability to instill confidence in his players were as central to the team's metamorphosis as his brilliance as a game-play strategist. Though his "sarcastic, critical" coaching style didn't always endear him to the players, when they saw the results of his simple, run-centered offense and powerful zone defense, he soon won their trust. A must-read for Packer and Lombardi fans, and will interest most NFL fans as well. Author events in Milwaukee, Madison,Green Bay, Wis. Agent: Scott Waxman/Waxman Literary Agency

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