Bart Starr by David Claerbaut

Author:David Claerbaut
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2021-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Not Perfection, but Excellence

BY 1962, Bart Starr was a well-established Pro-Bowl quarterback of an NFL championship team. For Lombardi, quarterback was decidedly the most critical of all positions. He was now a truly accomplished passer. Beyond that, however, was the mental part. “A quarterback must have great poise, too, and he must not be panicked by what the defense does or his own offense fails to do. He must know the characteristic fakes and patterns of his ends and backs and anticipate the break before the receiver makes it.” That poise has a stopwatch on it, because it is all about timing. “ ‘That timing’ is that 3.5 seconds your quarterback has to get the ball away. If he doesn’t get it off by then, except for those occasions when you can give him the maximum blocking on a try for a long one, his chances of success are minimal.” Receivers make their break in 1.5 seconds and that’s the length of time the quarterback has to anticipate.

By Lombardi’s standards, Starr was almost there, with the coach wanting only to see a bit more of the gambler in this disciple of Tobin Rote, the man who told Starr to hold onto the ball up to the last second, or even beyond, rather than toss it up for grabs. “He is great at picking that defense apart and adjusting, and if I could just get him to be a little more daring, he’d be everything. He kills them with those short ones, those singles and doubles, but he doesn’t throw home runs often because, where Unitas or Layne or Tittle will take a chance with an offensive man and a defensive man going down the field together, he has to be more sure that his offensive man has that defensive man beaten.”

The mentor’s tutorials continued unabated. “I know of no way but to persist,” said Lombardi about his relentless commitment to perfection, “and Bart Starr with that analytic mind, retentive memory, and inner toughness can take it.” He also pushed himself. “He always wanted to be the best,” said Gary Knafelc, “and he never quite felt he was the best.”

As Jerry Kramer had said, perfection was an important word for the volatile head coach. Everything short of dressing room decorum was evaluated by Lombardi and his staff. The coach described the grading process employed in 1962 after the season’s third game against the Bears. “Bill (Austin) and Red Cochran go over the film of our Bears game of Sunday once more. Red takes off the Bears’ defenses on each play, the yardage we made and who made the tackle, and Bill starts grading our players for what you might call our Honors Assembly after practice on Friday.”

One size did not fit all in Lombardi’s customized grading system. “The key to grading players,” he noted, “is the recognition of the fact that some positions are more difficult to play than others. On pass plays, for example, your center and your guards

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