As NFL role model, Bart Starr was the greatest of all time - Washington Examiner

No single man will ever epitomize the best of the National Football League like Bryan Bartlett Starr.

On the field and off, Bart Starr was the very definition of a winner and, especially, role model. Bizarrely overlooked in debates about who was the greatest quarterback ever, Starr, who died Sunday at age 85, won championships at a rate (five in seven years) still unequalled in the history of the game.

Starr’s Packers won while Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts, Frank Gifford’s’ New York Giants, and Jim Brown’s Cleveland Browns were all in their heydays. They won as Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys began their dynasty. And of course, they won the first two Super Bowls in convincing fashion, with Starr as Most Valuable Player both times.

Yet the “Greatest of All Time” appellation is usually given to Tom Brady, with Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, and sometimes Unitas or John Elway in the debate. Why not Starr?

Many people attribute Starr’s success to his coach Vince Lombardi. Well, if a genius coach is to get more credit for championships than the quarterback, why isn’t Brady’s record diminished by playing only for Bill Belichick? After all, Belichick’s Patriots won 10 of 15 games with the merely good Matt Cassell as quarterback one year and won just 10 of 16 with Brady the next.

Montana, with his “Mr. Clutch” post-season reputation of winning all four Super Bowls he played, couldn’t hold a candle to Starr’s post-season statistics. Starr won nine of the 10 playoff games he started. He threw 15 post-season touchdowns with only three interceptions. His post-season passer rating, back when the rules much more strongly favored defenses, remains the highest in history at 104.8. And in six NFL championship games, he threw 145 passes with only one interception.

By comparison, Montana lost seven playoff games as a starter, threw for a lower 7.9 yards per pass, threw 21 interceptions in 23 games, and achieved a passer rating nine points lower, at 95.6.

In the regular season, too, Starr was a star. He led the league in passer rating and in completion percentage four times each — including twice each after Lombardi retired as coach. He led in yards per attempt twice, and in lowest interception percentage three times. And he didn’t “dink and dunk”: His 7.8 career yards per attempt significantly exceeded the 7.1 of later Packer “gunslinger” Brett Favre.

What distinguished Starr even more was his character. His community spirit in Green Bay, Wis., and in his hometown of Birmingham, Ala., was unmatched, his charitable endeavors renowned.

“Bart came as close to perfection as any man I ever met, perfection as a quarterback and as a human being,” wrote his Hall of Fame teammate Jerry Kramer in 1985. “Bart always said the right thing, always did the right thing. All the years we played together, I looked for a flaw, waited for a slip, an inconsistency, a contradiction in his nature. I never spotted one.”

Starr himself was known for quoting Lombardi’s lessons on that front: “Coach Lombardi said that perfection is not attainable. But he said that if we chased perfection, we could catch excellence.”

Starr definitely caught excellence. He also caught, in one glorious drive in wind chills of 48 degrees below zero, the single most iconic moment in NFL history. Driving his team, driving it down the field against the Cowboys, willing his Packers toward the goal line, Starr entered folklore as the sun sank behind the stands of Lambeau Field.

It was an evening when a Starr fell into a frozen end zone, and legends were made.

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