You know, one of the advantages of being 84 is that you stop worrying about giving the popular answer. I’ve been asked about football for most of my life. The Super Bowls. The Cowboys. The Hail Mary pass. Uh the quarterbacks I played against. Um but uh every once in a while somebody asks a question that uh makes me sit back for a second.
Uh they asked Roger, “Who are the players you truly admired?” That’s a different conversation. Admiration isn’t about statistics. It isn’t about trophies. It’s about seeing something in another player and thinking I’d like to have a little of that in my own game. Maybe it was leadership. Maybe it was toughness.
Maybe it was the way they carried themselves when nobody was watching. Looking back now, there are five names that immediately come to mind. Five players who left a lasting impression on me long after the games were over. The first player I want to talk about is Johnny Unitas. Now, I know some younger fans might hear that name and immediately think about records or old NFL films highlights. That’s fine.
But for guys of my generation, Johnny was a lot more than that. He was the quarterback everybody watched. Um long before I ever played for the Cowboys, long before people knew who Roger Staubach was, I was watching Johnny Unitas. What impressed me wasn’t the way he threw the football. Plenty of quarterbacks could throw.
What impressed me was the way he carried himself. He walked onto the field looking like he already knew exactly how the game was going to unfold. There was no panic. No wasted movement. No need to prove anything. He just went to work. When I was at Navy, I paid attention to quarterbacks. That’s natural. You study people who are doing what you hope to do one day.
Every time I watched Unitas, I came away with the same feeling. He made difficult things look ordinary. A 2-minute drive didn’t seem dramatic when he was running it. A comeback didn’t seem impossible. Somehow, he made the hardest part of football look routine. I remember talking to players who faced him, and the thing that always stood out was the respect, not fear. Respect.
They knew that if the game was close in the fourth quarter, Johnny had a chance. You could play a great game for 55 minutes and still walk away disappointed because he found a way to finish it. Uh that’s something I always admired. Um football is full of talented players. Every roster has talent. What separates the special ones is trust.
Do your teammates trust you when everything is on the line? Do they believe you can solve the problem when nobody else can? Johnny Unitas had that. You could see it in the way his teammates looked at him. As my own career developed, I found myself understanding him more. Uh the quarterback position isn’t really about throwing passes.
It’s it’s about responsibility. Um everybody in that huddle is looking at you. They’re looking for confidence. They’re looking for answers. Um Johnny understood that better than anyone. I I never tried to become Johnny Unitas because nobody could. But I absolutely learned from him. I learned that leadership isn’t something you announce.
It’s something people give you because you’ve earned it. Johnny earned it every single Sunday. Before I ever led a huddle, I spent years admiring the way Johnny Unitas did. The next player I want to talk about is Bob Lilly. And uh honestly, if you spend enough time around the Dallas Cowboys in those years, it would have been impossible not to admire him.
When people talk about the Cowboys today, they they usually talk about championships, famous games, or some of the big personalities that came through the organization. But when I arrived in Dallas, Bob Lilly was already the standard. Not because somebody gave him that title. Not because he demanded attention.
He earned it. I can still remember walking into that locker room as a young player and seeing the way people reacted to him. Nobody had to tell you who the leaders were. You could feel it. Some players command a room because they’re loud. Bob wasn’t like that. Uh he commanded respect because everybody knew exactly how hard he worked and in exactly what he expected from himself.
Um the thing I admired most was that he never asked anybody to do something he wasn’t already doing. Um that’s rare. Um a lot of people can talk about commitment. A lot of people can give speeches. Bob Lilly showed commitment every day without saying much at all. And believe me, those Cowboys teams didn’t become contenders overnight.
There were tough seasons. There were disappointing losses. There were years when people wondered if the organization would ever get where it wanted to go. Through all of that, Bob stayed the same guy. He showed up. He practiced. He competed. He never looked for excuses. One thing people sometimes forget is how important players like Bob are to a franchise.
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Um everybody remembers the touchdowns. Everybody remembers the game-winning plays. What they don’t always see is the foundation underneath all of it. Every successful team has a handful of players who create the culture before the championships ever arrive. Uh Bob Lilly was one of those players. I saw it every day.
Younger players watched him. Veterans respected him. Coaches trusted him. When somebody like that speaks, people listen. When somebody like that works, people follow. And the truth is, football teaches you pretty quickly who is real and who isn’t. You spend too much time together for anything fake to survive. Um that’s one reason admiration means more to me than popularity.
