Pro Football 101: Bart Starr ranks No. 50 on all-time list

By Joe Posnanski
Special to FOX Sports

Editor's Note: Throughout 2021 and 2022, Joe Posnanski is ranking the 101 best players in pro football history, in collaboration with FOX Sports. Posnanski will publish a detailed look at all 101 players on Substack. The countdown continues today with player No. 50, Bart Starr.

The thing that gets you about Bart Starr is the way people talk about him. 

The statistics of quarterbacks in the 1960s will never look impressive to us — not after Marino and Fouts and Montana and Young and Manning and Brees and Mahomes — but when I mention that statistical gap to Starr’s Green Bay Packers teammate and friend, Bill Curry, he uncharacteristically blanches.

"How’s five world championships in seven seasons?" he asks with just a little edge in his voice. "How’s that for a statistic?"

They are protective of Starr — his teammates, his contemporaries, his fans — and I think this is because they worry that his brilliance, his mastery, his uniqueness will get lost in the statistical whirlwind. Starr never threw for even 2,500 yards in a season. He never came close to 20 touchdown passes in a season. He famously played for a coach whose entire essence was built around a running play called the Packer Sweep.

"What we’re trying to get is a seal here and a seal here, and we’re trying to run the play in the alley," Vince Lombardi famously said as he put chalk to chalkboard. One of the pivotal elements of his breakdown was that there was no place in it for the quarterback. Starr did none of the running and none of the sealing.

As such, it’s easy to drop Starr into the "game manager" category and write off his successes as a product of the work of other, more talented football players.

But nobody, not even Tom Brady, won the way Bart Starr won in the 1960s. He became a full-time starter in 1961 after years of trying to prove himself. The Packers won the championship in ’61 and again in ’62 and again in ’65 and again in ’66 and again in ’67. He played in 10 postseason games, and the Packers won nine of them. In that time, he was the league’s most accurate passer, the one least likely to throw an interception, the one most likely to make the big play when it was absolutely needed.

Perhaps most of all, Starr was the one and only guy who could push back against Vince Lombardi’s outsized rage.

"I told him, ‘I can take all of the chewing out you can give out,’" Starr would say. "I said, ‘I know your personality. That doesn’t bother me.’"

But, Starr added, he could not be the leader — could not take this team where it could go — if his teammates saw Lombardi belittling and denigrating him. He offered a deal: If Lombardi felt the need to chew him out, that was fine, but it had to be in the office, behind closed doors, where no one else would know.

"You know," Starr said, "that same office where you apologize to me when you know you are wrong."

Lombardi was not much for listening. But he listened. And he nodded.

And Vince Lombardi never again criticized Bart Starr in public.

*** *** ***

Bart Starr grew up believing that a man should never show his emotions. This was what he learned from his father, Ben, an Air Force sergeant whom Bart called "the toughest man I’ve ever known in my life." After tragedy struck the family — Bart was 12 when his brother died of tetanus after stepping on a dog bone — Bart went even deeper into himself. He would spend hours alone in his room working over his thoughts.

He tried to quit football right at the start. He tried out for quarterback at Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama, was promptly cut from the varsity and announced that he was finished with the game. But when Ben told him his other option was to come home and weed the family garden, Bart gave football another shot.*

* Ed Jones, a longtime coach in Montgomery, told another story. He said that Ben Starr came home one day to find Bart on the couch.

"Why aren’t you at football practice?" Ben asked.

"I quit," Bart said. "I’m better than the other quarterbacks, and I’m not gonna sit on the bench."

"Get in the car," Ben said immediately, and he drove his son back to practice and dragged him to see the coach.

"Coach," Ben said, "Bart seems to have made a mistake. He wants to talk with you about it."

And that was the end of that.

Bart Starr made his first start as a 140-pound junior when the team’s starting quarterback went down with an injury against state powerhouse Tuscaloosa. According to "America’s Quarterback" by Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr was Bart Starr right away. With the players panicking at the loss of their quarterback, and a sense of doom in the air, and everybody chirping advice on what they should do next, Starr stepped into the huddle and said this: "Now, all you guys stop that jabbering. I’m the guy in charge in the huddle. I’ll call the plays. When I want your advice, I’ll ask."

