Y.A. Tittle’s journey from San Francisco to New York
Hall of Famers
Published on : 7/16/2023
By Ryan Michael
Special to the Pro Football Hall of Fame
(Editor’s note: This article is the second in a series looking at quarterbacks’ achievements that have aged well over the past 80 NFL seasons.)
Yelberton Abraham Tittle Jr.
The quarterback known to the football world as “Y.A.” played in both the All-America Football Conference (1948-49) and the National Football League (1950-1964).
At the time of his retirement, his 2,118 completions, 28,339 passing yards and 212 touchdown passes were the most in NFL history.
Including his two seasons in the AAFC, his 2,427 completions, 33,070 passing yards and 242 touchdown passes were the most in pro football history.
In 1971, he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
If that’s all you ever knew about Y.A. TITTLE, you missed most of the journey. One that we’ll unpack a bit.
Y.A. was a football player. A great football player. But so much more than a football player.
Fans knew him as the tough-nosed QB from LSU. The innovator of the “Alley oop.” The record-breaker. The “Bald Eagle.”
Others knew him as a man of his communities, a friend, a husband and a father.
An opportunity to discuss Y.A.’s Hall of Fame career with his daughter — author Dianne Tittle de Laet — provided a look behind the curtain and under the helmet to explore the experiences of Y.A., the man, during his football journey from San Francisco to New York.
In the world of pro football that I recall, it was a time when hearts were poured out on real grass, or ice, or mud, the fans might storm the field at the game’s end to tear the wooden goal posts out of the ground, and the football players I knew worked at jobs in the offseason and worried, some of the time, about money. They didn’t worry that much about it, however. My father always considered himself to be lucky because he was paid to play the game that he would have paid to play. And he was not alone.
The collective salaries of the “Million Dollar Backfield” that included Hall of Famers “The King” HUGH McELHENNY, “The Jet” JOE PERRY, JOHN HENRY JOHNSON and my dad totaled $30,000, and yet, the primary worry at our house was injury and whether or not Lady Luck would come to our rescue on game day. She came quite often, and so did my father’s teammates come to our house on Sunday afternoons in the offseason, both to eat and to finagle at cards, shuffleboard, pingpong or anything that proclaimed the sky was their cheating limit! Meanwhile, all of us kids were herded together and left to play games of our own making.
As the team “kids” who could move with the speed of gnats swarming as if in an invisible bag, we were bound in a state of semi-ecstasy by the prospect of a store-bought dessert and a chicken pot pie. It may seem rather pitiful by today’s standard to think that behind my father’s UPI MVP Award in 1957 was the mighty team spirit of the 49ers and behind that, the luxury of a TV dinner — for the kids — somehow played to our team’s advantage. But you might say that victory was the name of our game as a family in a rather colorful team family that included fast runners and rather large, slow-moving types, individuals whose skin color wasn’t always the same, but whose arms were always open to us as we tumbled through those playful afternoons and seasons.
Odd to say, but we felt like family even though we were not family back in the 1950s. Even odder to say that we expected heaven to come to earth and even to our house on those Sundays in the offseason when we all got together — players, wives, and the kids — and did nothing well. Either the kinship was real or it was imagined. But I know that Y.A. Tittle imagined it. Some of his teammates imagined it. Yes, I cheer for the times we imagined it and for the stars I knew like The Goose and R.C. “Alley Oop” Owens, who appeared in the violent fairy tale that was professional football at that time.”
Ryan: When your father was traded to New York, what was his reaction? What was your reaction?
Dianne: “I know that my father would want me to be brief!
I recall that there were tears all around. Dad was supposed to be washed up and done for not only because of a slow-healing groin injury, but because he was, in fact, old for the game at that time. Even though he was the MVP just a few years earlier in his career, suddenly “he was that old, old, old, benched, booed, old has been.” Moreover, the Niners’ coach, Red Hickey (whose mysterious name fell on my young ear like a thunderbolt and occasioned a sense of humor that would never have existed otherwise) was committed to a “shotgun” offense that called for a quarterback who could “scramble.”
