Elite Company? Packers Who Have Scored All the Team’s Points in a Game
They’re an eclectic group. They number 20. The majority of them played before the 1970 NFL-AFL merger.
They are those rarest of athletes – players who scored every point in a Green Bay Packers’ victory.
Some of their names are familiar: Don Hutson, Paul Hornung and Mason Crosby. Some will be recognized only by the most diehard of Packers fans: Myrt Basing, Tillie Voss and Pid Purdy.
The Packers have played more than 1,000 regular-season games. There have been 115 instances where one player did all the scoring for Green Bay.
Relying on just one player for points is usually not a recipe for victory. The Packers’ record in those 115 games is 25-83-7.
Here are some of the players who have “single-handedly” won a game for the Packers.
Cub Buck
Winless through five games (0-3-2) in 1922, the Packers finally broke through for a 3-0 victory over the Columbus Panhandles on a muddy, early-November afternoon. Buck, a tackle, figured in at least two key plays. In the second quarter, Buck tackled Joe Mulbarger after the Columbus tackle blocked a Green Bay punt and took off with the ball. In the third quarter, Buck scored the first points of his Packers career. The Green Bay Press-Gazette reported Buck’s kick “went true and cleared the cross bar with a foot to spare. This won the game for the Bays.”
Myrt Basing
Five players – Buck, Verne Lewellen, Hornung, Ted Fritsch and Myrt Basing – share the Packers record for singlehanded victories with two each. Only one – Basing – never lost a game in which he accounted for all his team’s points.
Basing played five seasons (1923-27) for the Packers. He made an impact in his very first game when he rushed for two second-half touchdowns in Green Bay’s 12-0 win over the Minneapolis Marines. Curly Lambeau failed to make the extra point attempt after Basing’s first TD, and Buck’s attempt after the second score was blocked by Harry Mehre.
Two years later, Basing tied Marty Norton for the team lead in scoring with 36 points. Basing’s sixth and final touchdown of the season came on Nov. 1 against the Milwaukee Badgers where Green Bay staged a 13-play, 59-yard march in the second quarter. Basing accounted for four first downs and 48 yards on the drive, including the final two yards that send him over the goal line. Buck’s kick was partially blocked and Green Bay hung on for a 6-0 win.
Tom Nash
Tom Nash provided the first score of the Packers’ 1932 season. The lanky end blocked Stud Stennett’s third punt, the ball rolling out of the end zone to give Green Bay a 2-0 lead over the Cardinals. Hank Bruder and then Mike Michalske each scored a touchdown as the Packers won their opener 15-7 at City Stadium.
Nash wasn’t finished. A month later, the talented special teamer blocked a punt by the Bears’ Johnny Sisk in the second quarter. The ball again skipped out of the end zone and Green Bay went up 2-0.
That lead held up thanks to the Packers’ defense and Chicago’s Cookie Tackwell. Tackwell failed to connect on field goal attempts near the end of the second and fourth quarters.
The victory remains the only in which Green Bay won by the score of 2-0.
Ted Fritsch
No player ever accounted for a greater percentage of the Packers’ scoring in one season than Ted Fritsch did in 1946. The bruising fullback scored 100 of Green Bay’s 148 points (67.6 percent) and accounted for all of the team’s points in four out of 11 games.
Green Bay went 2-2 in those games. Fritsch became the first and only Packer to win two games singlehandedly in one season.
On Nov. 17, in a tremendous defensive effort, the Packers held the Lions to 81 yards. Fritsch booted a 15-yard field goal in the third quarter and scored on a 1-yard run (his extra point attempt was blocked) in the fourth for a 9-0 Green Bay win.
Two weeks later, he powered across three rushing touchdowns and kicked two extra points in a 20-7 triumph in Washington. The 20 points are the most scored by a Packer in a singlehanded win.
Chester Marcol
Chester Marcol had to work and wait until his ninth season to get his first and only singlehanded win. Marcol was involved in more singlehanded games than any other Packer (16), but the placekicker came up short in the first 15 in which he participated.
Marcol was the Packers’ second-round draft choice in 1972. He stayed busy, leading the NFL in scoring in 1972 and 1974.
So busy was he, that he sometimes was Green Bay’s only point producer. His first 15 singlehanded games occurred as such: 1972 (1 game), 1973 (2), 1974 (4), 1976 (1), 1977 (2), 1978 (3) and 1979 (2).
Never did he score more than nine points in any of those games. Green Bay four times lost by a single point with Marcol as its only scorer.
Marcol’s luck changed in one of the more famous games in team history: the 1980 season opener against the Bears. Marcol and Chicago’s Bob Thomas traded field goals, and at the end of regulation the score was tied 6-6.
The Bears got the ball first in overtime, but Green Bay forced a punt. A 32-yard pass from Lynn Dickey to James Lofton put the Packers in field goal range.
Four plays later, Marcol attempted a 35-yard field goal. His kick was blocked by Alan Page, but the ball bounced back to him and Marcol scooted 25 yards for the game-winning touchdown.
Though Marcol was swarmed under by teammates offering congratulations, he didn’t last the season. He was let go after five games in favor of Tom Birney who had filled in for him a year earlier when he was injured.