Yes, Bart Starr from the very start.

He led the team to an undefeated season, and the next year, 1951, he was one of the most highly recruited players in the South.

Not that anyone doubted where he would go to school: He was destined to play for Bear Bryant at the University of Kentucky. It was obvious. Starr's high school coach, Bill Moseley, had coached for Bryant. Moseley’s brother played center for Bryant at Kentucky. And Kentucky’s star quarterback, Babe Parilli, who would twice finish top-five in the Heisman Trophy balloting, was brought in to tutor Bart on the finer points of football.

Yes, Bart Starr was going to play for Bear Bryant.

Except … he didn’t. Not exactly. He did sign with Kentucky, but then his girlfriend, Cherry Morton — the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen — decided to go to Auburn, and Starr figured that Lexington, Kentucky, was just a little bit too far away from Auburn, Alabama.

"I was afraid I would lose her," he said.

So he went to play for Alabama instead. 

"Best audible I ever called," Starr would say. He and Cherry were married for more than 60 years. (Bryant would, of course, end up at Alabama himself, but not until 1958, three years after Starr was gone.)

But it didn’t turn out so well for Starr’s football career. After he suffered an injury as a junior, he hardly played his senior year. He wanted to show pro scouts what he could do in the Blue-Gray Football Classic, but that didn’t work out, either. His coach in the game was, yes, Bear Bryant, who put Starr on the bench and, for the most part, kept him there.

The Packers took him in the 17th round — the 200th pick — of the 1956 NFL Draft. He spent the summer throwing footballs through a tire hanging from a tree, which is about as cliché as a football story gets, but he did develop pinpoint accuracy. He was a backup to Tobin Rote as a rookie, and he was the main starter (sharing some time with his one-time tutor, Babe Parilli) in 1957 and ’58.

Then that guy Vince Lombardi came to Green Bay.

*** *** ***

Bill Curry has a million Bart Starr stories, but his favorite probably comes from the classic 1966 NFL Championship Game between the Cowboys and Packers. This was not the "Ice Bowl" — that was the next year. This game was in Dallas, and it was to determine which team would be the first to represent the NFL in the Super Bowl. Midway through the third quarter, the Cowboys led 21-20.

Starr led the Packers down the field and finished off the drive by hitting Boyd Dowler for a 16-yard touchdown, and the Packers never trailed again.

But it wasn’t the drive or the pass that Curry remembers most. No, it’s what happened after the pass. Dowler ran into the end zone when suddenly, Cowboys safety Mike Gaechter undercut him and flipped the receiver on his head. It was the cheapest of cheap shots — Dowler was 5 or 6 yards into the end zone when the hit happened — and the Packers were furious.

No one was more furious than Packers running back Jim Taylor, who was 220 pounds of rage and rock. He decided it was time to go after Mike Gaechter.

"We could not afford to lose Jimmy Taylor," Curry says. "But we all could see Jimmy getting ready to get himself thrown out of the game."

That's when Bart Starr stepped in. He grabbed Taylor and ran him all the way to the sideline, staying in front of him the entire time. It was the smallest thing, barely noticeable to anyone in the stands, but all the Packers knew it. That was Starr. He was going to make sure the Packers won the game.

*** *** ***

Now, my favorite Bart Starr story comes from a year later, the "Ice Bowl," and the key moment. The Packers had been entirely shut down in the second half; Dallas’ "Doomsday Defense" had sacked Starr eight times. The field, Starr would later say, was as hard as ice on concrete. There was no way to get any traction.

Before the final drive, the Packers’ fierce linebacker, Ray Nitschke, grabbed Starr by the shoulder pads, looked him directly in the eyes and said, "Don’t let me down."

With 4:54 left, the Packers were down a field goal. Starr slowly, tentatively, moved Green Bay downfield. It was even colder than the -13 degrees it had been at kickoff.

Here’s the drive:

First-and-10, Green Bay 32: Starr faked two handoffs, dropped back and threw a little dump-off pass to Donnie Anderson, who was pulled out of bounds after a gain of 6 yards.

