O.J. Simpson captivated the American public by leading the LAPD in an hour-long police chase around Los Angeles Nineteen years ago

Donald Driver will be ready to go if the Green Bay Packers call and say they needed his help.

Other NFL teams, however, needn't bother.

Green Bay's all-time leading receiver announced his retirement Jan. 31 after 14 years in the NFL - all with the Packers. Driver says he still loves the game, but he promised Packers fans he'd never play for another team.

Driver was back in northeastern Wisconsin over the weekend. On Saturday, a street in downtown Green Bay was renamed ``Donald Driver Way'' and a statue in his likeness was unveiled. On Sunday, he held his annual charity softball game in Appleton, an event he plans to continue in retirement.

Nineteen years ago, on June 17, 1994, O.J. Simpson captivated the American public by leading the LAPD in an hour-long police chase around Los Angeles.

Simpson had been charged with the double-murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but police gave Simpson the chance to turn himself in.

After failing to meet the LAPD's timeline, the police issued an all-points bulletin. Recognizing he was probably trying to flee after a tip to police from a motorist, law enforcement began tracing his cell phone and eventually tracked him down at 6:45 p.m. Former football player Al Cowlings was driving the white Ford Bronco while he told police that Simpson was in the backseat threatening to kill himself.

A band of police tailed Cowlings and Simpson back to Simpson's home in Brentwood around 8:00 p.m. where Simpson would eventually surrender.

All three major networks abandoned what they were airing to follow the pursuit, including NBC, which cut away from Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Rockets and Knicks. The big winner of the chase was Domino's Pizza, which reported the chain sold a record number of pizzas during the chase. The loser? Ford, for the worst product placement the car company could probably ever hope for.

After a lengthy trial, Simpson was acquitted of the double-murder charges that prompted this highly-watched chase.

In 2007, Simpson would later find himself in trouble again. He was arrested and later convicted on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping for a Las Vegas hotel-room raid when he and several other men attempted to retrieve memorabilia Simpson claimed had been stolen from him.

Simpson, now 65, is currently serving 9 to 33 years in a Nevada prison but has appealed for a new trial.

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Lombardi is happy to be a Washington Redskin

Were he still alive today, former Redskins head coach Vince Lombardi would have turned 100 years old this week. Here's a look back at his enduring impact on Washington football.

When the Redskins traded three premium draft picks for the rights to draft Robert Griffin III, it wasn't the first time that Redskins' ownership made an offseason offer that couldn't be refused.

Following the 1968 season, Packers' general manager Vince Lombardi felt the itch to return to the sideline and found immediate interest from more than a half dozen professional and college teams.

Coming off of yet another losing season, Redskins' owner and president Edward Bennett Williams reportedly offered the farm: an executive vice president title, full say over personnel and football decisions, a $110,000 and a 5 percent stake in ownership.

The Green Bay Packers subsequently released him from his contract, finalizing the deal.

At his introductory press conference, Lombardi was all smiles, telling the media: "I'm very happy to be here--believe me--most happy to be a Washington Redskin."

The Redskins had not enjoyed a winning season since 1955 and needed a spark from the man who won 73 percent of his games as head coach of the Green Bay Packers.

Asked what year he would like to break the streak of losing, Lombardi replied, "I'd like to win in the first year, if possible."

Not only did Lombardi make the possible, delivering a 7-5-2 season in 1969, butdid so in his only one season at the helm of the Redskins.

In the summer before the 1970 season, Lombardi checked into Georgetown University Hospital where his long-term digestive problems were diagnosed as terminal colorectal cancer.

He passed away shortly before the start of the 1970 season, leaving behind a a devastated group of players, but one that would go on to find greatness thanks to his short time in Washington.

An excerpt from Jim Gehman's "Then Gibbs Said to Riggins...," talking to Redskins' running back Larry Brown, who Lombardi first discovered was deaf in one ear:

"I would probably give the credit [for being the team’s first 1,000-yard rusher in 1970] to Vince Lombardi in this respect; I worked very hard that first year [1969] to win his confidence and the right to start at the running back position.

“The first game in 1969 [at New Orleans], I did not start the first half. He started the veterans. It was probably the best thing to do, to give the veterans a shot to keep their positions. But they didn’t do extremely well, so he yanked them out and put myself and [fullback] Charley Harraway in.

“My first running play, I didn’t particularly carry out that assignment very well. And then with some increasing pressure from him on the sideline, I began to develop some sort of rhythm in the way I was running. He had this rule that you stay with the [assigned blocking] hole. I’m saying to myself, ‘This guy’s crazy! There is no hole!’ So I had to find holes. He said, ‘Fine, you have broken a rule. But every time you deviate from the rule, you’d better not come up with losing yardage.’

"I guess because of the fear that I had being confronted by him; I was even more determined to find what you’d call ‘daylight’ if it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. That meant you had to think quicker and you had to move quicker. That helped me develop a kind of rhythm that I needed to be a good running back in the National Football League."

