Winning in the Trenches : A Lifetime of Football

Winning in the Trenches is a fascinating glimpse of a bygone era in professional football from one of the players who epitomized it. With candor, insight, and love for the game, Forrest Gregg takes the reader through an amazing career that began in 1956 with the Green Bay Packers and ended, 188 consecutive games later, with the Dallas Cowboys in 1971. Colorful stories of the Lombardi years show how the famed coach turned the dismal Packers into the most dominant team in the sport, despite playing in the toughest division in football. Later chapters chronicle Gregg's coaching career, including his four tumultuous years leading the Packers, and offer candid yet fair assessments of controversial owners Art Modell and Paul Brown. Gregg covers it all with the directness, honesty, and fairness that make him one of the most admired men ever to play the game.

Forrest Gregg epitomizes the old-school approach to football. During his Hall of Fame career he set an NFL record by playing in 188 consecutive games. His dedication to team success explains why Vince Lombardi called Gregg the "finest player I ever coached."

Winning in the Trenches presents Gregg's story, beginning in Birthright, Texas, where his impoverished family picked cotton. He used his athletic talent to earn a scholarship at Southern Methodist University, and then was drafted by the lowly Green Bay Packers, a team that would later dominate its era. Gregg played on the winning team in three Super Bowls. All told, he played on six NFL championship teams, a record he shares with two other players. After moving to the sidelines, he was selected Coach of the Year with the Cleveland Browns and then led the Cincinnati Bengals to an AFC Championship. He later returned to coach the Packers before going back to SMU, where he rebuilt the program after an NCAA "death penalty."

Gregg credits family, friends, teammates, and mentors for helping him along the way. Winning in the Trenches is a candid, powerful story of achieving the American dream through grit, humility, and determination.

Winning in the Trenches is a fascinating glimpse of a bygone era in professional football from one of the players who epitomized it. With candor, insight, and love for the game, Forrest Gregg takes the reader through a playing career that began in 1956 with the Green Bay Packers and ended, 188 consecutive games later, with the Dallas Cowboys in 1971. Colorful stories of the Lombardi years show how the famed coach turned the dismal Packers into the most dominant team in the sport, despite playing in the toughest division in football. Later chapters chronicle Greggs coaching career, including his four tumultuous years as the Packers' head coach, and offer candid yet fair assessments of controversial owners Art Modell and Paul Brown. Gregg covers it all with the directness, honesty, and fairness that make him one of the most admired men ever to play the game.