Second-and-4, Green Bay 38: Sweep right to Chuck Mercein, who had carried the ball 14 times all season. He pulled away from a defender and picked up 7 for a first down. He also got out of bounds to stop the clock.

First-and-10, Green Bay 45: Starr dropped back — it’s so cool to watch old-time quarterbacks drop back not by turning their shoulders but by simply running backward — and connected with Dowler over the middle for 13 yards and a first down. Dowler was thrown to the ground, and his head bounced off the ice.

First-and-10, Dallas 42: Handoff to Anderson, who was almost swallowed whole by Dallas’ huge defensive end, Willie Townes. Earlier in the game, Townes had sacked Starr, causing a fumble that Cowboys lineman George Andrie returned for what was, at the time, the game-tying touchdown. Anderson lost 9 yards on this play. "We couldn’t block Townes all game long," Starr would later say.

Second-and-19, Green Bay 49: Starr dropped straight back again, looked downfield, couldn’t find anyone open and then flipped a short pass to Anderson, who stopped, let one defender slide by and then ran for 12 yards. "On that ice," Dallas’ Lee Roy Jordan would say, "we could barely stand up."

Third-and-7, Dallas 39: Starr dropped back, again couldn’t find anyone downfield and again settled for a short pass to Anderson, who made two defenders miss and ran to the Dallas 30 for a first down.

First-and-10, Dallas 30: With 1:35 remaining, Mercein told Starr that the Packers' linebackers were dropping straight back, and that he would likely be open in the left flat. He was right — Starr dropped back, saw Mercein open, and pitched a quick pass to him. Mercein caught it around the 30, turned upfield and saw the last thing he expected to see — open field. He ran and ran before stumbling out of bounds at the Dallas 11. Cowboys coach Tom Landry later said he should have called for a zone defense rather than man-to-man on the frozen field.

First-and-10, Dallas 11: Starr made the gutsy call: He handed off to Mercein up the middle. The success of the play relied on one of the greatest players in NFL history, Dallas defensive tackle Bob Lilly, following the pulling guard away from the hole. Lilly fell for the fake, and by the time he realized his mistake, he couldn’t do anything about it — the field was frozen over. Mercein ran all the way to the Dallas 3.

Second-and-2, Dallas 3: Anderson plunges forward for 2 yards and a first down.

First-and-goal, Dallas 1: Anderson for no gain.

Second-and-goal, Dallas 1: Anderson for no gain.

On both of those plays, Anderson slipped — on the first one, he slipped as he tried to push his way into the end zone, and on the second one, he slipped before he even got the handoff. That made it third-and-goal from the 1-yard line with 16 seconds remaining, and Starr called timeout for one of the most famous conferences in NFL history.

Lombardi called for the 31 Wedge, the Packers’ best short-yardage play, behind right guard Jerry Kramer. Starr said the running backs couldn’t get their footing to run the play, but if he took it himself, because he was already standing there with the ball, he could feel his way into the end zone.

"Then run it," Lombardi said. "And let’s get the hell out of here."

This is my favorite Starr story, the way he stood up in the middle of the most pressure-packed situation imaginable and said, "I’ll take it in." Because, see, here’s the part that has gotten a bit lost about Starr’s call in the "Ice Bowl": The Packers were out of timeouts. 

If Starr didn’t score, the Packers would have had to desperately race the kicking team onto the frozen field to try a game-tying field goal. But nobody, Vince Lombardi included, knew if they could do it in such a short time.

Starr was basically saying, "Bet on me, coach."

Starr, of course, did run it in. The Packers won. And after the game, an ebullient Lombardi took full credit for the gamble. "The whole world loves a gambler," he famously said, "but not when he loses."

He smiled then: "I didn’t figure all those people up there in the stands could take the cold for an overtime game. You can’t say I’m always without compassion."

Starr, meanwhile, never saw it as a gamble. He knew he was going to score. That’s what made him great. 

He knew he was going to score because not scoring was simply not an option.

Joe Posnanski is a New York Times bestselling author and has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations. His latest book, "The Baseball 100," came out last September.