Fierce fullback led Packers to 4 titles
NFL’s most valuable player in ’62 had 5 straight 1,000-yard seasons
Jim Taylor, the ferocious Hall of Fame fullback who embodied the Packers’ unstoppable ground game during the Vince Lombardi era and helped the team win four NFL titles, including the first Super Bowl, died Saturday. He was 83.
He died unexpectedly at a hospital in his hometown of
Baton Rouge, La., the team said.
Taylor played on the great Packer teams and was the league’s MVP in 1962. He scored the first rushing touchdown in Super Bowl history.
“He was a gritty, classic player on the Lombardi teams and a key figure of those great championship runs,” Packers President Mark Murphy said of the player who left his mark on “multiple generations of Packers fans.”
Taylor spent 10 seasons in the NFL after being drafted in the second round out of LSU in 1958. He joined a backfield that featured Paul Hornung and began to thrive when Lombardi took over in 1959.
Lombardi devised the Packers “sweep,” which featured pulling guards Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston clearing the path for Taylor or Hornung running around the end. The 6-foot, 216-pound Taylor best fulfilled the play’s punishing effectiveness, a workhorse always charging forward, dragging would-be tacklers along.
“He taught me lots of character and virtues and principles,” Taylor said of Lombardi, with whom he occasionally feuded, in a 2001 interview with the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “He established a caliber of football that he felt like would be championship.”
In 1960, Taylor ran for 1,101 yards, topping Tony Canadeo’s franchise mark of 1,052 yards set in 1949. It was the first of Taylor’s five straight 1,000-yard seasons, and he led the Packers seven consecutive times in rushing.
In 1961, Taylor ran for 1,307 yards and scored an NFL-best 15 touchdowns, and the Packers rolled to a 37-0 victory over the Giants for Lombardi’s first title. The next year, Taylor ran for 1,474 yards and 19 TDs in 14 games and scored the only touchdown in the Packers’ 16-7 victory over the Giants.
He scored the Super Bowl’s first rushing touchdown after the 1966 season when the Packers beat the Chiefs 35-10 in the inaugural championship game between the NFL and AFL.
Taylor, also a member of the 1965 title team, finished his Packers career after the 1966 season as the franchise’s all-time leading rusher with 8,207 yards and scored 91 total touchdowns (81 rushing).
Taylor often was compared to his contemporary, Browns running back Jim Brown, but Lombardi had different views on the two.
“Jim Brown will give you that leg (to tackle) and then take it away from you,” Lombardi said. “Jim Taylor will give it to you and then ram it through your chest.”