Admiration comes from seeing somebody up close. It comes from seeing the habits nobody talks about and the sacrifices nobody celebrates. What I saw in Bob Lilly was consistency. The same attitude on Monday that he had on Sunday. The same effort in practice that he gave in games. The same professionalism whether cameras were around or not.
Those qualities don’t always make headlines, but they win football games. More importantly, they build organizations that last. Every championship culture starts with someone willing to set the standard. For the Dallas Cowboys, that person was Bob Lilly. The next player I want to talk about is Walter Payton. And I’ll be honest, when most people hear Walter’s name, the first thing they think about is running.
They think about all those rushing yards, all those highlights, all those records. I understand that. Uh he was one of the greatest running backs the game has ever seen. Uh but that’s not what made me admire him the most. Uh what stayed with me was how hard he played. I’ve been around football long enough to know the difference between talent and commitment. Talent gets you noticed.
Commitment is what keeps you great year after year. Walter had both. That’s a rare combination. You could turn on a game and immediately see it. He didn’t run like somebody trying to protect himself. He didn’t play like somebody worried about preserving statistics. Every carry looked important to him.
Every yard seemed to matter. It didn’t matter if it was the first quarter or late in the fourth. The effort never changed. Um as a quarterback, I always paid attention to to players who elevated everybody around him. Walter did that. Um defensive coordinators spent entire weeks trying to stop him. Teammates fed off his energy. Coaches trusted him.
Fans loved him. Um that’s not something that happens by accident. I I remember watching the Bears over the years and and thinking about how much responsibility was on his shoulders. Uh sometimes people look at great players and assume everything came easily. Uh football doesn’t work that way. Defenses knew Walter Payton was getting the ball.
They built game plans around stopping him. They stacked the line of scrimmage. They committed extra defenders. And um somehow he kept producing. That takes more than athletic ability. That takes determination. One thing I always respected was that Walter never seemed interested in taking shortcuts. Some players are blessed with extraordinary gifts and rely on them.
Walter worked as if he was still trying to prove himself. Even after becoming a superstar, he carried himself with the mentality of someone who still had something to earn. Players notice that. Trust me, they do. Inside locker rooms, reputations are built differently than they are outside. Fans see the games.
Players see the preparation. They hear the stories. They learn who puts in the extra work when nobody is watching. Walter developed the kind of reputation that every professional athlete hopes to have. And there was another thing I admired. He played for something bigger than himself.
You could see how much he cared about his teammates. You could see how much he cared about winning. There are players who chase individual recognition, and then there are players who genuinely want the entire team to succeed. Uh Walter always looked like the second type to me. When I think about the word admiration, that’s exactly what comes to mind.
Not just greatness. Not just records. Character. Consistency. Effort. Um the willingness to give everything you have, even when everyone in the stadium knows you’re carrying the load. Uh a lot of players leave behind numbers. Uh Walter Payton left behind a standard. Nobody earned respect the hard way uh quite like Walter Payton.
Uh the next player I want to talk about is Roger Wehrli. Now, this might be the name on the list that surprises people the most. If you’re expecting nothing but quarterbacks, Hall of Fame running backs, and household names that dominated commercials and magazine covers, uh Roger Wehrli might not be your first guess.
But admiration isn’t about popularity. It’s about impact. And Roger Wehrli left uh a lasting impression on me. One of the things that happens when you play quarterback for a long time is that you develop an appreciation for intelligence. Uh fans naturally notice speed. They notice strength. They notice spectacular plays. Quarterbacks notice something different.
We notice anticipation. We notice discipline. We notice players who seem to understand what’s happening before everyone else does. That’s what stood out about Roger Wehrli. Every time I face the Cardinals, I knew exactly where he was lined up. Not because coaches told me to watch him, because if I didn’t know where he was, eventually I’d regret it.
Some defensive backs relied on athletic ability. They wanted to outrun receivers or make dramatic plays on the football. Wehrli played a different game. He stud.i.ed. He prepared. He understood route concepts. He understood tendencies. He understood what quarterbacks were trying to accomplish. And that’s dangerous. People often assume the hardest defenders to play against are the most physical ones. Sometimes that’s true.
But sometimes the toughest defender is the one who quietly takes away the throw you thought would be open. The one who disguises his intentions. The one who forces you to hesitate for just half a second. A quarterback half a second feels like an eternity. There were times during games when I’d look at a coverage after the snap and realize Roger had already figured out what we were trying to do.
That’s frustrating. Not because he was making spectacular plays every series, but because he consistently made smart plays. He put himself in the right position. He made quarterbacks work harder than they wanted to. I I always respected that because football at its highest level is a thinking man’s game.
