Nelson Toburen, a promising linebacker whose career was cut short by a nearly fatal neck injury the day of his first start, died Sunday, Oct. 4, of pancreatic cancer at his home in Pittsburg, Kan. Toburen was 87.
Had it not been for his injury, Toburen might have wound up as a starter on Vince Lombardi's three-peat champions from 1965-67. Instead, his career ended on Nov. 18, 1962, in the fourth quarter of a game against the Baltimore Colts at what was then Green Bay City Stadium.
Toburen fractured his fifth cervical vertebrae and completely dislocated his sixth making a jarring tackle and forcing a fumble against Colts quarterback John Unitas that helped preserve a 17-13 victory as the Packers improved to 9-0
Dr. James Nellen, the Packers' orthopedist at the time, tended to Toburen on the field, rigidly holding his head at a specific angle as he was taken off on a stretcher and continued doing so in the ambulance as he was transported to St. Vincent Hospital, where he could be placed in traction.
"I always say Dr. Nellen saved my mobility and maybe my life," Toburen once shared in an interview.
The Packers selected Toburen, who played collegiately at Wichita State, in the 14th round of the 1961 NFL Draft. As a rookie, he played in all 14 regular-season games and the 37-0 victory over the New York Giants in the NFL Championship Game. In 1962, Toburen was the backup at all three linebacker positions, which was the strength of the Packers' defense at the time.
Left linebacker Dan Currie had made the Pro Bowl in 1960, was chosen as a Newspaper Enterprise Association all-pro by his fellow players in 1961 and would become a consensus all-pro by the Associated Press, NEA and United Press International after the 1962 season; while right linebacker Bill Forester would be named to his fourth straight Pro Bowl at the end of the year. That also was the season when Ray Nitschke finally took over as a full-time starter in the middle.
Toburen started against the Colts because Currie had sustained a knee injury the game before. But there also was some expectation that Toburen would soon replace the 30-year-old Forester or maybe even beat out Nitschke at middle linebacker.
"(Toburen) would have been All-Pro," Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback Herb Adderley once said. "He was a great athlete."
Toburen spent nearly six weeks in the hospital following his injury and never forgot the day that Lombardi stopped to see him.
"You know Vince was a very emotional man," Toburen recalled years later. "He walked in the door, looked at me in my cast, couldn't talk and left. He didn't say anything. He just teared up. He was just there long enough to look, choke up and leave. He never said a word. Vince gave me another year's salary. He didn't have to, but he did. Thank God he did. I don't know what we would have done."
After being told by Nellen and several other doctors that he shouldn't play again, Toburen went to law school and became an attorney in Pittsburg and eventually a state appellate judge in Kansas.
He also remained a diehard Packer fan. "He has a love for your team that is unmatched," Dave Barnes, a neighbor and friend of Toburen's, wrote to the Packers late last year after he had received his cancer diagnosis.
Occasionally, Toburen also mulled the what-ifs about his brief career in Green Bay.
"Sometimes I think about what it might have been like," Toburen said in an interview late in life. "I thought I had a future and was going to be there many years and play until I couldn't any longer. But it didn't work out that way. I looked at it as a rather tragic incident in my career at the time, but I guess it has worked out pretty well in the long run."
