#13 - Bart Starr
The reason Green Bay is still a franchise is because Brett Favre resurrected the team along with Mike Holmgren in the early-90's. He rescued the franchise from 20 years of nothingness. The reason the Packers deserved being rescued was because of Bart Starr building that team, along with Vince Lombardi. Bart Starr, the starting QB for the first two Super Bowl champions, the player with the pristine 9-1 record in the playoffs, the man who helped build Green Bay as America's greatest footballing outpost, was easily one of the best QBs in the history of the game even when you strip away legend, mystique and that Lambeau aura.
Bart Starr's career didn't start off with many indications of the legend he would become. It is easy to delineate Starr's career between his struggling pre-Lombardi days (1956-1958), with the post, but while Vince Lombardi's placement in Green Bay led the dynasty, let's not overstate how good Starr was.
Bart Starr's statistical record is stunning for a 1960's QB. Starr's real peak was from 1961-970, a period in which 83-35-4, with a 58.6% completion percentage, an 8.1 y/a, and a passer rating of 86.3 for that 10-year stretch. Add to that his individual great seasons during the period, with passer ratings of 97.1 in 1964, 105.0 in 1966, and 104.3 in 1968. These are numbers completely out of what with what else was going on in the league that that time. He didn't luck into these numbers, throwing a decent amount of passes for QBs of that time - and again playing the winter heaven of Green Bay. Bart Starr was a statistical marvel - one that extended upwards in the postseason.
We often fall on two disparate sides of the road when qualifying the value a playoff win-loss record brings. One side prays daily to that altar, holding up parables like Brady's 22-9 record, or Manning's 9 one-and-done's. The other looks beyond those simple stats and tries to uncover what led to those results, what drove the ultimate score - and yes those people (me included), come to the conclusion that despite the win-loss record Brady and Manning played fairly similarly in the playoffs. Where those two sides can come to a similar conclusion is in the case of Bart Starr, a calming player that can bridge both sides of that battle.
Bart Starr famously went 9-1 in the playoffs, losing his first game - a game he oddly played reasonably well in. And then he never lost a playoff game again, winning his last nine, picking up the last three NFL Championships and then the first two Super Bowls, giving him a nice ring for each finger. Moving past the hilarious coincidence that he played far better in that loss than his first two wins, Bart Starr ended his career with a 104.8 passer rating in the playoffs. In those 10 games, he completed 61.0% of his passes, with an 8.2 y/a, and 15 TDs to 3 INTs. Bart Starr was magic in the playoffs by all measures, whether you want to stop at the Wins and Losses or actually look deeper into how he actually played.
Bart Starr does often get forgotten, lost between the supernova that was Vince Lombardi's legacy on the game (the Super Bowl trophy is, after all, named for him), and contemporaries whose legacies shine slightly brighter (Unitas). Bart Starr played a large part in creating a footballing factory and legacy in Green Bay, a man whose brilliance created a 20-year crater in Wisconsin only filled by a man named Brett. Before we discuss Rodgers taking over Favre's role as the best QB to play in Green Bay, we must first realize he has still some ways to go to pass Starr for the 2nd position.
Along with Unitas and Tarkenton (who are both ahead of him on my list), Bart Starr created a type of QB-ing as well that bridged the gap between the archaic era of the 50's and the modern NFL. For some reason, things went slightly backwards in the 70's, but we can draw the throughline between Otto Graham and Sammy Baugh to Dan Marino and Joe Montana with Unitas and Starr the point in the middle. The fact he happened to also bridge the gap between the regional, small NFL era where the winning team won the simply titled NFL Championship, to the Super Bowl era where the league would grow into the outsized magnet it is now, places Starr at the crux of the league's development. Luckily for us all, he was good enough to merit that spot.