Physical talent gets players into the league. Mental discipline keeps them there. Roger Wehrli had that discipline. The other thing I admired was his consistency. Year after year coaches trusted him. Teammates trusted him. Opposing quarterbacks respected him. Those things don’t happen by accident. They happen because a player earns that reputation over thousands of snaps and countless hours of preparation.
When people look back at NFL history, they often focus on the loudest personalities. There’s nothing wrong with that. Great players deserve recognition, but you know, some of the professionals I admired most were the ones who approached the game with quiet excellence. They didn’t need attention. They didn’t need headlines.
They simply did their jobs at a extraordinarily high level. Roger Wehrli was one of those players. When I think about football intelligence, discipline, and professionalism, his name always comes to mind. He reminded me that greatness doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it just shows up every Sunday and does everything right.
Talent gets attention. Intelligence wins respect. And finally, the player I admire most is Bart Starr. You know, when I look back on my football life, there are certain names that immediately bring back memories of great games, great teams, and great moments. Then there are a few names that represent something bigger than football itself.
For me, Bart Starr belongs in that second group. Long before I became the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, Bart Starr was already the model. Not just for quarterbacks. For professionals. For leaders. For people who wanted to represent the game the right way. What always impressed me about Bart was how little he seemed interested in talking about himself.
That’s unusual when you’re one of the most successful players in the league. Most people would have every reason to remind everyone about championships, awards, and accomplishments. Bart never carried himself that way. He let his actions speak for him. I think that’s one reason so many players respected him. Um football locker rooms can be tough places.
Players come from different backgrounds, different personalities, different experiences. Respect isn’t automatically given. It’s earned. Somehow Bart earned it everywhere he went. When people discuss the great quarterbacks in NFL history, they usually start with wins and championships. That’s understandable. Bart had plenty of both, but what impressed me wasn’t simply the fact that he won. It was the way he won.
His teammates trusted him. That might sound simple, but it really isn’t. Every quarterback wants the confidence of his teammates. Very few earn it at the level Bart did. When games became difficult, people looked to him. When pressure increased, people believed in him. There was a a calmness about him that seemed to spread throughout an entire team.
As my own career developed, I started appreciating that quality more and more. The older I got, the more I realized leadership isn’t about speeches. It isn’t about volume. It isn’t about being the center of attention. Leadership is about giving other people confidence when circumstances become difficult. Bart Starr did that naturally.
I also admired the way he carried himself away from football. That’s something people don’t talk about enough. Um your reputation isn’t built entirely on Sundays. Uh it’s built through years of interactions with teammates, coaches, fans, and communities. Bart understood that responsibility. Over time, I noticed something interesting.
Whenever people talked about Bart Starr, they almost never started with statistics. They started with character. They talked about integrity. They talked about professionalism. They talked about trust. That’s incredibly rare in professional sports. The truth is, football eventually ends for all of us. The records get broken.
The trophies become history. New generations arrive. What remains is the kind of person you were and the impact you had on others. When I think about the players who influenced the way I viewed leadership, competition, and responsibility, no one stands above Bart Starr. He represented everything I believe football should encourage.
Excellence, humility, accountability, respect. If someone asked me what an NFL player should aspire to become, I would point them toward Bart Starr. Looking back on this list, what strikes me isn’t how different these players were, it’s how much they had in common. Johnny Unitas showed me what a quarterback could be before I ever stepped onto an NFL field.
Bob Lilly taught me that great teams are built by people willing to set standards every single day. Walter Payton reminded everyone that talent means very little without effort. Roger Wehrli proved that intelligence can be just as valuable as athletic ability. And Bart Starr demonstrated what leadership and character look like when they’re practiced consistently over an entire lifetime.
What’s interesting is that none of these men earned my admiration for exactly the same reason. That’s probably why this list was harder to put together than people might think. I wasn’t looking for the most famous names. I wasn’t looking for the biggest statistics. I was thinking about the players who left a genuine impression on me.
At 84, football looks a little different than it did when I was playing. The game has changed, the athletes have changed, the way fans experience football has changed, but some things never change. Teammates still follow leaders. Preparation still matters. Character still matters. Trust still matters. Those lessons stay with you long after the final whistle.
When I think about the players I truly admired, I don’t just remember what they accomplished. I remember how they carried themselves. I remember the example they set. And in many ways, those lessons ended up being just as valuable as anything I learned on the field. Those are my five. The five players I admired most.
I’d be curious to know who would make your list.
