DALLAS -- Bart Starr squinted his eyes and shook his head.
There was no Plan B, no safety net, no mulligan to take, he said, once Vince Lombardi chose a quarterback sneak on third and goal, with 16 second on the clock and no timeouts left in the famous 1967 Ice Bowl game.
Starr scored from just inside the 1 to beat the Dallas Cowboys, 21-17, and propel the Green Bay Packers into Super Bowl II.
"We prepared all week by putting in the 'wedge play' for short yardage, and it had gained two yards minimum whenever we tried it in the middle of the field . . . so we knew the play would work," Starr said during a brief media stopover Thursday.
The Hall of Famer was here to promote the annual NFL-sanctioned Super Bowl Breakfast to be held Feb. 5 at the Gaylord Texan, at which time the winner of the 2011 Bart Starr Award for off-field contributions will be announced. Ex-Cowboys safety Darren Woodson won it in 2001.
Starr, now 76, is ready to help the North Texas cause this time.
The Tom Landry Cowboys missed playing in Super Bowls I and II by a total of 11 points in back-to-back championship losses to Green Bay. The Packers won the 1966 game at the Cotton Bowl, 34-27.
"We were fortunate to beat 'em both times," Starr recalled. "But the (QB sneak) in the Ice Bowl was coach Lombardi's call. Our backs kept slipping and sliding, so I called timeout and asked our center (Ken Bowman) and right guard (Jerry Kramer) if they could get their double-team block on Jethro Pugh one more time, and they said they could.
"So, I went to the sideline and told coach Lombardi, 'There's nothing wrong with the play. I'm standing upright. I can shuffle my feet and lunge in,' to which coach Lombardi said, 'Then run it and let's get the hell out of here.'."
It was roughly 20 degrees below zero and felt like minus-48 with the wind chill.
Was Starr nervous, uptight, hypothermic? None of the above.
"I'm laughing. I'm actually chuckling to myself as I go back to the huddle," Starr recalled. "That was so typical of what coach Lombardi would say."
The toughness of the Cowboys' defense was the reason the "wedge play" was installed by Lombardi in the first place.
"They (the Cowboys) charged so low and so hard that you could hardly block 'em," Starr said. "You'd just kind of fall on 'em, because they were so low that's about all you could do. But the one player (Pugh) couldn't get quite as low, and we felt we could get underneath him."
By then, Lambeau Field had morphed into a skating rink.
With plenty of help from the elements -- even Starr admitted that the scoreboard at that end of the field created an icy shadow -- the Packers prevailed.
Starr and his wife, Cherry, flew back to their home in suburban Birmingham, Ala., after a series of interviews. He was asked about the Ice Bowl in every one. That was fine with Bart.
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