Hall of Famer Bart Starr displayed greatness when it really mattered

In all major team sports, there’s difficulty comparing greats over distant eras. That’s especially true in football, where wild changes have resulted because of both strategic innovation and the necessity to make the game less violent.

Bart Starr, who died over the weekend, was one the biggest stars in the history of the NFL, and one of the figures who helped usher it into the modern post-merger era. And yet somehow amid the fire hose of gaudy passing stats in recent years, we sometimes lose sight of what made Starr a towering figure.

Even with the understanding that Starr played in era of 14-game seasons, his stats likely don’t pop out to today's younger football fans, captivated by 50-touchdown seasons from the likes of Patrick Mahomes. Starr, who played in the NFL from 1956-71, never threw for more than 2,500 yards or 17 touchdowns in a season.

Quarterback, then as now, certainly had an outsized presence on a team, but the game was a little more balanced in terms of what type of offense prevailed. Starr was often remembered as a dutiful captain who carried out Vince Lombardi’s orders, a contrast to the celebrated passers of today who often have broad control over switching plays. But one of Starr’s defining moments was the Ice Bowl in 1967, in which he disregarded a handoff playcall from the sideline and opted to dive in for the winning touchdown himself.

Where Starr can hold his own in the all-time discussion is in the area that has changed the least over time: postseason success and championships. Attributing wins to quarterbacks is dicey even in a team sport where they play such a prominent role. Still, there’s little debate that Starr earned his stellar postseason reputation.

In 10 playoff games, Starr holds the career record for postseason passer rating (104.8), highest touchdown percentage (7.0), and is tied for most yards per pass attempt (8.4). The Packers were also 9-1 in those games. Starr’s team lost his first postseason game, then won every playoff game the rest of his career. It was only this past season that Tom Brady, whose career playoff passer rating is 90.5, eclipsed Starr's five career championships. 

Johnny Unitas might have typically gotten the G.O.A.T. designation even in Starr’s time, though Starr’s connection to, and involvement with, excellence ensured his name would always merit inclusion in the discussion.

It’s a weird quirk of modern fandom that many people more or less consider the dawn of the Super Bowl era to be the de facto beginning of NFL history. In some ways, that was a double-edged sword for Starr’s legacy. The benefit to that is inextricably linking him to the ruling class of those first Super Bowl years, so deeply mythologized that they were. Still, it diminished him in a way as well, for the Packers winning the first two Super Bowls got all the attention, while the fact they had won three of the previous five titles gets the short shrift.

Starr had much less success in a second act in Green Bay as a head coach and GM in the ‘70s and ‘80s, in part because of some bad luck. But he also struggled because he had no experience in either role. It may have been a dark period for the Pack, but it did little to tarnish Starr’s place in the franchise’s lore.