NFL Hall of Famer Hornung dies at 84
Paul Hornung was a Vince Lombardi favorite and maybe the most important player on the famed coach’s early championship teams with the Green Bay Packers.
Lombardi loved Hornung for his versatile skill set and clutch play as the featured left halfback in the Packers’ offense, as well as for his fun-loving off-field persona that helped get Hornung the nickname “Golden Boy.”
Hornung, who also won the 1956 Heisman Trophy, died Friday in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, at age 84 after a long battle with dementia, the Louisville Sports Commission announced.
Though Hornung never put up big rushing numbers in the NFL — his single-season high for rushing was only 681 yards — he filled the key position in Lombardi’s offense as a runner in the famed Lombardi sweep and option passer.
He was a big back (6-feet-2 and 215 pounds) with a nose for the goal line and for much of his career also was the Packers’ kicker.
His 176 points in the 12-game 1960 season was an NFL record that stood until 2006, 29 years after the league had moved to a 16-game schedule.
He was voted the NFL’s most valuable player that season.
Hornung also was voted a member of the NFL’s all-decade team of the 1960s and into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 after a nine-year career that ended in 1966. But perhaps the greatest tribute to him came from Lombardi himself in his two-volume book, “Vince Lombardi on Football,” which was published in 1973.
“Paul may have been the best all-around back ever to play football,” Lombardi wrote.
Hornung joined the Packers in 1957 as a so-called “bonus choice,” which was the first overall pick of the draft that rotated among the 12 teams in the league from 1947 to ’58.
His career floundered for two years until Lombardi was hired as Packers coach in1959 and built his offense around the same position that had made Frank Gifford a star when Lombardi was offensive coordinator with the New York Giants.
Hornung immediately thrived and would be a key player on offense from 1960-65, during which time the Packers won three NFL championship games and played in a fourth.
He won three NFL scoring titles in that time. He also was suspended by the NFL for one season, 1963, after admitting to gambling on NFL games.