Packers of the Past: Ahman Green

GREEN BAY – From the time he joined the Packers in 2000 through the end of the 2004 season, no one in the NFL gained more yards from scrimmage or rushed for more yards than Green Bay’s No. 30.

“I wasn’t a big stat guy when I was playing,” Ahman Green told Packerland during a July 2024 visit to Green Bay, for the annual Packers Hall of Fame golf outing. “Between Coach (Mike) Sherman and Edgar Bennett, my head coach and my position coach, those guys were always telling, ‘A.G., you’re right here to this record and to that record,’ and I’d be like, ‘I just want to know if we won the game or not.’ But now I can smell my flowers and look back on my career and just kind of take a notice of my body of work,” Green added.  

Green’s body of work has forever cemented his place among Green Bay’s all-time greats. He holds or shares 18 franchise records, including most yards rushing in a season (1,883), most career rushing yards (8,322), most seasons with 1,000 or more rushing yards (6), most yards rushing in a game (218), most career rushing attempts (1,851), most rushing attempts in a season (355), most touchdowns in a season (20), the team’s longest run from scrimmage (98) and the most yards from scrimmage (11,048).

Green, who turns 48 on Feb. 16, gives much of the credit for his individual success to the guys up front who cleared the pathways to daylight.

“Those guys were my bread and butter,” Green told us. “Marco (Rivera), Mike Wahl, Mark Tauscher, Chad Clifton, Kevin Barry, Mike Flanagan, and Bubba Franks, you count him in there, too. And then the wide receivers – Donald Driver, Robert Ferguson, Javon Walker, Greg Jennings, James Jones, Jordy Nelson – those guys, they’re all a part of it. But that line, though, you talk about those five guys with Kevin Barry rotating in as our sixth man off the bench that would help out with some of the power plays, me and those guys had good camaraderie, we hung out a lot, so I think that was our glue right there, knowing each other, watching film with one another, where we could pick out plays and then talk about how they were going to set the blocks for me, then I could just see it and make it real easy,” said Green. “And one thing they liked about the way I hit the hole, I hit it fast, so they were like, ‘The way you keep hitting the hole, we don’t have to hold our blocks long, so keep doing that and you’ll make us look good.’”      

On Dec. 28, 2003, the night he set the team’s single-game rushing record, Green also established the franchise record for the longest run from scrimmage, when he ripped off a 98-yarder against Denver at Lambeau Field, erasing Andy Uram’s 64-year-old franchise record (97 yards vs. Chicago Cardinals, Oct. 8, 1939) on his final carry of the regular season. 

“The play was H-2 Bob and it was a slight counter play where I take a false step to the left and make it look like I’m going left and then swing it back right by the time I get the handoff, and it’s a double-team on the play side up to the middle linebacker and then any garbage left, that’s where Kevin Barry or anybody on the right side would pick up the garbage and clean it up, and if it’s blocked perfectly, everybody saw what happens,” Green told Packerland. 

The 2003 campaign was, by far, Green’s best as a pro. He became the first and only player in NFL history to record at least 1,850 rushing yards, average 5.0 yards per carry, score 20 touchdowns and catch 50 passes in one season. He also broke Jim Taylor’s 41-year stranglehold on the team’s single-season rushing record, covering 1,883 yards on 355 carries, averaging 5.3 yards per rushing attempt. And his 120 points scored were the most by a Packers position player (non-kicker) since Paul Hornung scored 146 in 1961.

The following season, Green scored on a 90-yard run against Dallas on Oct. 24, 2004, the league’s longest rush that year. In doing so, he joined Bo Jackson in becoming the only players in NFL history to have two touchdown runs of 90 or more yards. They have been joined in recent years by Lamar Miller, Chris Johnson and Derrick Henry.

The week prior to the Cowboys game, Green threw for a touchdown at Detroit Oct. 17, a 20-yard, left-handed toss to Donald Driver. In doing so, Green became the first Packer in 21 years to record rushing, receiving and passing touchdowns in the same season (Gerry Ellis, 1983). 

Green was a major pass-catching threat out of the backfield, on a team known for its highly-successful screen plays.

Green led the Packers in receptions in 2000 and 2001 (73, 62) and was second to Donald Driver in 2002 and ’03 (57, 50). 

Green was acquired from Seattle in an April 2000 trade for cornerback Fred Vinson, which also involved several draft picks. He played for the Packers for eight seasons (2000-06, 2009). Green spent his first two seasons in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks, who selected him in the third round (76th overall) of the 1998 NFL Draft. In 2007, Green signed a four-year, $23 million deal with the Houston Texans, where he was reunited with his former head coach and former Texans' assistant head coach Mike Sherman, as well as former Packers running back Samkon Gado. 

During his time in Green Bay, Ahman Green was a four-time Pro Bowl selection (2001-04) and was a First-team All-Pro selection in 2003. He appeared in 104 games for the Packers.

Green lived in Green Bay for 24 years and he and his family just recently moved away.

He was elected to the Packers Hall of Fame in 2014.