Jim Taylor, Hall of Fame Fullback for the Green Bay Packers, Dies at 83

Jim Taylor, the bruising fullback who played on four NFL championship teams with the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s and became the first star in coach Vince Lombardi’s dynasty to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died Saturday. He was 83.

He died at a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Packers said in a statement Saturday.

Taylor ran for more than 1,000 yards in five consecutive 14-game seasons and was named to the NFL’s all-decade team for the ‘60s.

He also scored the first rushing touchdown in Super Bowl history, running for 14 yards in the second quarter of the inaugural game, when the Packers scored a 35-10 victory over the American Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs in January 1967.

When he wasn’t bowling over would-be tacklers, Taylor handed out crushing blocks, most famously on the Packers’ signature play, the power sweep, helping clear a path for halfback Paul Hornung, his fellow Hall of Famer, to run wide.

Taylor was listed at 6 feet and 214 pounds, not exactly menacing at first glance, and he was often overshadowed by Jim Brown, the Cleveland Browns’ great fullback. But he relished contact.

“Jim Brown will give you that leg and then take it away from you,” Lombardi was quoted by the Hall of Fame. “Jim Taylor will give it to you and then ram it through your chest.”

Taylor ended Brown’s five-year reign as the NFL’s rushing leader in 1962 when he ran for 1,474 yards, led the league in rushing touchdowns with 19, was voted its most valuable player and helped take Green Bay to the league championship.

The Packers faced the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium in the December ’62 NFL title game on a frozen field with temperatures in the teens and winds gusting up to 50 mph.

Taylor engaged in a private war that day with Sam Huff, the Giants’ middle linebacker and leader of their vaunted defense.

“I don’t ever remember being hit so hard,” Taylor once told The New York Times. “I bled the whole game. My arms bled from hitting that frozen dirt and my tongue bled after I bit it in the first half.”

After the game, Taylor accused Huff and some of his teammates of piling on after stopping him.

“Taylor likes to crawl,” Huff responded. “The only way to stop Taylor is to make sure that he’s down.”

Taylor carried the ball 31 times for 85 yards on the icy turf that day and scored the Packers’ only touchdown on a 7-yard run in the second quarter in their 16-7 victory.

Huff was emulating a tactic used by Hall of Fame middle linebacker Chuck Bednarik when the Packers faced the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1960 NFL championship game.

Taking a swing pass from quarterback Bart Starr, Taylor was inside the Eagles’ 10-yard line in the final seconds when Bednarik helped stop him and sat atop him until time ran out.

“You can get up now, Jim, this game is over,” Bednarik exulted, the Eagles having emerged with a 17-13 victory in what became the Packers’ only playoff-game loss under Lombardi.

But not many defenders got the best of Taylor.

“Most people ran away from a tackler. Not Taylor,” Abe Woodson, the San Francisco 49ers’ Pro Bowl defensive back, told Bob Carroll in the oral history “When the Grass Was Real” (1993). “Even if he had a clear path to the goal line, he’d look for a defensive back to run over on the way.”

Taylor played for the Packers’ NFL champions of the 1961, ’62, ’65 and ’66 seasons. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 1976.

James Charles Taylor was born on Sept. 20, 1935, in Baton Rouge. His father died when he was young and his mother worked in a laundry.

He was a football and basketball star in high school, and then concentrated on football at Louisiana State University, playing fullback on offense and linebacker and tackle on defense. In his senior season, he led the Southeastern Conference in rushing yards, with 762, and touchdowns, with 12.

He was selected by the Packers in the second round of the 1958 NFL draft but played sparingly as a rookie on a team that won only one game. Everything began to change when Lombardi arrived in 1959 after leaving his post as the Giants’ offensive coordinator.

Taylor went on to amass 8,597 rushing yards and 83 touchdowns on the ground, playing nine seasons for the Packers, then signing as a free agent with the New Orleans Saints in 1967, his final season. He was a Pro Bowl player every year from 1960 to 1964.

Details about Taylor’s survivors were not immediately available.

Taylor owned a shipyard business in New Orleans after retiring from football. Long after the Packers’ glory years, he reflected on what he called “the jaw-jabbers” of later generations in the pros.

“Forget all that talk, I like action,” he told Bob McCullough in “My Greatest Day in Football.” “Today’s athletes, they’re just full of so much conversation instead of keep your mouth shut and just do your job. I don’t even watch a game.”