Scott Hunter knows about replacing a legend
CROWE'S NEST
In 1972, he took over for Bart Starr as Green Bay Packers quarterback, a transition that went much smoother than the one between Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.
Aaron Rodgers is not the first man given the unenviable assignment of filling the cleats of a legendary former Green Bay Packers quarterback.
Scott Hunter had the privilege 36 years ago.
And it was a privilege, says Hunter, who not only took over for Bart Starr in 1972 but did so with the two-time Super Bowl most valuable player looking over his shoulder and endlessly critiquing his performance as a quarterback advisor to then-Packers coach Dan Devine.
Starr even called the plays.
"I worked very closely with him and was schooled very carefully by him," Hunter, 60, says from Daphne, Ala., where he's an investment advisor. "He was such a great guy to play with and to be coached by that it was an easy transition, in a sense. It was a little different than what they're going through now.
"Bart, for the most part, was at the end of his career and all the Packer fans knew it and knew that a transition was coming, so I don't think it was as difficult as the situation with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers."
In 1971, an arm injury had limited Starr to only three starts, none of them Packers victories. Hunter started 10 games as a rookie, had 17 passes intercepted in 163 attempts and the Packers won only four games, finishing last in the Central Division. Starr turned 38 shortly thereafter, but the man who led the Packers to five NFL championships in the 1960s wasn't quite ready to retire.
Hunter, meanwhile, waited patiently in the wings.
Like Starr, the 200th player taken in the 1956 draft, Hunter was a low-round pick from Alabama. Devine had ignored the advice of his scouting staff and made Hunter the 140th pick in the 1971 draft, the then-newly hired coach hoping he might have the same kind of luck with Hunter that Vince Lombardi had with Starr.
Hunter had been a three-year starter at Alabama under Paul "Bear" Bryant, and had spent a great deal of time studying Starr on television.
"I wasn't an option quarterback or the kind of guy that was going to scramble around like Fran Tarkenton," says Hunter, who broke most of Joe Namath's school passing records at Alabama. "I was more the Bart Starr-type operator, if you will, that was going to back up in the pocket, read the coverages and throw to the right guy, so Bart was the kind of guy I admired and emulated.
"Plus, I'd see Bart in the off-season when I was at Alabama. You'd go to a banquet in Birmingham and he'd be there, and I'd have a chance to talk with him."
