Throwback Thursday: Cleveland Browns quarterbacks with Super Bowl rings

Don Horn was the rookie backup quarterback for Bart Starr and the Green Bay Packers in the 1967 season when they won their second Super Bowl in a row. Horn had been drafted in the first round but was buried in the depth chart behind future Hall of Famer Starr and veteran backup Zeke Bratkowski. Horn didn’t get any snaps in Super Bowl II.

The first two Super Bowls were really almost like an exhibition game, seen by many as a farcical attempt to add another playoff game against AFL opponents who had zero chance to win. That was pretty much the case in this game featuring the Green Bay Packers and Oakland Raiders.

Green Bay scored field goals on their first two possessions, followed by a Starr-to-Boyd-Dowler 62-yard bomb. The Raiders closed to within six points after a Daryle “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica touchdown pass, but that was as close as they came. They didn’t score again until Green Bay had opened up a 33-7 lead

Despite zero snaps in that Super Bowl, Horn was a promising quarterback, an early disciple of Don Coryell at San Diego State University. By 1969 Bratkowski was retired  (he would come back in 1971), and Horn became the backup. He put together a 4-1 record as the starter substituting for veteran Bart Starr, who was only 4-5. In particular, in the last game of the season, Horn threw for 410 yards and five touchdown passes. That resulted in more than a bit of buzz in Green Bay that Horn would be the next Starr, who was nearing the end of a brilliant football career.

However, Horn didn’t live up to that early promise, completing only 36.8 percent of his passes in relief of Starr the following season. It was off to Denver for two years, where he was 2-6-1 as a starter, and threw only 3 TD passes versus 14 INTs. He wound up with the Cleveland Browns in 1973 backing up Mike Phipps and also was the holder for placekicker Don Cockroft. He threw only eight passes for the Browns, completing four of them.