Unfortunately, Dad ran like everybody else who has not yet awoken from a nightmare. He was a classic T-formation quarterback who ran “like an aging member of the DAR,” or so somebody said by way of a compliment.
And that is why we cried. At that time, a trade meant nothing less than a divorce from the community and from the fraternity of the 49ers faithful. Strange to say, it bore the marks of disloyalty and even betrayal. It was therefore unsettling, as unsettling as if somebody asked Davie Crockett or Jim Bowie to vacate the Alamo and go fight in New Jersey. Hard to describe the rippling effect of a team on a community back in the 1950s except to say that the currents were strong. And Dad wasn’t traded to the Rams as we thought he might be. At the very least, the Rams meant “Crazylegs” Hirsch and an occasional glimpse of our father who could possibly come home to see us sometime during that first season.
But New York was far away, and if traded, Dad worried about being so far from his family for months on end. When my father was away, even on a Saturday night before the games in ’Frisco, there was that occasional bad fan whose hero-worship backfired on our family. Then, harassment, hateful remarks on the telephone, worries about kidnappers, my mother’s hands trembling, etc. Since it was my beautiful and wild and fiercely loving mother who endured such nonsense, it was she who ultimately made the call and repeated the family mantra: “Nothing is easy … Never give up!” That is when the crying stopped. Dad asked Red Hickey if he could address the team and say his goodbyes at practice. There, he told his teammates that his departure was not meant to tear the team apart and that he wished them well going forward.
Then he got into his car, honked the horn twice — “Toot! Toot! — and was gone. Coach Red Hickey had to cancel practice that day because there was apparently more crying on the part of my dad’s teammates. I tend to think that the honk of the horn said it well in that it marked the departure of my old, old, old, benched, booed, old father, who was bound for New York City and the New York Football Giants, where he, and we, could begin a football dream of victory all over again. He was traded for a rookie lineman named Lou Cordileone.”
Ryan: After the Giants proved they could compete for a championship, how did your father’s feelings about playing for New York evolve?
Dianne: “I was not brief with your first question, Ryan. Perhaps I can do better this time. It did not take a championship for my father’s feelings about playing for New York to evolve. From Day 1, I know that he was struck by the shared sense among the New York Giants that they would win and that they expected to win. Even though the offensive and defensive teams were somewhat divided at that time, and their brilliant quarterback, Charlie Conerly, was battling injuries and the slow healing that comes with age, the Giants were fiercely loyal to him, as if to a standard and a tradition that was the way of the New York Giants.
I would imagine that talent and skill make of every athlete a potential winner, but the expectation of victory and the sense that victory is the element to which you most belong, is something different, something unique and rare. Maybe the old Giants caught the magic in 1961 and became young, as if by the wave of a wand that brought a city to its heels and made fans of nuns who were saying special prayers for the games and family out of cabdrivers who might run and jump into your arms.
This happened to my father on Fifth Avenue. My dad was on a first-name basis with the world in which he moved. I suspect that his feelings about himself had to evolve somewhat if only to make room for that bigger self and bigger responsibility that comes with fame once it starts to snowball. As for his feelings about the New York Giants, they evolved out of that very same amazement he experienced on Day 1 at camp. That was the day he took the snap on his first play as a New York Giant and broke his back. Thereafter, you might imagine the ever-rippling effect from that first shock of amazement to the one and the many shocks of amazement that came subsequently with records broken and records set, with a team that won three Eastern Division championships in a row and, in spite of every defeat, held fast to that expectation of victory.”
Ryan: What was that run like?
Dianne: “Oh boy! Maybe now I can be brief! Impossible to describe, but how can I not attempt a description of the wave that comes from far out at sea, that begins when a 6-year old boy listens to the fight between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling on the radio and imagines perfection for the very first time; imagines himself doing something rightly and well, true to his nature, and then does it for years and years — decades even — gets to do it! Get paid to do it and gets injured for doing it. Breaks a back, collapses a lung, endures, is ridiculed, praised, whatever.
So they come up with the idea of a face mask after dad is swung by an opponent into a goal post and his face collapses. His cheekbone shatters in 16 places. And still, the wave keeps building. What is it like to give years and years of a life for a moment? And what does that moment of victory really mean in the end? I say it was hard — hard on the family, on my older brother especially, and yet blissful for us, because there is nothing like the human roar and nothing like the moments in between the trials and the invasions of one’s privacy that came and went for three consecutive years of life in a football fairy tale.
What was it like for my father? Honestly, I have no earthly idea what this all meant to him in the end. He was like the eye of his own hurricane — quiet in the swirl and fury of so much happening that was exactly what he wanted to happen. But he passed himself off as an insurance person around the house and never mentioned football at home.
We went on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” We made a television commercial. Barbara Walters came to the house to interview my mother. And still, dad seemed most worried by the fact that I would spend my allowance on a flute instead of a pair of shoes. And this, right after he had thrown seven touchdown passes in one game! I have to say that he signed every autograph for anyone who ever asked and he looked them in the eye and smiled. “And what are you going to do, young man? Young lady?” I was most proud of this, the way he treated others. In turn, he was treated to the great luxury in life of getting to be exactly who was. He got to be the guy who took the moment of victory that came to Joe Louis and run with it all the way to that championship run from 1961 to 1963.”
Ryan: You were in the audience in Chicago for the 1963 NFL Championship game. What do you remember most about that day?
Dianne: “Violence. Tears. Heartbreak. Ice. Meanness. Cruelty in the stands. People who were made glad by my father’s injury. People who cheered when he couldn’t walk. Confusion. Cold. The sky was as white as a bone.
Then, Hugh McElhenny helping my father hop to the sidelines. Music. A Bach fugue at halftime. Then, my father again. His relentless spirit. That impossible striving. Giving up? No, never. I was so very sad.”
Ryan: If you had to choose one, what would you say was your happiest memory from the time your father spent playing for New York?
Dianne: “If I may, I will choose as my proudest moment as my happiest memory.
Kennedy had been assassinated. The following Sunday after the tragedy in 1963, the New York Giants played football in Yankee Stadium. It was cold, and it was a very gray day. Even so, one could see the silhouettes of many New Yorkers atop the skyscrapers that surrounded Yankee Stadium. From there, they would watch the game. Before the game, however, there was the national anthem that needed to be sung. Never once in all of my life as a spectator had I been able to hit the high note in our national anthem. It was always my father’s favorite song even though he could not hit that high note either. I sang our anthem to my father as he lay on his death bed and I am happy that I was able to give this to him at that time.
On the Sunday following the assassination in 1963, everybody sang. The players, the fans, everybody. I had never heard anything like it in my life. All of us singing together as one — and loudly, passionately! We belted out that high note as if we were opera stars. And then, all of us quiet together. After the national anthem was sung, nobody spoke. Seconds passed and not a sound. Thousands and thousands of us were gathered together and not a sound could be heard except for the wind. It was as if we were witness to a breath or sigh. But even though a country does not breath or sigh, this wind moved through the stadium as if to sweep away the stain of our collective sorrow, and free us to hope again, be happy again, win again, and remind us who we were: We, the people! And so did that human roar at last to signal the start of another game. But this time, I was filled with something wonderful and strange. Something that only my presence at a football game could give. An unspeakable gift.”
Although Tittle’s run in New York fell just short of a championship, it did see a plethora of significant records set.
In 1962, Tittle threw a single-season record 33 touchdown passes. What’s more, he was able to do so during a 14-game season.
His seven touchdown passes vs. Washington on Oct. 28, 1962, tied the NFL single-game record, a record that stands to this day.
In 1963, despite playing in only 13 of the Giants’ 14 games, Tittle broke his own single-season record for touchdown passes, tossing 36. That record stood until 1984, when Dan Marino threw 48 during a 16-game season.
To put the magnitude of that number into perspective: From 1964-1994, no quarterback other than Marino eclipsed the 36 touchdown passes Tittle threw in 13 games 30 years earlier. It’s a jaw-dropping statistic.
On Sept. 20, 1964, the date of his sternum injury and the famous photograph by Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tittle eclipsed BOBBY LAYNE (26,768) to become the NFL’s all-time leading passer.
“The body was broken on the same day the record was broken.” Dianne told me after I shared this discovery.
What was it all for?
Her father had said, decades after his retirement: “I missed out on that one moment of excellence. That one desire. That one thing that you seek, and that’s the ring on your finger. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? All of the sacrifice of getting to the championship game was worth every minute, every second, every play.”
For Y.A., having the privilege of sharing that specific moment with his teammates was a dream that never came to fruition.
But his endless pursuit of that dream made him a champion.
From a 22-year-old rookie whose numbers rivaled the great Otto Graham’s in 1948 to a 38-year-old veteran battling through pain and injuries, eventually becoming the league’s all-time passing leader in 1964 — Tittle never stopped competing.
His football legacy wasn’t about how it started or how it ended, it was about the journey and his relentless pursuit of excellence.
“Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
No, it doesn’t.
Ryan Michael is statistician, sportswriter and contributor to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You can follow him on Twitter: @theryanmichael .
This article is the second of a multi-part series highlighting noteworthy quarterback play over the past 80 seasons. Information from Pro-Football-Reference.com’s database, including its “Play Index Tools,” helped make the research possible.
Special to the Pro Football Hall of Fame
(Editor’s note: This article is the second in a series looking at quarterbacks’ achievements that have aged well over the past 80 NFL seasons.)
Yelberton Abraham Tittle Jr.
The quarterback known to the football world as “Y.A.” played in both the All-America Football Conference (1948-49) and the National Football League (1950-1964).
At the time of his retirement, his 2,118 completions, 28,339 passing yards and 212 touchdown passes were the most in NFL history.
Including his two seasons in the AAFC, his 2,427 completions, 33,070 passing yards and 242 touchdown passes were the most in pro football history.
In 1971, he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
If that’s all you ever knew about Y.A. TITTLE, you missed most of the journey. One that we’ll unpack a bit.
Y.A. was a football player. A great football player. But so much more than a football player.
Fans knew him as the tough-nosed QB from LSU. The innovator of the “Alley oop.” The record-breaker. The “Bald Eagle.”
Others knew him as a man of his communities, a friend, a husband and a father.
An opportunity to discuss Y.A.’s Hall of Fame career with his daughter — author Dianne Tittle de Laet — provided a look behind the curtain and under the helmet to explore the experiences of Y.A., the man, during his football journey from San Francisco to New York.
View from a front-row seat
Dianne: “First, I must preface my answers to your questions, Ryan, not only with a cheer for the game to which my father devoted his life, but with a roaring thanks to those fans, players, and that time in America when we were on the cusp of societal change and the advent of big-time commercial television.
In the world of pro football that I recall, it was a time when hearts were poured out on real grass, or ice, or mud, the fans might storm the field at the game’s end to tear the wooden goal posts out of the ground, and the football players I knew worked at jobs in the offseason and worried, some of the time, about money. They didn’t worry that much about it, however. My father always considered himself to be lucky because he was paid to play the game that he would have paid to play. And he was not alone.
The collective salaries of the “Million Dollar Backfield” that included Hall of Famers “The King” HUGH McELHENNY, “The Jet” JOE PERRY, JOHN HENRY JOHNSON and my dad totaled $30,000, and yet, the primary worry at our house was injury and whether or not Lady Luck would come to our rescue on game day. She came quite often, and so did my father’s teammates come to our house on Sunday afternoons in the offseason, both to eat and to finagle at cards, shuffleboard, pingpong or anything that proclaimed the sky was their cheating limit! Meanwhile, all of us kids were herded together and left to play games of our own making.
As the team “kids” who could move with the speed of gnats swarming as if in an invisible bag, we were bound in a state of semi-ecstasy by the prospect of a store-bought dessert and a chicken pot pie. It may seem rather pitiful by today’s standard to think that behind my father’s UPI MVP Award in 1957 was the mighty team spirit of the 49ers and behind that, the luxury of a TV dinner — for the kids — somehow played to our team’s advantage. But you might say that victory was the name of our game as a family in a rather colorful team family that included fast runners and rather large, slow-moving types, individuals whose skin color wasn’t always the same, but whose arms were always open to us as we tumbled through those playful afternoons and seasons.
