A defensive star in Green Bay — he ran back seven interceptions for touchdowns — he played on five championship teams under Vince Lombardi and one in Dallas.
Herb Adderley, the Hall of Fame cornerback who played for Coach Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packer teams that won five N.F.L. championships in the 1960s, including the first two Super Bowls, and then helped take the Dallas Cowboys to their first Super Bowl victory in franchise history, died on Friday. He was 81. The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, announced his death. No details were provided. When Adderley arrived at the Packers’ 1961 training camp as a first-round draft pick and a former all-Big Ten running back at Michigan State, he expected to be a backup for the Packer stars Jim Taylor at fullback and Paul Hornung at halfback, and that is what he became. Going into the annual Thanksgiving Day game between the Packers and the Detroit Lions, he had not run from scrimmage all season. But Lombardi, who saw Adderley as the best pure athlete on the team, finally gave him a chance — in the defensive alignment. He inserted Adderley, who had played some defense in college, at left cornerback in the second quarter when the Packers’ secondary, already short-handed, lost cornerback Hank Gremminger to an injury. “I was in a state of shock,” Adderley told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel long afterward. “I was shaking and nervous. I had no time to ask anybody any questions. I didn’t know what I was doing.” Nonetheless, he intercepted a fourth-quarter pass from the Lions’ Jim Ninowski, helping the Packers rally for a 17-9 victory. In December, the Packers won their first N.F.L. championship under Lombardi, routing the Giants,37-0. Adderley played for nine seasons with the Packers and three for the Cowboys. He had speed and decent enough size for a cornerback of his time, at 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds, and he intercepted 48 regular-season passes, running seven of them back for touchdowns.
