Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,673

This is the grave of Jim Taylor.

Born in 1935 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Taylor grew up in the working class. A strong kid and a good athlete, he started playing football only as a junior in high school. Turned out that was a good call. He was so good so fast that Louisiana State recruiting him to play fullback for them. He was such a terrible student that he flunked out after his freshman year, had to go to a community college for a year, then returned as a junior. He and Billy Cannon produced the greatest college backfield of the 1950s, or real close to it. He scored twenty touchdowns as a Tiger.

The Green Bay Packers picked Taylor in the 2nd round of the 1958 NFL Draft. Good pick. He didn’t play much as a rookie on a truly terrible team. But before his second year, Vince Lombardi took over as head coach. He was soon placed in the starting lineup with Paul Hornung as the other back. Hornung provided the speed and Taylor the power. Taylor was the bellcow back, leading the NFL with 230 carries in 1960, which he used to rush for 1100 yards and 11 touchdowns. The next year, he led the NFL with fifteen rushing touchdowns. Both years, he was second in yards, but a guy named Jim Brown was first. But in 1962, he would lead the league with 1474 yards and 19 touchdowns, his greatest year. The 62 title game was one of those old school NFL epics where the Packers and Giants just beat the shit out of each other in frigid conditions. Taylor had 31 carries for 85 yards, which is a terrible average out of context, but the Giants were the best defense in the NFL and he took an absolute beating from them, with tons of trash talk and multiple injuries during the game that he played through, plus an undiagnosed case of hepatitis that didn’t get diagnosed for a couple of weeks, so he was down 15 pounds anyway.

Taylor only had a couple more years of dominance. The body can only take so much. His last Pro Bowl season was in 1964. That year (well, technically 1965), he led the Packers over the Browns in the title game and won the game MVP, which came with a Corvette that I am sure he enjoyed. By 1966, with Brown retired, he was the active leader in rushing yards. He led the Packers into Super Bowl I and led them in rushing yards in that game, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs.

In 1967, Taylor decided to move on and signed with the New Orleans Saints. He was down in 67 and was effectively going to benched in 1968, so he retired before going through that.

Taylor had a pretty successful post-playing career. He headed the United States Rugby League in the 1970s, was around LSU sports, had a lot of business ventures, and somehow escaped all the long-term injuries that most football players dealt with. In fact, as late as the early 2000s, he ran five miles a day.

Taylor died in 2018, at the age of 83.

Jim Taylor is buried in Greenoaks Memorial Park, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Taylor was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1976. If you would like to visit the other 1976 inductees, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Ray Flaherty, head coach of the Redskins in the 1930s and early 40s, is in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Len Ford, defensive end for the Browns, is in Suitland, Maryland. Oddly, these were the only inductees in 1976. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.