Odd to say, but we felt like family even though we were not family back in the 1950s. Even odder to say that we expected heaven to come to earth and even to our house on those Sundays in the offseason when we all got together — players, wives, and the kids — and did nothing well. Either the kinship was real or it was imagined. But I know that Y.A. Tittle imagined it. Some of his teammates imagined it. Yes, I cheer for the times we imagined it and for the stars I knew like The Goose and R.C. “Alley Oop” Owens, who appeared in the violent fairy tale that was professional football at that time.”
Ryan: When your father was traded to New York, what was his reaction? What was your reaction?
Dianne: “I know that my father would want me to be brief!
I recall that there were tears all around. Dad was supposed to be washed up and done for not only because of a slow-healing groin injury, but because he was, in fact, old for the game at that time. Even though he was the MVP just a few years earlier in his career, suddenly “he was that old, old, old, benched, booed, old has been.” Moreover, the Niners’ coach, Red Hickey (whose mysterious name fell on my young ear like a thunderbolt and occasioned a sense of humor that would never have existed otherwise) was committed to a “shotgun” offense that called for a quarterback who could “scramble.”
Unfortunately, Dad ran like everybody else who has not yet awoken from a nightmare. He was a classic T-formation quarterback who ran “like an aging member of the DAR,” or so somebody said by way of a compliment.
And that is why we cried. At that time, a trade meant nothing less than a divorce from the community and from the fraternity of the 49ers faithful. Strange to say, it bore the marks of disloyalty and even betrayal. It was therefore unsettling, as unsettling as if somebody asked Davie Crockett or Jim Bowie to vacate the Alamo and go fight in New Jersey. Hard to describe the rippling effect of a team on a community back in the 1950s except to say that the currents were strong. And Dad wasn’t traded to the Rams as we thought he might be. At the very least, the Rams meant “Crazylegs” Hirsch and an occasional glimpse of our father who could possibly come home to see us sometime during that first season.
But New York was far away, and if traded, Dad worried about being so far from his family for months on end. When my father was away, even on a Saturday night before the games in ’Frisco, there was that occasional bad fan whose hero-worship backfired on our family. Then, harassment, hateful remarks on the telephone, worries about kidnappers, my mother’s hands trembling, etc. Since it was my beautiful and wild and fiercely loving mother who endured such nonsense, it was she who ultimately made the call and repeated the family mantra: “Nothing is easy … Never give up!” That is when the crying stopped. Dad asked Red Hickey if he could address the team and say his goodbyes at practice. There, he told his teammates that his departure was not meant to tear the team apart and that he wished them well going forward.Then he got into his car, honked the horn twice — “Toot! Toot! — and was gone. Coach Red Hickey had to cancel practice that day because there was apparently more crying on the part of my dad’s teammates. I tend to think that the honk of the horn said it well in that it marked the departure of my old, old, old, benched, booed, old father, who was bound for New York City and the New York Football Giants, where he, and we, could begin a football dream of victory all over again. He was traded for a rookie lineman named Lou Cordileone.”
Ryan: After the Giants proved they could compete for a championship, how did your father’s feelings about playing for New York evolve?
Dianne: “I was not brief with your first question, Ryan. Perhaps I can do better this time. It did not take a championship for my father’s feelings about playing for New York to evolve. From Day 1, I know that he was struck by the shared sense among the New York Giants that they would win and that they expected to win. Even though the offensive and defensive teams were somewhat divided at that time, and their brilliant quarterback, Charlie Conerly, was battling injuries and the slow healing that comes with age, the Giants were fiercely loyal to him, as if to a standard and a tradition that was the way of the New York Giants.
I would imagine that talent and skill make of every athlete a potential winner, but the expectation of victory and the sense that victory is the element to which you most belong, is something different, something unique and rare. Maybe the old Giants caught the magic in 1961 and became young, as if by the wave of a wand that brought a city to its heels and made fans of nuns who were saying special prayers for the games and family out of cabdrivers who might run and jump into your arms.
