While Vince Lombardi will always and forever be remembered best for his historic 10-year run with the Green Bay Packers, it's very easy to forget that he did not end his NFL career in Titletown, nor did it begin there.
After 16 years of coaching at the high school and college levels, the Brooklyn native joined the New York Giants in 1954 as the team's offensive coordinator, serving in the role for five seasons and ultimately helping Big Blue to a pair of appearances in the NFL Championship Game, winning the first in 1956 over none other than the Chicago Bears and losing the second in 1958 to the Baltimore Colts in overtime. Fun fact: the defensive coordinator for those teams was Tom Landry, who, of course, went on to be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys for three decades.
In early February 1959, after posting 1-10-1 record during the '58 campaign, which remains the worst mark in franchise history, the Packers hired Lombardi to serve as both the head coach and the general manager. And the rest, as they say, is history. Over the next nine years, Green Bay won five NFL Championships, the last two of which came at the expense of Landry's Cowboys and put the Packers in what we now know as the Super Bowl, both of which they won easily.
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Not long after the Packers' 33-14 win over the then-Oakland Raiders in the second AFL-NFL World Championship Game (for those unaware, that was the Super Bowl's original name), Lombardi made the decision to step down as head coach but remained in his GM role through the 1968 campaign, a season in which Green Bay went 6-7-1 under Phil Bengtson.
In early February 1969, nearly 10 years to the day after joining the Packers, Lombardi was released from his contract and inked a new deal with the franchise now known as the Washington Commanders. And it was there that he ended his NFL career.
Vince Lombardi spent one season with Washington before his tragic death in 1970
Similar to the deal he got in Green Bay, Lombardi took on two roles with Washington, serving as both the head coach and executive vice president while also receiving a five percent stake in the franchise's ownership.
Heading into the 1969 season, Washington hadn't posted a winning record since going 8-4 in 1955. Upon Lombardi's arrival, however, they went 7-5-2 to take second place in the NFL's Capitol Division in the Eastern Conference, finishing behind only Landry's Cowboys, who went 11-2-1 before being trounced in the conference title game by the Cleveland Browns.
Sadly, however, on September 3, 1970, roughly two weeks before the start of the first official season of the NFL-AFL merger, Lombardi passed away due to an aggressive form of colon cancer that he'd been diagnosed with just 10 weeks earlier.
In 10 years as a head coach, Lombardi never had one losing season and ultimately posted a 96-34-6 regular-season record, while going an incredible 9-1 in postseason games. Shortly after his death, the Super Bowl trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy.