George Allen used to call it “Ram weather.”
As coach of the Los Angeles Rams, Allen refused to concede that eye-blurring snowstorms or body-chilling cold fronts could affect his team. He knew driving rain could reduce a field to mud, and howling wind could turn a spiraling football into an uncontrollable piece of leather, but that was for other coaches to worry about.
“It was also Redskin weather when he coached in Washington,” said Allen’s son, Bruce, a former Oakland Raiders executive who was named general manager of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last week. “Wherever his teams played, he told them it was their kind of weather.
“He made sure not to wear gloves or heavy jackets in those games. And he would always shake the hands of the players because he wanted them to feel his skin.”
Such an approach may be necessary this weekend in three of the four NFL conference semifinals. A high of about 40 degrees is forecast in Kansas City, but the games in Philadelphia and Foxboro, Mass., are likely to be in subfreezing temperatures.
“I remember one of the games, when my dad was coaching in Washington, was played in a huge blizzard. My dad had Harold McLinton, one of his linebackers, dive into a snow pile during warmups. And my dad would sometimes start snowball fights. People might have thought they were acting like idiots, but it was all part of my dad’s plan.
“He wanted to show that the weather could be fun. He would tell his players in the locker room that the bad weather outside was just part of the environment of the stadium, a part they could use to their advantage. He would say, `It’s great that you get to play in the cold to show people what you can do.’ He was trying to create a different mentality.”
Because the most crucial NFL games before the Super Bowl are played this time of year, when the weather can be the worst, the elements must be considered, despite George Allen’s best psychological ploys.
One of the most memorable games in NFL history was the Ice Bowl, the NFL championship game between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, played in frostbite conditions in Green Bay on New Year’s Eve 1967.
Nearly four decades later, memories of that game linger in the form of two words–frozen tundra–and in the images of players seemingly frozen at the line of scrimmage, teeth chattering and icicles hanging from their helmets.
If he had been there, George Allen would have merely shrugged and called it “Packer weather.”
