Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Nearly 20 years before "The Drive," he delivered "The Drive"--In brutally cold weather, to boot.

When we went to the PFRA Meeting to Green Bay in 2016, Zeke Bratkowski asked us to pray for Bart Starr's health, I was very touched by that.

Bart was certainly a better athlete than he was given credit for. Otherwise the Packers wouldn't have hung on to him in the first place. Look how many future AFLers struggled to get a snap in the NFL of the late 1950s. Unitas was cut. Bart must have been showing something.

A wild card in Bart's story is Randy Duncan. Randy Duncan was the first overall pick in the 1959 NFL draft by the Packers. A QB out of Iowa. Duncan was drafted several months before Lombardi was hired. Jack Vainisi did the drafting for the Pack. Meanwhile, Scooter was fired and Duncan's coach, Forest Evasheski, turned down the Packer job. Lombardi wanted to sign Duncan. Duncan wanted to go to law school while he played pro ball. Apparently Green Bay was not adequate in that regard. Duncan wound up signing with the BC Lions of the CFL. He started one year there and split time the second. Duncan was not particularly mobile, which was more of a disadvantage in the game up North. Then he backed up Len Dawson for a year with the Texans, then quit and became a lawyer. Duncan later said that he had a happy life and career as a lawyer, but regretted not signing with the Packers.

Maybe Duncan could have played well in Green Bay, maybe not. Certainly the Packers would not have traded for Lamar McHan had Duncan been around. Maybe they keep Babe Parilli around instead of Pineapple Joe Francis because they want another veteran with the rookie Duncan. Duncan was certainly going to be given playing time at some point, it was going to be different than with McHan. We'll never know.

Jay Z wrote:Bart was certainly a better athlete than he was given credit for. Otherwise the Packers wouldn't have hung on to him in the first place. Look how many future AFLers struggled to get a snap in the NFL of the late 1950s. Unitas was cut. Bart must have been showing something.

An odd tidbit that illustrates Starr's athleticism is that he intercepted 3 passes in Alabama's loss to Rice in the 1954 Cotton Bowl. They showed footage of this in Starr's GSL segment, and one of the INTs Starr made was spectacular. GSL host Paul Hornung says to Starr that "you made the all-time Cotton Bowl team on defense", and Starr replies with "Yeah...because we were on defense a lot that day".

That Cotton Bowl game had Tommy Lewis come off the bench to tackle Rice's Dickie Moegle which became a famous/infamous play. A weird thing about that play is the officials awarded Rice a TD...since the original LOS was Rice's 5-yard line, it was a 95-yard TD play...and all of the yardage on this play was added to Moegle's rushing total (and not some of it being counted as penalty yardage). So Moegle's statline ended up being 265 yards on only 11 carries. My memory isn't the best, but I recall Moegle's 265 rushing yards being the highest total in any bowl game and that record stood for like 35 years.

Jay Z wrote:Bart was certainly a better athlete than he was given credit for. Otherwise the Packers wouldn't have hung on to him in the first place. Look how many future AFLers struggled to get a snap in the NFL of the late 1950s. Unitas was cut. Bart must have been showing something.

A wild card in Bart's story is Randy Duncan. Randy Duncan was the first overall pick in the 1959 NFL draft by the Packers. A QB out of Iowa. Duncan was drafted several months before Lombardi was hired. Jack Vainisi did the drafting for the Pack. Meanwhile, Scooter was fired and Duncan's coach, Forest Evasheski, turned down the Packer job. Lombardi wanted to sign Duncan. Duncan wanted to go to law school while he played pro ball. Apparently Green Bay was not adequate in that regard. Duncan wound up signing with the BC Lions of the CFL. He started one year there and split time the second. Duncan was not particularly mobile, which was more of a disadvantage in the game up North. Then he backed up Len Dawson for a year with the Texans, then quit and became a lawyer. Duncan later said that he had a happy life and career as a lawyer, but regretted not signing with the Packers.

Maybe Duncan could have played well in Green Bay, maybe not. Certainly the Packers would not have traded for Lamar McHan had Duncan been around. Maybe they keep Babe Parilli around instead of Pineapple Joe Francis because they want another veteran with the rookie Duncan. Duncan was certainly going to be given playing time at some point, it was going to be different than with McHan. We'll never know.

You have to wonder about Duncans commitment to football if he has law school on his mind from the getgo. I think Lombardi would've wanted full and complete dedication to the Packers instead of some guy already preparing for his post football career

sheajets wrote:
You have to wonder about Duncans commitment to football if he has law school on his mind from the getgo. I think Lombardi would've wanted full and complete dedication to the Packers instead of some guy already preparing for his post football career

Perhaps. But this was in an era when players typically often held jobs in the off-season to make ends meet.

And later in Lombardi's tenure, Willie Davis began and completed his graduate degree in the off-season from the University of Chicago.

John Maxymuk's blog has a nice write up about Starr, posted this morning:

https://packerspastperfect.wordpress.co ... arr-r-i-p/

sheajets wrote:You have to wonder about Duncans commitment to football if he has law school on his mind from the getgo. I think Lombardi would've wanted full and complete dedication to the Packers instead of some guy already preparing for his post football career

Despite the tough image, I always read Lombardi as "Let's win and get the hell out of here" type coach. If he thought it would work, he did not let his ego get in the way. Other coaches could run tougher camps, but they didn't have Lombardi's nuance. If Duncan would help the team and Lombardi could make it work, he would make it work. Same with tolerating Hornung and McGee's antics. Or paying Anderson and Grabowski. It was his genius that he could be flexible that way while maintaining authority and control of the team.

Every great coach has the ability to get the best out of each individual player by understanding exactly how to motivate them. Some players need to be ridden hard and some have to be ridden gently. Some need a pat on the back when things aren’t going well and some need a kick in the ass. The successful coaches know what buttons to push.

So how many of the stars of those '60's Packers teams are still alive. Crazy to think that it has been over 50 years now since that group won the last Super Bowl. The very youngest of them all would be in their early to mid 70's by now.

lastcat3 wrote:So how many of the stars of those '60's Packers teams are still alive. Crazy to think that it has been over 50 years now since that group won the last Super Bowl. The very youngest of them all would be in their early to mid 70's by now.

Hornung, Jerry Kramer, Willie Davis, Dave Robinson, Dowler, Adderly, Dale, Mercein, Willie Wood, Doug Hart, Bob Long, Tom Moore, Fleming, Bratkowski were the ones off the top of my head who I think won at least two titles and are still alive, but there are surely more.