The quarterback who led Green Bay’s dynasty

Vince Lombardi joined the Green Bay Packers in 1959 looking for a field general to match his obsessive will to win. The disastrously underperforming team’s young part-time quarterback, Bart Starr, showed potential. But Starr was “so polite,” coach Lombardi later recalled, “that I wondered if maybe he wasn’t too nice a boy to be the authoritarian leader your quarterback must be.” Lombardi gave the introspective player a shot, and Starr went on to become one of the most revered leaders in NFL history, guiding Green Bay to championships in 1961, ’62, and ’65 and the first two Super Bowls in ’66 and ’67. The decade’s most accurate passer and a onetime MVP, Starr was best known for his motivational gifts: A quarterback, he said, must inspire teammates “to go to the gates of hell with him.”

Bryan Bartlett Starr was born in Montgomery, Ala., said The Washington Post. His disciplinarian father—an Air Force master sergeant—favored his younger brother, Hilton, the “more aggressive player in family football games.” When the future Packer was 13, Hilton died of tetanus, and as a result his “father urged the scrawny Starr to match his brother’s intensity on the field.” He became a high school all-American, and as a sophomore at the University of Alabama he led the Crimson Tide to the Cotton Bowl. But Starr suffered a back injury during a vicious hazing ritual and rarely suited up again for Alabama. “Drafted in 1956 by the Packers with the 200th pick, Starr received little playing time before Lombardi took over the team.”

Standing 6-foot-1, with an “average-at-best throwing arm,” Starr wasn’t an imposing athlete, said USA Today. He was, however, tempered perfectly for Lombardi. Their sophisticated offense met its match in 1966 against the Dallas Cowboys, in a 36-below Lambeau Field classic remembered as the “Ice Bowl.” One game away from the Super Bowl and down 17-14, Starr led a nearly 70-yard drive to within inches of the end zone. With 16 seconds left after two failed handoffs, the quarterback plunged in himself for one of the most iconic touchdowns in football history. The Hall of Famer earned accolades long after his playing days ended, said The New York Times, helping create a care center in Wisconsin for at-risk teenagers. The Bart Starr Award is now given annually by the NFL to the player who shows “outstanding character and leadership on and off the field.”