Jerry Kramer has basked in the attention on his key block on the winning play in the Ice Bowl for more than half a century.
He sure was uneasy, though, when Vince Lombardi told Bart Starr to run “31 Wedge” from a yard out, the Green Bay Packers’ dynasty dangling by a thread with 16 seconds remaining on that 1967 New Year’s Eve afternoon so frozen in time.
It was a play Kramer himself had suggested, almost sheepishly, to Lombardi after finding a flaw in Dallas’ short-yardage defense during film study 72 hours earlier.
He noticed that while Bob Lilly was so close to the ground, “you couldn’t move him with a D-9 CAT” bulldozer, fellow Cowboys defensive tackle Jethro Pugh stood too high in his stance, making him vulnerable.