Honestly, I almost skipped this one. A Lombardi-era linebacker named Nelson Toburen died at 87, and the first thing I did was look up who he was: two seasons in Green Bay, 1961 and 1962, two NFL championships, and a career that ended when a neck injury on a tackle late in that second season put him in a hospital bed instead of a huddle. Then he went home to Kansas, went to law school, and spent decades as a judge. That is a good life. It is not, on its face, a watch-guide story. Nobody is opening an app tonight and typing "Toburen" into the search bar.

But I kept poking around, and here's what changed my mind. Every time a player from that era passes, the same thing happens. A few thousand people go looking for the Lombardi Packers, find a forty-second clip embedded in a news story, and give up. The footage exists. The documentaries exist. They are just scattered across four or five services, and nobody tells you which ones are actually worth paying for. So that's what this is: my honest take on where the Lombardi-era Packers live in 2026, what I'd spend money on, and what I'd leave alone.

Start free, because the free stuff is better than you'd think

The NFL's official YouTube channel, along with NFL Films' own channel, is where I'd send anyone first. NFL Films has been quietly posting restored vintage material for years: highlight packages from the 1960s title games, old "NFL Films Presents" segments, and the kind of grainy sideline footage of Lombardi chewing out Jerry Kramer that you cannot get anywhere else. Search "1962 NFL Championship" and you'll find the Packers grinding out a 16-7 win over the Giants in a brutal wind at Yankee Stadium, the game that capped Toburen's final season. Fair warning: these are not full broadcasts. Complete TV broadcasts of most 1962 games simply don't exist anymore, because the networks didn't keep them. But the NFL Films cameras were on the sideline, and that film is the real record of the era.

Packers.com also keeps a surprising amount of archive video, and the team's social accounts reliably post tribute reels when an alumnus dies. Free, no account, no sign-in wall. I check them more often than I'd like to admit.

Where I'd actually spend money

If you only buy one thing, make it HBO Max, and the reason is a single film: "Lombardi," the 2010 documentary HBO Sports made with NFL Films. Fifteen years on, it is still the best ninety minutes anyone has produced about that team. Bart Starr, Kramer, Willie Davis and Lombardi's own family talk on camera, and the game film is cut in with real care rather than dumped in as filler. Max's catalog does rotate, so confirm it's still listed before you sign up, but it has been a steady resident of the sports documentary shelf for a long time. The ad-supported plan runs about ten dollars a month, and I'd do exactly what I do every winter: subscribe for a month, work through the sports docs, cancel. Max's cancel flow is painless, which is something I can say about very few streaming apps.

NFL+ is the one I go back and forth on. The base plan is roughly seven dollars a month, and the Premium tier is about fifteen, or around a hundred a year if you commit. Premium is the tier that matters here, because it unlocks NFL Films archive content and NFL Network's library programming, including "A Football Life," which has profiled several Lombardi-era Packers over the years. Which players have episodes, and whether those episodes are currently in the on-demand library, changes more than I'd like, so check the app's listings before you pay for it. My honest read on NFL+: the app is clunky, the search is bad, and the whole thing is built for someone who wants to rewatch last Sunday's game on a phone during lunch. But if you're the type who will sit through a full "America's Game" episode on the 1966 or 1967 Packers, the Super Bowl I and II teams that came just after Toburen's time, nothing else has that depth. I keep it from September through the playoffs and drop it in February.

Peacock and ESPN's streaming tiers both carry some NFL documentary programming, and both are worth a browse if you already pay for them. I would not sign up for either one specifically for 1960s Packers material. ESPN's 30 for 30 library is enormous and wonderful and has almost nothing on Lombardi's Green Bay. Peacock's sports documentary shelf turns over often enough that I'd rather you check it the week you're reading this than trust anything I could write down today.

One honest gap: there is no streaming home for complete Lombardi-era games the way there is for, say, 1980s Super Bowls. If someone sells you on a service by promising "every classic Packers game," they mean highlights and NFL Films features, not three-hour broadcasts. Set your expectations there and you won't feel ripped off.

What's happening right now (October 2026)

This part will go stale, so treat it as a snapshot. Expect NFL Network and the Packers' own channels to run tribute segments on Toburen over the next week or so, and expect the Packers to acknowledge him at Lambeau before a home game. If you want NFL Network live rather than on demand, it streams through NFL+ Premium and through the big live-TV bundles, including YouTube TV, Fubo and Sling. Channel lineups shift, so confirm NFL Network is in whichever package you're eyeing before you commit. NFL Network also posts most of its feature pieces free on its site and YouTube within a day or two, which is how I'd watch them. I'm not paying for a bundle to see a four-minute tribute.

If this sends you further down the rabbit hole, and it did for me, two books do what no documentary quite manages: Jerry Kramer's "Instant Replay," a diary of the 1967 season, and David Maraniss's "When Pride Still Mattered," the definitive Lombardi biography. Not streaming, I know. But you'll watch the old film differently afterward.

Here's the thing I keep coming back to. Toburen played two seasons, got hurt, and built an entire second life that had nothing to do with football. The NFL Films footage from those two years is still sitting there, free, on YouTube. That seems like a fair trade: twenty minutes of your evening for a guy who gave the game his neck. Start there, add Max for the Lombardi doc if you want the full story, and skip the rest unless you already have it.

That's where I'd start. See you next week.

Marcus

— Marcus Bell