This happened to my father on Fifth Avenue. My dad was on a first-name basis with the world in which he moved. I suspect that his feelings about himself had to evolve somewhat if only to make room for that bigger self and bigger responsibility that comes with fame once it starts to snowball. As for his feelings about the New York Giants, they evolved out of that very same amazement he experienced on Day 1 at camp. That was the day he took the snap on his first play as a New York Giant and broke his back. Thereafter, you might imagine the ever-rippling effect from that first shock of amazement to the one and the many shocks of amazement that came subsequently with records broken and records set, with a team that won three Eastern Division championships in a row and, in spite of every defeat, held fast to that expectation of victory.”
Ryan: What was that run like?
Dianne: “Oh boy! Maybe now I can be brief! Impossible to describe, but how can I not attempt a description of the wave that comes from far out at sea, that begins when a 6-year old boy listens to the fight between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling on the radio and imagines perfection for the very first time; imagines himself doing something rightly and well, true to his nature, and then does it for years and years — decades even — gets to do it! Get paid to do it and gets injured for doing it. Breaks a back, collapses a lung, endures, is ridiculed, praised, whatever.
So they come up with the idea of a face mask after dad is swung by an opponent into a goal post and his face collapses. His cheekbone shatters in 16 places. And still, the wave keeps building. What is it like to give years and years of a life for a moment? And what does that moment of victory really mean in the end? I say it was hard — hard on the family, on my older brother especially, and yet blissful for us, because there is nothing like the human roar and nothing like the moments in between the trials and the invasions of one’s privacy that came and went for three consecutive years of life in a football fairy tale.
What was it like for my father? Honestly, I have no earthly idea what this all meant to him in the end. He was like the eye of his own hurricane — quiet in the swirl and fury of so much happening that was exactly what he wanted to happen. But he passed himself off as an insurance person around the house and never mentioned football at home.
We went on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” We made a television commercial. Barbara Walters came to the house to interview my mother. And still, dad seemed most worried by the fact that I would spend my allowance on a flute instead of a pair of shoes. And this, right after he had thrown seven touchdown passes in one game! I have to say that he signed every autograph for anyone who ever asked and he looked them in the eye and smiled. “And what are you going to do, young man? Young lady?” I was most proud of this, the way he treated others. In turn, he was treated to the great luxury in life of getting to be exactly who was. He got to be the guy who took the moment of victory that came to Joe Louis and run with it all the way to that championship run from 1961 to 1963.”
Ryan: You were in the audience in Chicago for the 1963 NFL Championship game. What do you remember most about that day?
Dianne: “Violence. Tears. Heartbreak. Ice. Meanness. Cruelty in the stands. People who were made glad by my father’s injury. People who cheered when he couldn’t walk. Confusion. Cold. The sky was as white as a bone.
Then, Hugh McElhenny helping my father hop to the sidelines. Music. A Bach fugue at halftime. Then, my father again. His relentless spirit. That impossible striving. Giving up? No, never. I was so very sad.”
Ryan: If you had to choose one, what would you say was your happiest memory from the time your father spent playing for New York?
Dianne: “If I may, I will choose as my proudest moment as my happiest memory.
Kennedy had been assassinated. The following Sunday after the tragedy in 1963, the New York Giants played football in Yankee Stadium. It was cold, and it was a very gray day. Even so, one could see the silhouettes of many New Yorkers atop the skyscrapers that surrounded Yankee Stadium. From there, they would watch the game. Before the game, however, there was the national anthem that needed to be sung. Never once in all of my life as a spectator had I been able to hit the high note in our national anthem. It was always my father’s favorite song even though he could not hit that high note either. I sang our anthem to my father as he lay on his death bed and I am happy that I was able to give this to him at that time.
