A look back at the Bart Starr Head Coach/GM years ('75-'83)

Thank you for posting that. Interesting stuff.

You rock Sscuhmer.

I was fortunate to miss a lot of bad football in those years because I played soccer on Sundays.

on the Sabbath? 

That makes it sound like they were almost good.....they weren't.  I was a witness.

It's like Green Bay was in the middle of a 'perfect storm'; no matter how hard they tried to draft and improve, there was always a problem. An injury, losing the Clark pick further aggravating a general dearth of picks, a front office in complete disarray, poor coaching, drafting, and trades, struggling to deal with the perceptions of playing for the Packers......'twas a mighty deep hole the Pack dug for themselves.

Blair Kiel posted:

You rock Sscuhmer.

I was fortunate to miss a lot of bad football in those years because I played soccer on Sundays.

 

I know another guy that played a lot of soccer... allegedly. 

Do I have to?  That's a lot of emotional scarring as a kid. 

But it did show me how bandwagon Vikings fans are.  

and unloading Ted Hendricks.

Those were some pretty tough years, what I remember most was being able to take the whole family to the pre-season games when tickets were  $ 10 bucks a head.   

Pikes Peak posted:

That makes it sound like they were almost good.....they weren't.  I was a witness.

Towards the end of Starr's coaching career, I thought they legitimately were "almost good".   They didn't have a losing record his last 3 years, and the '82 team actually was a good team, at least for that strike shortened season making it to the divisional round of the playoffs.

What got him fired was the collapse of the defense in '83.  We've seen some bad defenses in GB over time and that '83 defense was as bad as any of them.  If it's even slightly good, they probably make the playoffs and save his job, but it was far from that.

Who knows, maybe if Starr had Ron Wolf as GM picking players he may have worked out as a coach, but we'll never know.

FIGHTPHOE93, I think that's accurate.  That '83 defense was possibly the very worst in the last 40-50 years.  It didn't help that Starr lost two defensive linemen for the year in the first game or two, and prior to the season lost DE Mike Butler to the USFL.  If Starr had Ron Wolf as his GM, Wolf never would have let Ted Hendricks leave in '75 (PHAEDRUS, good call on that one) and likely wouldn't have drafted noodle-armed Rich Campbell in '81 #1.  But in fairness to Starr the GM, he actually overall had a much better record than Wolf when it came to drafting in the first round.  Wolf's in the HOF because he signed Reggie White in Free Agency, traded for Brett Favre and found players in the middle rounds.  But if Wolf hadn't misfired over and over with his #1 picks, Favre would very likely have delivered multiple Super Bowl wins instead of just one.  The problem wasn't that Starr couldn't draft the right guys, it was that almost all of them suffered serious injuries or left the team.  What we'll never know is how good his teams could have been if they'd simply had the league average of injuries during his span.  

Think the dysfunctional nature of the franchise itself was a bigger factor than the injuries. Picking Campbell against the advice of scouts was an egregious blunder by Starr.

My biggest memory of that period was that expectations were so low that the sting of losses really wasn't that great. 

8-8 was joyous. 

The truth is Dick Corrick and Robert Parins had no clue has how to build a team.  WHEN they kicked Bart out as GM and hired Corrick there was no improvement. They fired Bart, brought in Forrest Gregg and things only got worse.   The blames goes solely on those 2 a-holes, not Bart. 

AMMO, Dick Corrick was the top adviser on the draft, but both Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg were the GMs.  See following article.  I can see blaming Judge Parins, but don't understand why you'd dump on Corrick.

http://www.packers.com/news-an...97-88bd-c59b15ba96cd

Boris to Judge Parins = 

Does make you wonder how long things might have continued had Bob Harlan not cleaned up the mess and set up the proper structure. He really does belong right up there with Lombardi and Lambeau in franchise history.

sschumer - Packer Fan HoF'r posted:

AMMO, Dick Corrick was the top adviser on the draft, but both Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg were the GMs.  See following article.  I can see blaming Judge Parins, but don't understand why you'd dump on Corrick.

http://www.packers.com/news-an...97-88bd-c59b15ba96cd

Not exactly.    From Wiki:

 Initially given a three-year contract,^[44] he led the Packers for nine years, the first five as his own general manager.

