Pro Football 101: Forrest Gregg ranks No. 48 on all-time list

By Joe Posnanski
Special to FOX Sports

Editor's Note: Throughout 2021 and 2022, Joe Posnanski is ranking the 101 best players in pro football history, in collaboration with FOX Sports. Posnanski will publish a detailed look at all 101 players on Substack. The countdown continues today with player No. 48, Forrest Gregg.

"This is another real football player, this Forrest Gregg."  — Vince Lombardi, "Run to Daylight"

In January 1964, at age 30, Forrest Gregg retired from professional football to become an assistant coach at the University of Tennessee. He’d been an All-Pro tackle four times already, he was at the heart of the famed Packer Sweep, and he was Vince Lombardi’s favorite player.

But … Gregg had always wanted to be a coach, and even though he felt sure that he still had some good playing years left, he didn’t want to miss his chance with the Volunteers.

"I didn’t want to wait until I was over the hill," he said. "I know it’s a big paycut, but I would have to take it sometime."

Six weeks later, he quit the job, saying that the Packers made him "too good an offer to pass up."

In January 1969, at age 35, Forrest Gregg retired from professional football again. He’d added three more Pro Bowls, played in the first two Super Bowls and left his mark as one of the best tackles in NFL history. 

"I’d like to play the rest of my life," he said in an emotional news conference. "But unfortunately, you can’t do it physically. I want to retire before I overstay my leave."

He immediately became a hot coaching commodity. The Steelers offered him a job. That wasn’t interesting to him. Lombardi wanted to hire him for his first season in Washington — "Forrest is a player’s player, a coach’s player and someday a great coach," he had said — but he had made a deal with the Packers that he would not hire any of Green Bay’s assistant coaches or retired players for five years.

So Gregg took an assistant coaching job with the Packers. And this time, he stayed retired for more than four months. In late May, though, it was reported that "Gregg, who has kept himself in spectacular condition during the offseason, may be lured into returning."

And sure enough, he did return — as a player/coach. "After looking at the films of the 1968 season," he said, "Coach [Phil] Bengtson and the other coaches told me they thought I was still capable of playing in the NFL. … All the guys were calling me a rookie today."

In December 1969, Forrest Gregg walked off the field to a standing ovation — surely this was his last game. A touching photograph of Gregg with his longtime teammate and friend Willie Davis appeared in the Green Bay paper with the headline: "Last Hurrah for Willie D., Forrest G."

This time, Gregg didn’t announce his retirement — he didn’t have to announce it. Everyone just knew. In late January, he considered becoming offensive line coach at the University of Florida. He decided to stay with the Packers' coaching staff. In June, he put away all doubts by saying that he just wanted to be a coach. 

"But," Bengtson said, "I told him facetiously the other day to stay in shape."

Perhaps it wasn’t so facetious, as the Packers kept Gregg on the active roster. Gregg insisted that was just paperwork. "I’m going to do just like the old Texas cowboy," he said in late August. "I’m just going to ride off into the sunset. I have no plans to play."

Two weeks later, the Packers announced that Gregg was on the 40-man roster, even though he had not put on a helmet or shoulder pads at any point during training camp. "I view myself strictly as a backup," he said. Four days after that, he started against the Atlanta Falcons and, according to Bengtson, "held up very well."

Gregg played in all 14 games and started four of them.

And then … one more time, it was time to say goodbye. In December 1970, the Packers ended the season with a 20-0 loss, and Gregg said, "I’m sorry we didn’t win the last game I played in."

"Forrest Gregg Plays Final Game … Again" was the somewhat exasperated headline in the Green Bay Gazette. He had played in 187 straight games. "That," he said as a final statement, "is a lot of huddles."

A bunch of things happened after that. Bengtson resigned as Packers coach. Missouri coach Dan Devine took over and asked Gregg to say on as an assistant. Gregg declined, deciding instead to go into the sporting goods business in Dallas. Gregg, yet again, did not announce his retirement — there seemed no need — and because of that, he was still on the Packers' roster.

They waived him, and that seemed the end of one of the NFL’s greatest careers.

Except … Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry saw Gregg’s name on the waiver list and called him.

"Hi, Coach," Gregg said. "How can I help you?"

"You still got your cleats?" Landry asked.

And Gregg came back one more time. "They’re a great team," he said. "I couldn’t resist trying to be a part of it."

Sure enough, 38-year-old Forrest Gregg was on the sideline in New Orleans for the Cowboys’ 24-3 win over Miami in Super Bowl VI. He did not play, but he did get his third Super Bowl ring.

And that was his last game.

"There’s no way," he said while soaked in champagne, "that I’m going to play anymore."

Oh, yes, Vince Lombardi got it right. Alvis Forrest Gregg was a real football player.

