Starr Power: How a Small-Town Alabama Boy Became a Super Bowl Icon

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The first Super Bowl star came from Alabama and had an NFL three-peat

The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will meet in the 59th Super Bowl on Sunday. Counting down to the NFL title game, (link unavailable) is spotlighting a Super Bowl hero with Alabama football roots daily through Sunday, starting with Sidney Lanier High School and Alabama alumnus Bart Starr.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs will have the opportunity to become the first quarterback and first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls on Sunday, when they square off against the Philadelphia Eagles. But they wouldn’t be the first to win three NFL championship games.

Quarterback Bart Starr and the Green Bay Packers won the NFL championship in 1965, 1966 and 1967. When the Packers played in the first two Super Bowls, they already had won the NFL championship.

The Super Bowl became the NFL’s championship game in the 1970 season, when the NFL’s absorption of the AFL had been completed and the current AFC/NFC format was adopted.

Green Bay defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in Super Bowl I on Jan. 15, 1967, and the Oakland Raiders 33-14 in Super Bowl II on Jan. 14, 1968, although the contests weren’t officially the Super Bowl at the time.

To cap the 1965 campaign, the Packers defeated the Cleveland Browns 23-12 in the NFL Championship Game, and that was the end of their season.

But the next season, after Green Bay defeated the Dallas Cowboys 34-27 on four touchdown passes by Starr in the NFL Championship Game, the Packers had another game to play against AFL champion Kansas City as the leagues moved toward their merger.

Starr completed 16-of-23 passes for 250 yards with two touchdowns and one interception against the Chiefs as he followed his MVP Award for the 1966 NFL season with the same honor for the world-championship game.

On third down against Kansas City, Starr completed 6-of-7 passes for 119 yards and one touchdown – a 57-yard connection with end Mike McGee for the game’s first points.

Starr also had a 16-yard touchdown pass to McGee in the third quarter, but he lost a 64-yard TD pass to flanker Carroll Dale in the second quarter on an illegal-procedure penalty.

The next season, Starr scored the winning touchdown on the most famous quarterback sneak in football history as the Packers won the game now known as the Ice Bowl – a 21-17 victory over the Cowboys in the NFL Championship Game.

With Starr at quarterback, Green Bay had won five NFL crowns in seven seasons.

The Packers didn’t let the upstart league spoil their reputation as the best team in football in the second AFL-NFL World Championship Game as Starr completed 13-of-24 passes for 202 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions against the Raiders.

For the second year in a row, Starr again produced the game’s first touchdown with a deep pass — a 62-yard connection with end Boyd Dowler as Green Bay took a 13-0 lead in the second quarter.

Starr’s second Super Bowl MVP Award came in his ninth consecutive playoff victory as the Packers’ starting quarterback.

That stood as the best streak in NFL history until Tom Brady was the winning QB in his first 10 postseason games with the New England Patriots, surpassing Starr in a 32-29 victory over the Carolina Panthers in the 38th Super Bowl.

Mahomes enters Sunday’s game having started nine straight playoff victories for Kansas City.

The victory over Oakland was Starr’s final playoff appearance.

In 10 postseason games, he posted a cumulative passing-efficiency rating of 104.8.

Only one quarterback in NFL history with more than five playoff appearances has a better one – Mahomes at 105.8.

The 200th player picked in the 1956 NFL Draft, Starr was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977, his first year of eligibility.

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