Ben McAdoo is no Vince Lombardi.
At least not when it comes to being an assistant for one team and then facing them as head coach of the other in the Giants-Packers rivalry. While McAdoo has suppressed any opportunity to either wistfully recall his eight seasons as an assistant in Green Bay under Mike McCarthy or admit how much he would like to beat his former boss and mentor, Lombardi showed no such restraint when it came to facing the Giants.
"Lombardi enjoyed beating two teams above all else: the Giants and the Cowboys," said Ernie Palladino, author of the book "Lombardi and Landry" that examined the two legendary coaches' time together as assistants with the Giants. "He always held a bitterness toward the Giants for not giving him the head coaching job, despite his close friendship with Wellington (Mara)."
According to a 1959 report in the Milwaukee Sentinel just prior to his first game back at Yankee Stadium with the Packers, Lombardi sent word through a scout for the Giants to "expect trouble" in their Nov. 1 meeting. The two teams had already faced off in a preseason contest in Bangor, Maine, and while the Giants won that game 14-0 (the only shutout of any kind during Lombardi's career as a head coach) former Giants defensive back Emlen Tunnell, who had just joined the Packers along with Lombardi, knocked out two Giants starters: Mel Triplett and Joe Morrison.
Lombardi's regular-season threats came as the rookie coach of a team that had one win the previous season going against a squad that was coming off a loss in the 1958 NFL Championship (a.k.a "The Greatest Game Ever Played").
The hard feelings at the time were mutual.
"Nothing would give me more pleasure than to beat his brains out Sunday," Giants coach Jim Lee Howell said of Lombardi, though he later insisted the quote was taken out of context.
