{"id":190759,"date":"2025-07-08T11:23:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/190759\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T11:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:23:12","slug":"countdown-to-kickoff-joel-hilgenberg-is-the-saints-player-of-day-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/190759\/","title":{"rendered":"Countdown to Kickoff: Joel Hilgenberg is the Saints Player of Day 61"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Orleans Saints<\/a> have a 61-day wait until they host the Arizona Cardinals<\/a> to kick off their 2025 regular season and 59th year in the NFL. Kellen Moore is the team’s new head coach, and he’ll be accompanied by several other new faces. However, there is no player on the roster that currently possesses 61 as a jersey number. Only nine players have ever worn this number in Saints history, with offensive lineman Connor McGovern being the last to do it for six games last season. For our choice as Saints Player of the Day, we’ve selected the best to wear 61 in team history with Joel Hilgenberg.<\/p>\n

Name (age): Joel Hilgenberg (62)<\/p>\n

Hometown: Iowa City, Iowa<\/p>\n

Height, weight: 6-foot-3, 250 pounds<\/p>\n

Drafted: Round 4, 94th overall in 1984 (Saints)<\/p>\n

NFL career: 10 years (all with Saints)<\/p>\n

Upon graduating from Iowa City High School, Hilgenberg didn’t venture far with his collegiate selection of the Iowa Hawkeyes. Joel was teammates with brother Jay at Iowa for one season. The two are also nephews of former Minnesota Vikings<\/a> star linebacker Wally Hilgenberg. Joel forged his own path with the Hawkeyes, earning back-to-back All-Big Ten honors in 1982 and 1983 as well as a 2nd Team All-American selection as a senior.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

New Orleans took Hilgenberg off the board midway through the fourth round of the 1984 NFL Draft. He’d appear in 10 games without a start as a rookie but gradually carved out bigger roles over his next two seasons. After starting seven of his 31 game appearances in 1985 and 1986, Hilgenberg was the Saints’ starting center by 1987. From that point, he was a fixture in the middle of the New Orleans line and started 90 games over the next seven seasons.<\/p>\n

Joel Hilgenberg played all of his 10 NFL seasons with the Saints. Over that span, he appeared in 142 games while making 97 starts. Joel was even reunited with brother Jay during the 1993 season with the Saints. It would be the last year in the playing careers of both Hilgenberg brothers. Joel Hilgenberg earned one Pro Bowl berth, in 1992, but was widely recognized as one of the league’s better interior linemen during his career. After retirement, Hilgenberg spent three years as an offensive line assistant with the Green Bay Packers. In 2006, Hilgenberg was inducted into the Saints Hall of Fame. He was just the fifth New Orleans offensive lineman to receive that honor at the time.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Countdown to Kickoff: Joel Hilgenberg is the Saints Player of Day 61<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Orleans Saints have a 61-day wait until they host the Arizona Cardinals to kick off their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[390,7,345,1286,41333,7166,259,896,55,2572,2571,6,397,41334],"class_list":{"0":"post-190759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-arizona-cardinals","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-iowa-hawkeyes","12":"tag-joel-hilgenberg","13":"tag-kellen-moore","14":"tag-minnesota-vikings","15":"tag-new-orleans","16":"tag-new-orleans-saints","17":"tag-neworleans","18":"tag-neworleanssaints","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-saints","21":"tag-wally-hilgenberg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114817361799600154","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}