It’s NFL Draft Weekend 2025, a great time to remember players who helped establish the NFL and make it the game it is today. The Giants’ Y.A. Tittle certainly belongs in that category.
Y.A. Tittle’s NFL career was very successful when he joined the New York Giants, but he labored long and hard to get there.
Y.A. at LSU (photo courtesy LSU Football)
Born Yelberton Abraham Tittle, he dreamed of being a quarterback at a young age. He idolized quarterback Sammy Baugh and spent countless hours throwing a football through a tire swing. In 1944, Tittle became the quarterback for the LSU Tigers. He led the LSU Tigers to the 1947 Cotton Bowl during his junior year. Against the Arkansas Razorbacks—the game was known as “The Ice Bowl”—the teams played to a scoreless tie.
Tittle made his NFL debut in 1948 with the Baltimore Colts of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), and then joined the San Francisco 49ers in 1951, sharing quarterback duties with Frankie Albert. During his time with the 49ers, he was part of “The Million Dollar Backfield” with fullbacks John Henry Johnson, Joe Perry, and halfback Hugh McElhenny. In 1954, Tittle became the first NFL player to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Tittle was traded to the New York Giants in 1961, replacing 40-year-old quarterback Charlie Conerly. Tittle led the Giants to conference titles in 1961, 1962, and 1963, but the team was defeated each time in the NFL title game. Still, in 1963, the Associated Press selected him as the league’s most valuable player.
“The photograph,” reprinted here courtesy of ESPN.
Tittle’s last season came in 1964, and the Giants went 2-10-2. One of the game’s most iconic photographs was taken in late September when the Giants played the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pittsburgh Steelers lineman John Baker crushed Tittle, and Morris Berman, a photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, captured the scene. Tittle knelt in the end zone, shoulders drooped, no helmet, bald, and face bloodied. The photograph hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Tittle sold insurance in the off-seasons (players supplemented their football income by having summer jobs), and he later founded the Y.A. Tittle Insurance Services in San Jose, California. Of that transition, he once said this….
Y.A. Tittle, quoted in Sports Illustrated (1965): It will be a strange fall for me. For 27 years, from September to December, I put on my armor and went out to engage in what is, really, a sort of warfare.
Tittle became a fan favorite at memorabilia shows and NFL alumni functions and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971. Y.A. Tittle passed away in 2017 at 90, and his name will forever be ensconced in the annals of NFL history.