Redskins' Hall of Fame linebacker Chris Hanburger also played under Vince Lombardi in Washington, and described him this way (via Gehman):

"[Lombardi] was a lot more than a coach. He taught you a lot about life as well as football. And of course, he brought with him quite a history. You were really in awe of him in everything that he did and said.

"He was just a wonderful person to be around despite all the supposedly bad things that you heard about him, how he could be and so on. But I found him to be a remarkable human being."

Sonny Jurgensen, a fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer and Redskins quarterback during Lombardi's tenure, described him as the best he ever encountered on the sideline (via Gehman):

“Of the nine different head coaches that I had, [Lombardi] was head and shoulders above everybody else. No comparison. It was easy to see why Green Bay was so successful.

"Of all the coaches I played for, he simplified the game instead of trying to complicate it. If I could have played my career with him, it would have made the game a lot of fun."

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Packers looking to help Williams return to 2010 playmaking form

In 2010, Tramon Williams blossomed into one of the NFL’s premier cornerbacks.

He had a career year with nine interceptions (regular season and playoffs), including his game-turning 70-yard return for a touchdown in the playoffs at Atlanta that was one of the most spectacular plays of the Green Bay Packers’ Super Bowl title season. The Packers rewarded him in November of that year with a five-year contract that averages $7.6 million a season.

Since then, though, Williams has sustained a nerve injury in his shoulder that diminished him in 2011 and then had a better season last year that still wasn’t up to the 2010 standards and was marred by tackling issues in the run game.

Now the Packers are looking to help the 30-year-old return to his 2010 playmaking form by playing to his strengths as a cover man, which means lining him up several yards off the line of scrimmage more than last year, when the Packers played primarily bump-and-run coverage.

“Did he play as good (last year) as he did in 2010? No,” cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt said. “I’m going to take some of that (responsibility,) for the fact that we asked those guys (last) year for as much as possible to get up and press, which he can press.

“(But) he gets the ball better when he’s off. He makes more impactful plays from playing off. Sam (Shields) makes more impactful plays being pressed. So (Williams) played better because he can see the ball and go get it. Well if you go back to 2010, most of his impact plays came from being off.”

Whitt’s comment last week was part of an impassioned five-minute endorsement of Williams’ performance last season, a year removed from the shoulder injury. Williams was healthier and better than in ’11 but had only OK numbers (two interceptions and 24 passes defended, which was second on the team) and a couple of glaringly bad-looking plays as a tackler. Most notably there was a long screen pass against the New York Giants and a run by Minnesota halfback Adrian Peterson on which Williams appeared passive.
Butt Whitt said that Williams’ tackling last season was significantly improved from 2011 – had Williams for 16 missed tackles in ’11 and six last year. Cornerback probably is the Packers’ deepest position for quality talent with Shields, Casey Hayward and Davon House potential starters, and after last season Whitt said that all the starting jobs were open this year. But it’s hard to see Williams being anything but a full-time player again this season.

“When (Williams) is allowed to do what he does best, he’s pretty good, and that’s just what it is,” Whitt said. “And so I know some people are going to say, ‘(Whitt) is protecting his player.’ No, that’s just what it is because after the season I went back and watched every play, over 1,200 plays. The guy can play, and he played physical, too. Let me clear that up too.

“You go back and watch the games. Now, did he miss the tackle on (Peterson) from Minnesota? Yeah, but he went up there and hit it. We’re going to miss some tackles. We’re not going to be 100 percent on (running) backs. I’m not going to get into every single play, but he’s going to play fine this year.”

Williams remains one of the most respected and liked players in the Packers’ locker room, as evidenced when his teammates late last year voted him the club’s Ed Block Courage Award winner.

The Ed Block foundation website defines the award as recognition of the player who best exemplifies each team’s “commitments to the principles of sportsmanship and courage.” It’s usually given to a player who that season overcame some kind of adversity, but Williams was already a year removed from his shoulder injury, so that isn’t why he won for the Packers. Several players interviewed said they voted for Williams based on his positive influence in the locker room and the work of his charitable foundation in Green Bay and Houston, his offseason home.

“(The award was for) something ‘T’ just gives off to the team,” safety Jerron McMillian said.

Williams, in the meantime, said the nerve in his right shoulder has regenerated about as much as it’s going to now that he’s 1? years removed from the injury. Last summer doctors measured the electrical signals in his shoulders, and the signal in his right (injured) shoulder still was noticeably weaker than the left. But the difference in the strength in each arm while weightlifting wasn’t as great and has diminished from last year.

“I can be the guy in 2010, I can be a guy past that,” Williams said. “Every year doesn’t go the same. I won’t blame it on the shoulder. I was able to go out there and play. I had to do what I had to do. It’s not really an issue to me.

“You can watch and see obviously 2010 was a special year for everybody, we won the Super Bowl. At the same time, I played solid last year, the only thing people say is I only had two interceptions. I think I played really solid last year, did a lot of things good, just didn’t come up with the statistics.”