For more than a century, the Green Bay Packers have been a benchmark for football excellence.

Thousands of players have helped pave the way, and we're here to tell you their stories.

I'm Wayne Laravie.

This is the Packers alumni spot White ken Ellis was a fourth round draft pick in nineteen seventy by the Packers out of Southern University.

It came to Green Bay as a wide receiver and punt returner, but it didn't take long for defensive minded head coach Phil Benkston to move him over to cornerback on a club still loaded with Lombardy vets.

There was Willie Wood, Bob Jetter, Doug Hart in the secondary.

Those three four guys that I remember whale and they kids took me under their wings.

In fact, I recall the first two weeks of training camp.

Green Made drafted me by the way as a wide receiver, and the first two weeks of training camp that's what that's where I was at on the offensive side of the ball.

And I remember being called in the coach Bankston's office and he basically set me down and said, you know, you're doing a good job on offense, and but you know you're gonna probably make the team.

And if you stay on offense, you gonna back up Carroll Dale.

But we need you on defense.

If you moved the defense, you got an opportunity to start.

So I said, well, move me, coach, i'm'a I I wanna play.

And as as you recall that herb Adam was still with the club at that time, but they traded him to Dallas and the drafted on another court defensive back, Al Matthews that year to take out of this spot.

But Al was in the All side camp.

He and Mike McCoy were playing in the All Side game, and during that two weeks of of training camp, I got, you know, the opportunity to to move the defense and ended up starting.

Talented quarterback Willie Buchanan came along in nineteen seventy two and paired with Kenny to form one of the best cornerback duos in team history.

Together, they intercepted eight passes that year.

We accepted Willie for who he was.

We knew the talent that he had.

He was a first round pick.

Course back then, as rookies, you know, you got kind of hounded by the veterans.

You know, you had to sing doing training camp and meals and stuff like that.

But Willie was a little different, and he let his play on the field talk for him, and we saw the talent that he had and we accepted him right away.

When you guys were playing, it was pretty much what man the man coverage right back there.

Yes it was, And I mean man, the man bumping run back then was bumping run.

It's not just what they're playing today.

You could bump the guy all over the field as long as the ball was in the air.

Wow, it was a different game, wasn't it.

It was definitely a different guy.

In fact, I remember when you were playing against the Rams, and I can't remember the receiver's name, but he was complaining all day on refie holding me, and I just kept mass shut him and play ball.

The nineteen seventy two season was the team's first postseason since the Bombardi era.

Now, many on that team believed they had the stuff to go all the way.

Remember that was the year the Dolphins went undefeated.

The Packers lost to George Allen and is over the Hill game in Washington in the playoffs.

As I think back about that game and about that year, that was the year that Miami went undefeated and they beat Washington in the Super Bowl.

I remember the last game that Miami lost that year was in the preseason game.

And when we played them, we beat them in Miami in the preseason that year.

And that's not preseason like today.

That's preseason where your starters played most of the way right, most of the you know, so you played them, see not many people know that the last game they actually lost, last game of the accident, and that was in Miami, in Miami.

In the preseason.

Yes.

Wow, And that's why we figured if we could get by Washington, we could go to the Super Bowl.

We had a good chance to winning that game.

Did that game kind of give you guys the belief that, hey, we could do something here?

Yes it did.

We knew what we had defensively, and we knew what we had offensively.

But we knew we had a great football team, We had great players, and we were just given a chance to jail together another year we could do something really great.

You were also special teams play maker.

The field goal attempt to return at one hundred yards for a touchdown in nineteen seventy one still ranks longest return of a missed field goal, block field goal, missed field goal, you returned one hundred yards.

That's the longest in team history to this day.

Do you remember that play?

Was it something that stands out for you?

Yes?

I remember it, And I don't know what we had, if we had a return called or not, but I just know that I was back at the goal line and the ball was short, and I feeled it and I started down the right side of the sideline and I saw that it had a wall set up, and I just got behind that wall and right under the yards for a touchdown.

Wow.

And what a tremendously exciting play.

Yes, it was.

Tell me about your defensive backs room, because I know the football teams are broke broken down into position groups.

You become close to the people usually in your position group.

Tell me about yours.

The secondary of that Packers team in that.

Era, myself and Willoughby Cannon on the corners of Al Matthew and Jim Hill at the safest Charlie Hall was.

We had a close knit group of guys and we kind of macof Lane used to call us the rat pack, a little rat packed, a little rat back there, but we enjoyed playing for one another and playing with one another, and we got a real out of being the last line of defense, to know that if we kept everything in front of us, we didn't our guys get behind us, that we had a chance to do something great with our offensive line rush that we had in our linebackers.

Ellis recorded twenty career interceptions with Green Bay and was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in nineteen ninety eight.

But as I look back on it, I feel blessed to have been drafted by Green Bay.

And I say that because I came from a small town in Southeast Georgia city by the name of Woodbine, Georgia.

I went to a small high school there.

I went to a small school in HBCU at Southern University.

And coming to Green Bay, like I said, it was a blessing for me because I feel like had I started out in a city like New York or LA or some a bigger city, I would have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Coming here to Green Bay was like home for me.

Although I must admit I didn't always like Green Bay for two reasons.

They were always winning and it was cold up here.

I didn't like cold weather then and I still don't like cold weather.

But I fell in love with green Bay because of again, the atmosphere, the fans.

It was like being at home, you know.

As a team, we did a lot of things together.

I remember on our off days we had Bob Brown was our chef.

He would always cook up meals for us and we would get together as a team, so we hung out together after practice.

We would go to the local bars and have beers together and things of that nature.

So green Bay was the right place and the right fit for me.

Got a great trivia question for you.

Try this at your next cocktail party.

Who was the last team to beat the Miami Dolphins in nineteen seventy two.

The answer the Packers in the preseasonard of Miami's perfect campaign.

Now, players from that Packers team have told me they actually matched up really well with the Dolphins that season, So who's to say they couldn't have done it again, maybe in the Super Bowl that year.