Some Packers fans rooted hard for him. Others hated him.
Whatever your stance may be, the truth is former Green Bay Packers quarterback Randy Wright didn’t exactly have a good situation in Green Bay. And he was never one of those types of athletic and cerebral quarterbacks who could will his team to win.
Not that he had much of a team.
In 1986, his lone year as the unquestioned starter, Wright threw for 3,247 yards, with 17 touchdowns and (gulp) 23 interceptions. Let’s face it, it was easier to live with interceptions when it was Brett Favre throwing them. But I digress.
Drafted in the sixth round of the NFL draft, the former Wisconsin quarterback came to the team presumptively to be the backup to Lynn Dickey, who had a prolific career in green and gold, even if there wasn’t a lot of winning involved.
But Dickey spent a lot of time on the training table, so Wright got some playing time and spot starts his first two seasons. At times, he would come off the bench and move the ball. He showed enough that then-head coach Forrest Gregg anointed Wright the starter for that 1986 season, only to see the Packers go 4-12. Yuck.
USA Today even once included ol’ No. 16 in its list of the worst quarterbacks for every team in history. The article even notes that the Packers’ winning percentage was .218 in games Wright started.
But, as noted above, some Packers fans rooted for Wright and wanted him to succeed. I was one of those fans. I eagerly watched one game in particular in 1987 against the Bears and honestly believed Wright had turned the corner – or was at least about to.
The former Wisconsin Badger was 20 of 41 passing for 298 yards and a pair of touchdowns, one to Phillip Epps and one to Ed West. WIth a minute left on the clock, the Packers drove for what seemed to be a game-winning field goal.
But then the Packers’ defense couldn’t stop Jim McMahon and the Bears, and Kevin Butler kicked a 47-yard game-winning field goal as time expired. Final score: Bears 26, Packers 24. Just heartbreaking.
“I wasn’t an Aaron Rodgers or a Brett Favre or a Walter Payton, so I always had to approach things differently,” Wright said in a 2018 interview. “I knew I wasn’t a great athlete … but there are a lot more athletes like me than there are like Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre or Walter Payton.”
Another aspect of Wright’s career that fans probably remember is that he got hit. A lot. And hard. In that same interview, he recalls getting sacked by Giants great Lawrence Taylor.
Wright recalled that Taylor told him, “Randy, don’t try and get away when I got you. I’m going to lay you down soft, I’m not going to hurt you, but if you try to run away, I’m going to have to slam you.”
“I looked at him and said, ‘Yes, Sir,’” Wright said.
One of the knocks on Wright during his playing does, besides his lack of superior skills, was that he wasn’t necessarily well liked by all of his teammates or the media. This, according to Cliff Christl, who covered the team at the time.
He recalls in that article that he wrote a highly critical story about the quarterback in 1988, after the Packers went 0-5 to start the season with Wright at the helm. It was clear Wright had lost the team, and he soon was benched in favor of Don Majkowski. Christl even said Head Coach Lindy Infante pulled him aside and told him he’d made it impossible for him to go back to Wright as the starter.
In any case, it spelled the end. Wright would be cut before the 1989 season and his NFL career was over. He got over it, though – he did some broadcasting for Big 10 Football and also started what became a successful business in retirement. He also stepped back into football as a coach for his son’s high school team in the early 2010s, before ultimately starting a business that holds football camps with a partner named Jeff Trickey.
For the record, I still have my Randy Wright jersey that I purchased in 1987. Still fits too.