17 replies to this topic

[conace21]

Don Hutson
Brett Favre
Jim Taylor
Herb Adderley


Oh my, talk about difficult. Anyone who includes coaches has to put Lombardi and Lambeau on. I'm including players only (yes, I know Lambeau was a player) and it was still difficult. Hutson was obvious. So was Favre, despite the recent backlash. Aaron Rodgers has not done close to enough to be considered. Verne Lewellen, Johnny Blood, Cal Hubbard from the earlier Packers. Great players, just not enough spots. I may have gone with Blood, but he only played half his career in GB. Same with Reggie White. From the Lombardi Packers, Forrest Gregg, Bart Starr, Willie Davis were all considered for their talent; the Golden Boy and Jerry Kramer were considered for their fame as much as talent. I went with Taylor because I thought he represented the blood and guts style of Lombardi, and because he was the only man to win a rushing title over Jim Brown (albeit an injured Brown.) With Adderley, I thought he was the one player most likely to be considered for the NFL's All Time Team.

[Teo]

It's tough, too many great players, but leaving Lambeau and Lombardi out:

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Forrest Gregg
Brett Favre

(I know that Favre won't be in many teams because of his GB exit and Aaron Rodgers resurgence, but you can not leave out his consistency throughout the years. It's still amazing that a quarterback could start each of his team games for that long, maybe that record won't be broken).

[james]

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Jim Taylor
John Blood McNally

Those would be my four.

[ronfitch]

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Forrest Gregg
Johnny "Blood" McNally

I *think*. Top two are the gimmes for me, paring down for the second two is much, much tougher ....

[Jay Z]

Hutson
Starr
Favre
Taylor

No defensive players for this team. Hutson dominated his position at the time. Starr's on for his postseason record mostly. Favre, 16 years as a top quality QB. Taylor wasn't Jimmy Brown, but he was still way above anyone else of the era.

'60s defense was great, but I don't see a single player there I can elevate. I am just looking at the postseason games, where I have the most info. Honors seem to be split between a bunch of guys, depending on the game. No one stood out enough.

[paulksandiego]

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Ray Nitschke
Brett Favre

[nicefellow31]

Bart Starr
Ray Nitschke
Don Hutson
Paul Hourning

[NWebster]

Don Hutson
Jim Taylor
Bret Favre
Bart Starr

[BD Sullivan]

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Willie Davis
Brett Favre

[rhickok1109]

I'm glad some others went before me, because I've been thinking about this for a while, but I was totally unable to narrow it down to four. These earlier selection helped clarify my thoughts and I can now present four players as possible alternative choices, rather than as those who have to be carved in stone.

Arnie Herber--The NFL's first great long passer and the only native of Green Bay who's in the HOF as a player; he represents the team that won 3 straight championships, 1929-32 (though he played only 2 of those seasons)

Don Hutson--The one player who absolutely has to be there

Forrest Gregg--Lombardi called him the best player he ever coached and I call him the one who will look best carved into a mountainside

Ray Nitschke--The Packers named one of their practice fields after him for a reason; for me, it was a toss-up between him and Jim Taylor, because both were incredibly tough players who embodied the Lombardi philosophy, but I finally decided to go with Nitschke because my other three choices were all on the offensive of the ball (although Hutson was a great defensive back for the last 7 years of his career)

[Bob Gill]

>Arnie Herber--The NFL's first great long passer and the only native of Green Bay who's in the HOF as a player; he represents the team that won 3 straight championships, 1929-32 (though he played only 2 of those seasons)

The trouble is that Herber played only as a reserve in 1930, and hardly at all in 1931, so he's not a good representative of that team. I'd say Hubbard, Michalske or Dilweg would be much better choices from that group.

[JohnH19]

Hutson
Starr
Favre
Davis or Nitschke

[Ken Crippen]

>Arnie Herber--The NFL's first great long passer and the only native of Green Bay who's in the HOF as a player; he represents the team that won 3 straight championships, 1929-32 (though he played only 2 of those seasons)

The trouble is that Herber played only as a reserve in 1930, and hardly at all in 1931, so he's not a good representative of that team. I'd say Hubbard, Michalske or Dilweg would be much better choices from that group.

I would have to agree that Dilweg would be a better representative from those championship teams. Six-time consecutive, consensus all-pro. Four-time consecutive, unanimous all-pro. I used a statistical ranking system for ends during his time, and he was ranked number one overall (be a large margin most years) five consecutive years. He has better stats than other pre-modern era HOF ends.

[DWarren]

Don Hutson
Forrest Gregg
Bart Starr
Brett Favre

[rhickok1109]

>Arnie Herber--The NFL's first great long passer and the only native of Green Bay who's in the HOF as a player; he represents the team that won 3 straight championships, 1929-32 (though he played only 2 of those seasons)

The trouble is that Herber played only as a reserve in 1930, and hardly at all in 1931, so he's not a good representative of that team. I'd say Hubbard, Michalske or Dilweg would be much better choices from that group.

Of course, I definitely considered those three, along with Johnny Blood, Red Dunn (the NFL's best passer before Friedman), Lambeau, and others, but I chose Herber for two reasons. First, as I mentioned, he was a native of Green Bay and lived there virtually all of his life. Second, when I was growing up in Green Bay, he was a very present and visible link to the great Packer teams of the past.

It seems to me that the Mt. Rushmore idea is not to select the four "best" players in a team's history, but four who are somehow symbolic of that history, and Herber is very important to me, in that respect.

When I was growing up in Green Bay, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Arnie Herber worked in the downtown courthouse. He had breakfast and lunch every weekday at Holzer's Drug Store. It was impossible to spend any time downtown without seeing him, while sightings of other former greats were rare. So Herber was, and still is for me, an emblem of the great Lambeau-coached championship teams.

Cal Hubbard was long gone; Hutson was quite visible for a few years after retiring, but then opened an auto dealership in Racine and disappeared, except for weekends when the Packers were playing at home; Michalske lived in the area and could be spotted eating steak at the Union Hotel in De Pere every so often; Johnny Blood was a comet whose appearances were brief and unpredictable; Lambeau was fired and went on to the Cardinals and Redskins; Dilweg had a law office in Green Bay but spent most of his time in Washington; Lewellen was also in the area, but rarely sighted. A few lesser-known players from those early teams were more visible: Boob Darling had an insurance office downtown, Dave Zuidmulder was the fire chief: Jug Earp (whose daughter was the secretary of my high school class) was the Packers' PR man; and Ted Fritsch coached at Central Catholic High School.

But native son Herber was even more visible. Furthermore, he was a link not just to the 1930 and 1931 championship teams, but the teams that won titles in 1936 and 1939.

My reasons for choosing him may be largely personal, but I suspect that a lot of Packer fans of my age or thereabouts would make the same choice.

[JuggernautJ]

I feel like I am going out on a limb by trying to think of my own list before looking at the previous... but I think I'd go with...

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Forrest Gregg
Ray Nitschke (and just imagine the granite visage)

[classic3283]

Don Hutson
Bart Starr
Ray Nitschke
Brett Favre

I would have to agree with the above list. Although I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned Reggie White. I know he spent only a handful of years in Green Bay but the acquisition of White was a huge turning point for the franchise.

[tedz]

The "players-only" restriction simply cannot apply to the Packers. And given that, this is really really easy:

---Lambeau
---Hutson
---Lombardi
---Favre