On Monday night, Tom Brady threw for 517 yards and 4 touchdowns, becoming one of only 11 quarterbacks to throw for over 500 yards in the history of the league. He also became the first to throw for 500 yards and 4 or more touchdowns in almost 50 years, since Y.A. Tittle in 1962.
Most of today’s fans don’t know much about Tittle apart from the name since his career ended almost five decades ago, but the Hall of Famer was a trail blazer in moving us to the quarterback-driven league that we have today. His career was full of fascinating stories, and he is one of the most iconic figures in the history of the NFL.
Y.A. Tittle, short for Yelberton Abraham, was born in Marshal Texas in 1926 and played his college ball for LSU. He was the MVP of the 1947 Cotton Bowl, which was legendary for ending in a scoreless tie with Arkansas during an ice storm. The game was known as the Ice Bowl, a full 20 years before the 1967 NFL Championship game, played at the “frozen tundra” in Green Bay with wind chills of 48 below zero, took over the Ice Bowl moniker.
Tittle began with the Baltimore Colts in 1948, two years before they joined the NFL. He joined the San Francisco 49ers in 1950 and played there for ten years.
Tittle was the first of the long line of San Francisco quarterbacks that extended from him through John Brodie and up to Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Steve Young in the 1980s and 1990s.
During his time in San Francisco, Tittle was part of the famous 49ers “Million Dollar Backfield,” back when a million dollars was a compliment, not the salary for an underpaid backup quarterback. The 49ers had four Hall of Famers in the backfield together – Tittle and running backs John Henry Johnson, Hugh McElhenny and Joe Perry.
From 1957 through 1960, Tittle was sharing playing time with John Brodie in San Francisco, and finally in 1961, the 49ers traded him to the New York Giants. Tittle was energized as he went to play for a contender in NY for the next three years.
“Tittle has the enthusiasm of a high school kid,” Giants great Frank Gifford said in 1962. “He loves to play. This is great for our young players. When they see 36-year-old man so fired up, they have to get fired up, too.”
The quote could have been written about Brett Favre and his legendary child-like enthusiasm, and like Favre, when he was reenergized, Tittle put up some big numbers. In the three years in New York, he put up some of his best numbers, including setting a record with 33 TD passes in 1962 and then breaking it with 36 TD passes in 1963.
Keep in mind that this was a 14 game schedule, and a non-passing league. The record of 36 TDs stood for over 20 years, until it was broken by Dan Marino in 1984, when the game was very different.
On October 28, 1962, Tittle put up perhaps the greatest game an NFL quarterback has ever had. He was 27 of 39 for 505 yards and 7 touchdowns. He remains one of only five quarterbacks to throw for 7 touchdowns in a game, a feat which hasn’t been equaled since Joe Kapp in 1969.
At the end of his career, Tittle was the subject of one of the most iconic images in all of sports – the photo above. The photo was taken on September 20, 1964 in the last year of his career. Tittle was photographed helmetless, bloodied, and kneeling immediately after being knocked to the ground by John Baker of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and throwing an interception that was returned for a TD on the same play.
Tittle suffered both a concussion and a cracked sternum on the play. In spite of his injuries, he went on to play the rest of the season, but the Giants fell to a disappointing 2-10-2.
“I’ll never know how Y. A. did it,” Gifford observed. “I’ll remember that show of courage long after I have forgotten the score.”
Tittle was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio in 1971, in what is widely considered to be the greatest induction class in history.
The class included Y.A. Tittle, Norm Van Brocklin (who still holds the record with 554 yards passing in a single game), Jim Brown (considered by many as the standard by which all other running backs are judged) and the man whose name is on the Super Bowl trophy – Vince Lombardi.
Tittle was one of the great quarterbacks in the history of the league, and he was ahead of his time in the way he played the game. And the enduring image of him kneeling on the field should serve as a reminder of the importance of courage and perseverance in the NFL.
