Former Green Bay Packers fullback and Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Taylor passed away Saturday morning. He was 83.
I never saw Taylor play, but I do know this. He was about the toughest son of a bitch to ever carry a football.
Not only would the guy take a pounding and keep right on going, but he dished it out too. Throw in the crew cut and you’ve got the epitome of the way football used to be played. By men who liked violence. Who weren’t afraid to hit or get hit.
Here’s how team historian Cliff Christl described Taylor.
Taylor ran with a football as though he was hell-bent on turning each and every game into a human demolition derby. There was nothing fancy or pretty about his style. He ran with ferocity. He ran with power. He ran with grit. Bottom line: He played like a man possessed, a throwback to the days when football more closely resembled trench warfare and the sole mission of each player was to seemingly dish out more punishment than he took.
Taylor played for the Packers from 1958-66. Along with Paul Hornung, he formed one of the best backfields in the NFL and in team history.
Taylor rushed for more than 1,000 yards five times (1960 to 1964). He ran for a league-leading 1,474 yards in 1962, on undeniably the best Packers team of all time. Taylor won the league MVP that year.
To put the 1962 Packers in perspective, they scored 415 points. They gave up just 148. Both marks were tops in the league, as the Packers went 13-1 and won the NFL title. Just as impressive is Taylor averaged 105.3 yards per contest that season.
Taylor’s 1,474 yards was a team record that stood for 41 years. Ahman Green now holds that record after running for 1,883 yards in 2003.
Taylor also held the Packers career rushing mark with 8,207 yards until it was just slightly surpassed by Green (8,322 yards) in 2009. He still has the most rushing touchdowns in team history by far at 81. Green is second with 54. And finally, Taylor held the Packers single-game rushing record with 186 yards until Green broke that with a 218-yard day in 2003.
Taylor was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1976. He was named to the 1960s All-Decade Team, was named to five Pro Bowls and was a three-time first team and three-time second team All-Pro.
Jim Taylor was a man.
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The picture that best shows Jim Taylor’s running style was the Sports Illustrated 1965 Championship. The mud bowl against Cleveland. See link below just below Johnny Unitas cover. Jim Taylor was a mudder.
https://www.si.com/nfl/photos/2010/10/19-0sis-best-nfl-covers.
Jim Brown will give you that leg and then take it away from you. Jim Taylor will give it to you and then ram it through your chest.
VINCE LOMBARDI
Yea…apparently, he would look for confrontation on the defender, just because that’s how he liked it. Word has it, that it used to drive Lombardi nuts.
Godspeed to his family and friends.
My condolences.
Much respect to one of the greats.
Jim Taylor was my boyhood hero. In 1962 I was the starting fullback on my 9th grade team and wore #31. We ran the Packer sweep over and over; it was the craze of high school coaches everywhere. After practice I dashed home to read about the Packers in the sports page. The Packers were undefeated most of the year, thrashed the Browns in a showdown, and Taylor outgained Jim Brown. It doesn’t get any better for a 14 year old boy than it did for me that fall of ’62.
R.I.P. hero.
When I was a kid my dad took me to one of those charity basketball games where some Packers would would play a local rec league team. Most of the Packers were goofing around and hamming it up, Fuzzy Thurston had obviously been to a bar first, but Taylor was playing like it was the NFL championship. The most competitive guy that I ever saw and tough as nails.
I hesitate to say this because i have a lot of respect for the older generation players and i don’t want to be mis-understood. But those players would get mauled against the players of today (for obvious reasons. Todays players are insanely fast and ripped.
With that said, there is a higher degree of respect i have for the older players. They didn’t have candy ass rules, when you hit the QB, you hit the QB, nobody questioned it.
They played at a time when men were men.
Jim Taylor’s G stood for
Green Bay Gridiron Grit Generated Greatness and Glory
Ground Gains, Greatness and Glory