Bob Harlan: Post-Lombardi struggles

Continued from previous week

Bob Harlan’s first day with the Green Bay Packers was June 1, 1971.

“It was a little tough at first. I think that everybody wanted to find ways to hate me. Chuck Lane, the former PR man, came up to me one day after about a year and said, ‘You know, Bob. We were all looking for ways to hate you. We just couldn’t come up with a way.’ I said, ‘Well, good.’ I was hoping that was true,” Harlan said.

“I never knew why I was so unpopular. But they just didn’t like Devine; they didn’t like anybody Devine brought in. So, he had some tough hurdles.”

Devine’s disfavor may have been rooted in the fact that the Packers Executive Committee was split on Devine’s hiring — a 5-2 vote, with Tony Canadeo and Dick Bourguignon looking to get Joe Paterno instead.

“But, from that point on, things were so bad in Green Bay, and they had been so good. In fact, that’s when the period began,” Harlan explained. “When Lombardi left, the Packers hired (Phil) Bengtson, Devine, (Bart) Starr, (Forrest) Gregg and (Lindy) Infante in the next 24 years, and each one of those coaches had a lower winning percentage than his predecessor. So, we were just like a stairway going down; we couldn’t solve our problems. We just could not find a way to win — 24 years of mediocrity in Green Bay was very, very tough.”

Devine had Harlan start negotiating contracts, working with the lower Draft selections and back-up players, while then Packers Director of Personnel Pat Peppler worked with the top Draft choices and veteran players.

While Harlan didn’t have experience in that area, he threw himself into the work, studying contracts from the 1960s.

With a staff that was a fraction of today’s Packers front office, Harlan found himself getting involved in numerous areas of the franchise.

To make matters worse, Devine broke his leg during his first game as the Packers coach, after getting hit on the sidelines.

But Devine’s second year as coach saw some improvement, as the Packers won the division and Devine was named Coach of the Year.

The following year, things started to head in the opposite direction, and at the end of the 1974 season, Devine resigned to take a position as head coach with the University of Notre Dame.

Bart Starr was hired by the Packers as head coach and general manager on Christmas Eve.

To be continued