And from a Dec. 19, 1983 article By LANI JORDAN :

 At the close of the 1980 season, Starr was stripped of his general manager duties by the Packer Board of Directors.

Corrick ran the draft after 1980. that is why I dumped on him. 

So as I said Corrick and Parins were the a-holes who screwed Bart. 

At that time, the Packers weren't looking far enough forward to realize the dual role of HC/GM was becoming a thing of the past. They kept the status quo because "that's how Vince did it", and it was just a perpetual swirl.
In Ihe 70's we needed RBs and QBs. By the time the 80's arrived, we still needed them....

I know Starr was at war with some of the beat writers for the Packers at that time. I dont remember if it was Christl or Chris Havel. It was nasty where Starr would kick them out of press conferences. Trump and Jim Acosta from CNN have nothing on these two.  

I always thought teh Packers offense was really good with Coffman, Dickey, and James Lofton but that the defense was just plain horrible. Starr hired some Defensive coordinator that was well known (Hank Bulloch maybe) and that same guy quit and went to coach a college team before the first game. 

Those were some dark years but every year I trusted the team was going to turn the corner. They never did. Starrs last game I think was for teh chance to go the playoffs against Chicago and I remember a Punt returner for the packers fumbled the ball toward the end and the Packers lost the game.

 Memories by Streisand was played on TV while they did a montage of Starrs Packers history. It was really sad.

Replacing him with forest greg who was just the absolute worse head coach ever was mind boggling. I remember Lynn Dickey hated Gregg. Said his idea of an offensive game plan was for Dickey to throw for 300 yards and 3 TDs every week. That relationship did not end well. 

I've defended some of those 80s teams many times here.  They weren't great but they had a few really good offenses and flirted with leading the division or taking a WC spot several times.  That's what made them so hard to watch as a kid.  Seemed to always be just enough hope to get crushed by the end of the season.

To DH13’s statement, I remember being very familiar with every playofff scenario in the hopes the Packers would get a wild card whenever they got close.

It’s my theory that fantasy football took shape because of the 80’s Packers offenses. 

No joke. I remember that MNF game. Couldn't look away from the screen or you'd miss another TD. That was back when MNF meant something; not the watered down version of today, much less that pit known as TNF.

Floridarob:
Replacing him with forest greg who was just the absolute worse head coach ever was mind boggling. I remember Lynn Dickey hated Gregg. Said his idea of an offensive game plan was for Dickey to throw for 300 yards and 3 TDs every week. That relationship did not end well. 

Not saying Gregg was not a poor coach during his Packer tenure, but he took the Bengals to the Super Bowl against the 49'ers.  And they easily could have won.  Real nice looking team, I thought.

People seem to forget this.

Green Bay was even mentioned on SNL's "Weekend Update"!
Jim Belushi (of all people!), as a special reporter, announced the Russians had launched a nuclear attack, and the target appeared to be Green Bay, WI.
He then said, "But Green Bay will fight back because they are very good in the air!"

http://www.the-kramerfamily.co...CKERS-GORYYEARS.html

It is kind of a cheesy website but it sure does give another gut punch for those of us who lived during those dark days.  My most vivid memory of Starr as a coach (I am too young to remember him playing) was that dark day in Chicago when the Bears throttled the Packers by something like 60-7 and thinking "lets hope they finally fire him" (and they didnt).   The other was a game the Packers got killed in and watched the Bart Starr show in GB on the following Monday night.  All he could come up with for a positive thing from the game was how high the Packers punter was kicking the ball.  I can remember him saying "look how high that ball is it is as high as the stadium!"

All I know is having lived through those times if you had told me in about 1987 that Packers would MAKE the playoffs much less win a Super Bowl I would have laughed at you.