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N.F.L.|Billy Howton, Top Green Bay Packers Receiver in the ’50s, Dies at 95
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/sports/football/billy-howton-dead.html
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He retired as the N.F.L.’s leading career receiver but was soon surpassed. In retirement, he went to prison for bilking investors in an $8 million fraud.
Aug. 13, 2025, 5:25 p.m. ET
Billy Howton, a gifted wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers and two other teams who retired after the 1963 season as the National Football League’s career leader in receptions and served as the first president of the players’ union, but who decades later was sentenced to prison for financial fraud, died on Aug. 4 in Houston. He was 95.
His son, William, confirmed the death, in a memory-care facility.
Howton never played for a winning Packers team, but he distinguished himself as the team’s leading pass catcher during his seven years in Green Bay. In 1952, when teams played a 12-game season, he led the N.F.L. with 1,231 receiving yards. It was the first time a rookie receiver had gained more than 1,000 in a season.
In 1956, Howton broke Don Hutson’s Packers record for receiving yards in a game when he caught seven passes for 257 yards — a record that still stands. The next year, he caught the first touchdown pass at City Stadium (now Lambeau Field).
“Howton was a tall Texan, quick and cocky, the sort who would return to the huddle and announce that he could get open on a deep fly pattern if only the quarterback could throw that far,” David Maraniss wrote in “When Pride Still Mattered,” his 1999 biography of Vince Lombardi, who became the Packers’ coach and general manager in 1959 and led the team to five N.F.L. championships in the 1960s, including victories in the first two Super Bowls.
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In 1956, Howton again led the league in receiving yardage, with 1,188 yards on 55 receptions, and was named an All-Pro for the first time. He earned that honor again the next season and was selected to play in the Pro Bowl four times.