Forrest Gregg was an important figure in my childhood; he was the coach of the Cleveland Browns when I first became aware of professional football.

Gregg really didn’t make a lot of sense as the Browns' coach, but Art Modell had publicly said he wanted a coach with a winning résumé to turn his team around after its first real decline. Understand, Paul Brown had founded the team in the All-American Football Conference in 1946, and the Browns didn’t have a losing record until 1974. They won all four AAFC Championships, played in the championship game each of their first six years in the NFL (winning three of them), won another championship in ’64, lost the championship in ’65 and came within one game of the Super Bowl twice in the late 1960s. They almost beat the famed and undefeated 1972 Dolphins in the playoffs.

But 1974 was a disaster — a 4-10 team featuring a defense that couldn’t stop anybody. The head coach was Nick Skorich, and when Modell fired him, Skorich gave every impression that he would have done the same. "You’ve got to win in this business," he said. "And I didn’t."

Forrest Gregg was an offensive line coach for those 1974 Browns, and there was no indication that he was a particularly good one. But he was a bona fide legend, a surefire Hall of Famer (he would be inducted in 1977) and, perhaps, the greatest tackle in NFL history to that point. So there was an aura surrounding him.

Even more to the point, he carried with him the glow of Vince Lombardi, who had died four years earlier. In fact, while conducting the coaching search, Modell got an unsolicited call from Marie Lombardi, Vince’s widow.

"This is none of my business," she said, "but I’d like to pass along some things Vince felt concerning Forrest."

I feel pretty confident in saying that this was the call that convinced Modell to hire Gregg. I think Modell was infatuated with the idea of hiring Lombardi 2.0 to turn around the Browns.

And, sure enough, Gregg looked the part. So in came Gregg. 

I was 8 years old and did not know anything about his playing days with the Packers. I knew only that he had a deep voice with a Texas twang and a rugged face, and for the rest of my life, my image of the ideal pro football coach looked and sounded just like Forrest Gregg.

"There will be curfews," he announced upon taking the Browns' job. "The players will be neat. And there will be no place on this team for any player who gets involved with drugs. And yes, practices will be a bit more strenuous than they’ve been in the past."

He said that last part with a little grin; he had so much Lombardi in him. His first season, the Browns went 3-11, but in year two, they went 9-5, winning eight of their last 10 games, and he was named NFL Coach of the Year. The team got off to a hot start in 1977, too — "I’d hate to say now that we’re a contender," Gregg crowed with the team 5-2 — and things were looking up.

Only then, it all just collapsed. Injuries. Bad breaks. Personal foul penalties. The team began losing — and along the way, it began being branded as a dirty team. When the Browns lost to Los Angeles 9-0 to essentially drop out of the playoff race, Art Modell made it clear that he’d lost patience with his Vince Lombardi.

"It’s a disgrace," Modell said after that game. "But there might be a bright side to this. If we had won, we might have been lulled into complacency. We might have figured that no changes were needed. Now we know that isn’t the case. There’s no doubt about it. We must make some moves."

Gregg, publicly, took the beating. "What Mr. Modell meant by that statement, you’ll have to ask him," he told reporters. "He hasn’t said anything to me, so I would gather that he wasn’t talking about me."

Privately he knew: Modell, of course, was talking about him. Gregg considered resigning right then and there because Modell had proven himself to be a less than honorable man. He stayed on for two more hellish weeks, and then before the final game, Modell announced that he had accepted Gregg’s resignation. Gregg said nothing except that he didn’t quit.

Three years later, he was hired by Paul Brown — another coach Modell had canned and treated shabbily — to coach the Cincinnati Bengals, and in 1981, he coached them to the Super Bowl. Later, he coached the Packers to some mediocre seasons, and then he was hired to coach at his alma mater, Southern Methodist, after the school had been given the death penalty by the NCAA. Gregg passed away three years ago.

All along the way, he was the rock-solid, no-nonsense guy Vince Lombardi adored as a player. Bill Curry tells a story about Gregg that I love: When Curry joined the Packers in 1965, Gregg was already an icon — heck, he’d already retired once. But what Curry saw was a player working on the most basic things, like his stance and footwork every single day, as if he were still learning how to play offensive line.

"Why do you do that?" Curry asked.

"Playing offensive line," Gregg said, "is an unnatural thing. Your body doesn’t want to move that way. And the minute you lose the basics, you’re out of this league."

"I’ve thought about that so many times," Curry said. "When you talk about Forrest Gregg, you’re talking about one of the best to ever play this game. But when I think about Forrest Gregg, I think about a guy practicing his stance and his starts again and again and again long after he’d proven himself. 

"That’s greatness for you."

Joe Posnanski is a New York Times bestselling author and has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations. His latest book, "The Baseball 100," came out last September.