A Devine Blunder

With the 11th pick in the 1972 NFL Draft, the Packers selected Nebraska QB Jerry Tagge. It could've been a great story; Tagge was a hometown athlete who attended Green Bay West High, sold popcorn at Lambeau Field as a kid, and went off to college in Omaha, where he led Nebraska to back-to-back national titles. Tagge, who was the MVP of the Orange Bowl in '71 and '72, didn't offer exceptional talent, but played well under pressure in college and appeared to be an efficient field general.

Tagge sat on the bench in 1972 and watched Scott Hunter lead the team to it's first division title since the departure of Lombardi. The next year head coach Dan Devine created a chaotic atmosphere around the postion, shuffling Hunter, Tagge and Jim Del Gaizo at quarterback.

With the advent of the horrendous John Hadl trade, Tagge was cut during the 1975 preseason by rookie head coach Bart Starr. Despite not panning out in the NFL, Tagge played with San Antonio of the World Football League in 1976, and found success with the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League from 1977-79. He took the Lions to the playoffs two of his three years there, and was MVP of the Western Division in 1979, before suffering a career-ending knee injury just as the Lions were entering the postseason.

Upon joining the team for spring training camp in '72, Dan Devine issued Tagge his familiar number 14, which he wore during his successful tenure at Nebraska. Eventually, someone caught the mistake and told Devine: The team had retired number 14 in honor of Don Hutson in 1951.

Fortunately, Devine's blunder was discovered before the beginning of the preseason, and Tagge was then given # 17, his old high school number.

The jerseys pictured above represent two of the four issued for Tagge at the start of training camps in 1972. Tagge is wearing the green jersey in this picture, featured in the 1972 Sports Focus Packers Yearbook:

The accidental issuance of Hutson's number was a newsworthy event at the time. Here's a UPI account from the (Oshkosh) Daily Northwestern, June 7, 1972:

The article states that Devine subsequently sent Hutson one of the number 14 jerseys from the Packers locker room, and that "the number would be taken off the rest." This would imply altering any durene jerseys issued to Tagge at the time, since you obviously can't remove a screened-on number from a mesh jersey.

I'm inclined to believe only mesh jerseys were issued to Tagge at this point, however. My guess is that Devine sent Hutson one of the green ones, and the three others were put into storage.

One green and two white #14 jerseys were saved by longtime Packers equipment manager Bob Noel, and for good reason: They represented the last time the team would ever manufacture a jersey with that number--arguably the most important jersey number in Packers history.

The three jerseys show some use (what you might call "appropriate training camp wear", I suppose), but have retained their bold colors due to the fact they were spared the typical indignity of being recycled for practice use for years afterward.

Devine's gaffe was also mentioned in the official 1972 Packers Yearbook, on page 28:

It's worth mentioning that this sort of accident happened with the Packers once before: In 1961 Ben Agajanian was allowed to wear Tony Canadeo's number 3, which had been retired for him in 1952.

Although Dan Devine made much bigger blunders as head coach of the Packers, I can appreciate this small one as an interesting part of his legacy, and as a quirky contribution to our arcane hobby of collecting these things. Besides, I didn't have $60,000 for Hutson's number 14, so Tagge's will have to do.