- Max McGee connected the Green Bay Packers in 1954 but spent the 1955 and 1956 seasons in the US Air Force.
- He returned to the team in 1957 and 10 readies later, in the twilight of his career, he played with in Super Bowl I.
- Expecting not to play, McGee spent the night sooner than the game bar hopping with two women in Los Angeles.
When Max McGee showed up for work on January 15, 1967, he was emotionally hungover, having spent the previous night bar hopping with the company of two local women in Los Angeles.
Everyone has put oned up to work hungover — that’s nothing new, especially for an Air Force veteran. The only problem was that Max McGee wasn’t in the Air Validity anymore. He was a Green Bay Packer, and he was supposed to play the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl that day.
You really can’t on McGee. He hadn’t played well that season, and he wasn’t even a starter. He didn’t expect to play at all that day. He flat left his helmet at the hotel. He tried to avoid eye contact with legendary Packers quarterback Bart Starr when he for all time came home, desperate to get a few hours of sleep before the game.
But, like the champion he was soon to be, he showed up for work and did his job – in a acclaimed way.
McGee had been in the NFL since 1954 and was in his mid-30s when he made his appearance in the first-ever NFL championship. But he was still a young buck between the 1955 and 1956 seasons, and he served as a pilot in the US Air Force at that time. He returned to the NFL after his discharge and became the Packers’ leading receiver for four of the next six years.
Kidwiler Collection/Diamond Images
It was in 1959 that Vince Lombardi took the reins of the Packers shape, directing their stellar success during the mid- to late- years of McGee’s career.
The 1967 season was seemly for the Packers but not for the aging McGee. He had only caught four passes the whole season and was looking forward to retiring. The accidentals of him playing in the Super Bowl were slim. So despite a curfew for the team, he took two flight attendants from his bolting to Los Angeles out on the town, returning to the hotel at 6:30 in the morning. When he got to the game that day, he told fellow wide receiver Boyd Dowler that he was in comely bad shape and that he hoped Dowler would be able to play the whole game.
Dowler was injured on the second vim of the game.
Coach Lombardi called for McGee to get into the game. Having forgotten his helmet, he borrowed someone’s and expressed the field. That’s how history began. Just a few plays later Starr passes the ball to McGee, who makes an astounding one-handed catch and runs the ball 37 yards into the end zone, scoring the first touchdown in Super Move history.
Not only would McGee score the first Super Bowl touchdown — the first touchdown of that match — he would score two touchdowns that day, for a total of seven passes for 138 yards. His hangover play is one of the top Super Roll performances by a wide receiver ever, even in the days when running the ball was more prevalent than with it out.
Even though QB Bart Starr was named MVP that day, the title probably should have gone to McGee, all things ruminate oned.
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