[msb-alumni] Herb Adderley, a Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Cornerback, Is Dead at 81 on October 30, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2020 16:00:13 -0500
BlankHerb Adderley, a Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Cornerback, Is Dead at 81.
By Richard
Goldstein.
A defensive star in Green Bay -- he ran back seven interceptions for touchdowns
-- he played
on five championship teams under Vince Lombardi and one in Dallas.
Herb Adderley, the Hall of Fame cornerback who played for Coach Vince
Lombardi's Green Bay
Packer teams that won five N.F.L. championships in the 1960s, including the
first two Super
Bowls, and then helped take the Dallas Cowboys to their first Super Bowl
victory, died on
Friday. He was 81. The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, announced
his death. No
details were provided, but the Packers said he had recently been hospitalized.
When Adderley arrived at the Packers' 1961 training camp as a first-round draft
pick and a
former all-Big Ten running back at Michigan State, he expected to be a backup
for the Packer
stars Jim Taylor at fullback and Paul Hornung at halfback, and that is what he
became.
Going into the annual Thanksgiving Day game between the Packers and the Detroit
Lions, he
had not run from scrimmage all season. But Lombardi, who saw Adderley as the
best pure
athlete on the team, finally gave him a chance -- in the defensive alignment.
He inserted
Adderley, who had played some defense in college, at left cornerback in the
second quarter
when the Packers' secondary, already short-handed, lost cornerback Hank
Gremminger to an
injury.
"I was in a state of shock," Adderley told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel long
afterward. "I
was shaking and nervous. I had no time to ask anybody any questions. I didn't
know what I
was doing."
Nonetheless, he intercepted a fourth-quarter pass from the Lions' Jim Ninowski,
helping the
Packers rally for a 17-9 victory.
In December, the Packers won their first N.F.L. championship under Lombardi,
routing the
Giants, 37-0.
Adderley played for nine seasons with the Packers and three for the Cowboys. He
had speed
and decent enough size for a cornerback of his time, at 6-foot-1 and 205
pounds, and he
intercepted 48 regular-season passes, running seven of them back for
touchdowns. He took an
interception 60 yards for a score when the Packers defeated the Oakland Raiders
in Super
Bowl II.
Adderley was selected for the N.F.L.'s all-decade team of the 1960s, playing on
a defense
that included the future Hall of Famers Willie Wood at safety, Willie Davis at
end, Henry
Jordan at tackle and Ray Nitschke and Dave Robinson at linebacker. (Wood died
in February at
83, and Davis died in April at 85.)
Adderley was an outstanding kickoff returner as well. He ran the ball back 103
yards against
the Baltimore Colts and took another kickoff for a 98-yard score against the
Los Angeles
Rams.
He was among only a few Black players on the Packers when he joined the team.
When the
Packers faced the Washington Redskins in a 1961 preseason game in Columbus,
Ga., where
hotels were segregated, the entire team stayed at Fort Benning, an Army base.
As Adderley recalled, Lombardi said, "I'd rather be here with all my players
than be split
up somewhere else."
Adderley said that landlords would not to rent to the Packers' Black players
when he was a
rookie, leaving him to live with Davis and the running back Elijah Pitts in
what he called a
"shack" on the outskirts of Green Bay, Wis. Lombardi met with real estate
agents after that,
Adderley recalled, and "the following year, it was different. We had decent
housing. He
opened a lot of doors for Black folks and Black families -- many that had
nothing to do with
the Packers."
Herbert Allen Adderley was born in Philadelphia on June 8, 1939, the son of
Charles and Rene
Adderley. His father was a factory machinist. Herb was a multisport athlete at
Northeast
High School.
Playing for three seasons at Michigan State, he gained more than 800 yards
rushing and was a
pass-catching threat. The Packers selected him as the 12th overall pick in the
1961 N.F.L.
draft. The Packers traded Adderley to the Cowboys in September 1970. He teamed
with the
future Hall of Famer Mel Renfro at cornerback when Dallas lost to the Baltimore
Colts in the
Super Bowl after the 1970 season and then defeated the Miami Dolphins in the
next Super
Bowl. (A member of that Colts team, the wide receiver Jimmy Orr, died on
Tuesday.)
Adderley retired after the 1972 season with 1,046 yards in interception returns
and 3,080
yards in kickoff returns.
In October 1984 he attended the Packers' first full-scale reunion for players
from the 1966
team, which defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl I. And he made it
clear where his
loyalties resided. Telling of that gathering in "Distant Replay" (1985), by the
former
Packer guard Jerry Kramer and the sportswriter Dick Schaap (the follow-up to
their book
"Instant Replay"), Adderley said: "As far as I'm concerned, I never played for
the Dallas
Cowboys. I'm the only guy in the country who has a Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl
ring and
doesn't even wear it."
Adderley's survivors include his wife, Brenda, the Hall of Fame said.
After his playing days, Adderley owned a Philadelphia-based company that laid
television
cable lines around the country. He was the lead plaintiff in a 2007 federal
lawsuit against
the N.F.L. players' union filed on behalf of 2,056 retired players who
contended that the
union had improperly failed to include them in marketing deals. The suit
resulted in a $28.1
million judgment against the union; after the verdict was appealed, the
retirees settled for
a $26.25 million payout.
Robinson, the Packers' left linebacker of the 1960s, once recalled Adderley's
combativeness,
which could extend to confronting an opposing coach. "Herb didn't forget
anything," Robinson
was quoted as saying on the Packers' website. "He took everything personal. One
time in
Baltimore, Don Shula yelled at him from the sideline after a tackle, and Herb
told Shula to
put on a uniform and he'd hit him the same way."
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