Bart Starr led powerhouse Packers in 1960s
Quarterbacking great dead at the age of 85 in Birmingham, Ala.
Bart Starr was an ordinary quarterback until teaming with Vince Lombardi and serving as the catalyst for the powerhouse Green Bay Packers teams that ruled the 1960s and ushered in the National Football League as America’s most popular sport.
The quarterback’s graceful throws helped turn a run-heavy league into a passing spectacle, yet it’s a run for which he’s most famous: the sneak that won the famed “Ice Bowl” in 1967.
Starr died Sunday at age 85 in Birmingham, Ala., the Packers said. He had been in failing health since suffering two strokes and a heart attack in 2014.
Starr is the third of Lombardi’s dozen Hall of Famers to die in the past eight months. Fullback Jim Taylor died in October and offensive tackle Forrest Gregg died last month.
“A champion on and off the field, Bart epitomized class and was beloved by generations of Packers fans,” Packers president Mark Murphy said in a statement. “A clutch player who led his team to five NFL titles, Bart could still fill Lambeau Field with electricity decades later during his many visits.”
The Packers selected Starr out of the University of Alabama with the 200th pick in the 1956 draft. He led Green Bay to six division titles, five NFL championships and wins in the first two Super Bowls.
Until Brett Favre came along, Starr was known as the best Packer ever. The team retired Starr’s No. 15 jersey in 1973, making him just the third player to receive that honour. Four years later, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
After losing the 1960 NFL title game in his first playoff, the Packers never lost another playoff game under Starr, going 9-0, including wins over the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders in the first two Super Bowls.
Starr’s college career wasn’t very noteworthy and it wasn’t until Lombardi’s arrival in Green Bay in 1959 that Starr, living by his motto “desire and dedication are everything,” began to blossom. Lombardi liked Starr’s mechanics, his arm strength and especially his decision-making abilities. Under Lombardi’s nurturing, Starr became one of the league’s top quarterbacks.
“If you work harder than somebody else, chances are you’ll beat him though he has more talent than you,” Starr once said.
The gentlemanly quarterback’s status as a Packers icon was tested by his struggles as the team’s head coach. In nine seasons from 1975 to ‘83, he won just 41 per cent of his games, going 53-77-3, including 1-1 in the playoffs, part of three decades of futility that followed the glory years.
After football, Starr became a successful businessperson in Birmingham not far from his hometown of Montgomery, where he was born Jan. 9, 1934.
Starr was a four-time Pro Bowl selection and two-time All-Pro. He won NFL titles in 1961, ’62, ’65, ’67 and ’68. He was the ’66 NFL MVP and was named to the ’60s All-Decade team. He also was named MVP of the first two Super Bowls. When Starr retired following the ’71 season, his career completion rate of 57.4 per cent was tops in the run-heavy NFL, and his passer rating of
80.5 was second-best ever, behind only Otto Graham.
But the play he was most famous for was a run. In the NFL championship on Dec. 31, 1967, Starr knifed into the end zone behind guard Jerry Kramer and centre Ken Bowman with 16 seconds left to lift the Packers over the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 in what became known as the “Ice Bowl.”
The Packers had spent $80,000 for a heating coil system that was to have kept the field soft and warm, and forecasters said not to worry because the approaching cold front wouldn’t arrive until after the game.
“It was 20 degrees the day before,” the late Tom Landry once recalled. “It was great. Vince and I were together that night and we talked about how good the conditions were and what a great game it would be.”
They were half-right. When the grounds crew rolled up the tarpaulin, a layer of condensation had formed underneath and, with 40 m.p.h. wind, the field promptly froze like an ice rink.
With a temperature of minus-14 and a wind chill of minus-49, it was the coldest NFL game ever recorded. The wind chill had dipped another 20 degrees by the time the Packers got the ball at their 32, trailing 17-14 with five minutes left.
With one last chance for an aging dynasty to win a fifth NFL title in seven seasons, Starr took the field completing all five of his passes and directing one of the most memorable drives in NFL history.
“We all have a capacity to focus and to concentrate to a unique degree when we’re called upon to do it,” Starr said on the 30th anniversary of that game. “That’s exactly what I did that day. And I think the same was true of the Cowboys. Let’s face it, they obviously were not accustomed to something like that; and yet they were the team which had surged and come back in the second half and were in a position to win it.”
With 1:11 remaining, tackle Bob Skoronski opened a hole and Mercein charged through the middle for 8 yards to the Dallas 3.
Halfback Donny Anderson slipped twice on hand-offs, so Starr called timeout, went to the sideline and suggested a sneak because of the poor traction.
The play worked perfectly, a flawless finish to that coldest of games so frozen in time.
Mercein and his teammates thought he was going to get the hand-off on the play. Nobody knew but Starr and Lombardi that it was to be a quarterback sneak.
Two weeks later in sunny Miami, the Packers defeated the AFL champion Raiders 33-14 in Lombardi’s final game as head coach of the Packers.
In 1965, Starr and his wife, Cherry, helped co-found Rawhide Boys Ranch in New London, Wisconsin, a facility designed to help at-risk and troubled boys throughout the state.
The couple dealt with tragedy in 1988 when their son Brett died at 24 due to complications from cocaine addiction. They also had another son, Bart Jr.
Starr has an NFL award named after him, given annually to a player of outstanding character.