Green Bay Packers: 50 greatest players in franchise history

Greatest players in Green Bay Packers history: 31. Gale Gillingham

Green Bay has had well over 20 former Packers that have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. One of the best Packers of all-time that does not have a bust in Canton is guard Gale Gillingham. He spent his entire 11-year NFL career with the team that drafted him No. 13 overall in the 1966 NFL Draft out of Minnesota.

Gillingham played sparingly as a rookie in 1966, but would start at left guard beginning in 1967. However, it was in 1969 that Gillingham’s career really took off. He switched over to right guard and became a perennial Pro Bowler. Gillingham made five Pro Bowls over a six-year stint from 1969 to 1974. He made two All-Pro first teams and four All-Pro second teams in his 11 years with the Packers.

Gillingham won two NFL championships and two Super Bowls as a young player for the Packers in 1966 and 1967. However, Green Bay wouldn’t get back to the Super Bowl at any point of Gillingham’s prime. He would retire professionally after the 1976 NFL season at the age of 32. Overall, Gillingham played in 128 regular season games for the Packers, starting in 116 of them.

While he is in the Packers Hall of Fame, obviously the Pro Football Hall of Fame has evaded Gillingham. If he does get in, it will be posthumously, as Gillingham died in 2011 at the age of 67. Gillingham may inevitably remain in the Hall of Very Good, but there is a chance he does get in one day. It took far too long for fellow Packers guard Jerry Kramer to get in, so you never know.