On the Sunday following the assassination in 1963, everybody sang. The players, the fans, everybody. I had never heard anything like it in my life. All of us singing together as one — and loudly, passionately! We belted out that high note as if we were opera stars. And then, all of us quiet together. After the national anthem was sung, nobody spoke. Seconds passed and not a sound. Thousands and thousands of us were gathered together and not a sound could be heard except for the wind. It was as if we were witness to a breath or sigh. But even though a country does not breath or sigh, this wind moved through the stadium as if to sweep away the stain of our collective sorrow, and free us to hope again, be happy again, win again, and remind us who we were: We, the people! And so did that human roar at last to signal the start of another game. But this time, I was filled with something wonderful and strange. Something that only my presence at a football game could give. An unspeakable gift.”
Rewriting record book
Although Tittle’s run in New York fell just short of a championship, it did see a plethora of significant records set.
In 1962, Tittle threw a single-season record 33 touchdown passes. What’s more, he was able to do so during a 14-game season.
His seven touchdown passes vs. Washington on Oct. 28, 1962, tied the NFL single-game record, a record that stands to this day.
In 1963, despite playing in only 13 of the Giants’ 14 games, Tittle broke his own single-season record for touchdown passes, tossing 36. That record stood until 1984, when Dan Marino threw 48 during a 16-game season.
To put the magnitude of that number into perspective: From 1964-1994, no quarterback other than Marino eclipsed the 36 touchdown passes Tittle threw in 13 games 30 years earlier. It’s a jaw-dropping statistic.
On Sept. 20, 1964, the date of his sternum injury and the famous photograph by Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tittle eclipsed BOBBY LAYNE (26,768) to become the NFL’s all-time leading passer.
“The body was broken on the same day the record was broken.” Dianne told me after I shared this discovery.
What was it all for?
Her father had said, decades after his retirement: “I missed out on that one moment of excellence. That one desire. That one thing that you seek, and that’s the ring on your finger. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? All of the sacrifice of getting to the championship game was worth every minute, every second, every play.”
For Y.A., having the privilege of sharing that specific moment with his teammates was a dream that never came to fruition.
But his endless pursuit of that dream made him a champion.
From a 22-year-old rookie whose numbers rivaled the great Otto Graham’s in 1948 to a 38-year-old veteran battling through pain and injuries, eventually becoming the league’s all-time passing leader in 1964 — Tittle never stopped competing.
His football legacy wasn’t about how it started or how it ended, it was about the journey and his relentless pursuit of excellence.
“Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
No, it doesn’t.
Ryan Michael is statistician, sportswriter and contributor to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You can follow him on Twitter: @theryanmichael .
This article is the second of a multi-part series highlighting noteworthy quarterback play over the past 80 seasons. Information from Pro-Football-Reference.com’s database, including its “Play Index Tools,” helped make the research possible.
More of this series
- Analysis: Charlie Conerly’s giant accomplishments hold up as eras pass
- Y.A. Tittle’s journey from San Francisco to New York
- Analysis: An appreciation of Sammy Baugh’s historic 1943 season
- Legendary seasons for Sid Luckman, Peyton Manning separated by 70 years
- Looking back at TB12’s historic 2011 season 12 years later
- Russell Wilson’s decade of dominance in Seattle remains elite
- Roger Staubach’s 1971: The greatest season you’ve never heard about
- Silver anniversary: Randall Cunningham’s solid gold season with Vikings
- 50 years since Unitas’ last pass: Some things you might not know about No. 19
- Race to the top: Brady’s battle with Brees for the NFL’s most hallowed record
- Analysis: Did Andrew Luck exceed hype or fall short?
- Silver anniversary of John’s Elway’s sterling final game
- As cold as ice: Perception of Matt Ryan’s legacy after ‘28-3’
- Cam Newton leads high-flying 2015 Carolina Panthers
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Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2023 speech order announced
The speech order for the Class of 2023’s Enshrinement has been confirmed for the ceremony taking place Saturday, Aug. 5. Enshrinement will be aired nationally on ESPN and NFL Network.
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Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 1983 celebrates 40-year anniversary
On July 30, 1983, the Pro Football Hall of Fame welcomed five more individuals to Canton, Ohio. While helping the Hall of Fame celebrate its 20th anniversary, the 1983 Enshrinement class featured four individuals who made history in the passing game and a fifth whose all-around skills might have made him an offensive standout as well if he didn’t find his NFL home on defense.