On October 28, 1962, Y.A. Tittle threw seven touchdown passes as the New York Giants beat Washington 49-34 at Yankee Stadium, tying the NFL record for a single game. Four days past his 36th birthday, Tittle completed 27 of 39 passes for 505 yards without an interception, and he did it against the team leading the Eastern Conference, still unbeaten after six games.
Washington had gone 1-12-1 the year before and arrived in the Bronx at 4-0-2. The Giants were 4-2. By the end of the afternoon Washington’s unbeaten run was over, and the Giants were back in the thick of the race in the East.
Seven scores to four receivers
Washington struck first. Second-year quarterback Norm Snead found Bobby Mitchell for a 44-yard touchdown in the first quarter and a 7-0 lead. Tittle answered with three scoring throws before halftime: 22 yards to halfback Joe Morrison, 5 yards to tight end Joe Walton and a 1-yard toss to Morrison again. New York went to the locker room ahead 21-13.
Snead and Mitchell hit again right after the break, an 80-yard catch-and-run that cut the margin to 21-20. Then the Giants pulled away for good. Tittle hit split end Del Shofner for 53 yards, Walton for 26 and flanker Frank Gifford for 63, three touchdowns in one quarter that made it 42-20. In the fourth quarter he found Walton from 6 yards out for his seventh, and the scoreboard read 49-20. Washington added two late touchdowns to reach 34.
The receiving numbers were as striking as the passing line. Shofner caught 11 balls for 269 yards, a Giants club record that has stood for more than six decades. Gifford had 127 yards on four catches, and Walton, with six receptions for 63 yards, finished with three of the seven scores. On the other side Mitchell piled up 158 yards on five catches in a losing effort. A crowd of 62,844 watched.
Why there was no eighth
With the Giants deep in Washington territory late in the game, the crowd and some of his own teammates wanted Tittle to go for an eighth touchdown pass and the record outright. He chose to hand the ball off and let the clock run, satisfied with a 15-point win. His 505 yards that day were the second-highest total in league history at the time, behind only Norm Van Brocklin’s 554 in 1951.
Seven touchdown passes in a game had been reached only three times before: by Sid Luckman of the Chicago Bears in 1943, Adrian Burk of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1954 and George Blanda of the Houston Oilers in the AFL in 1961. Since Tittle, four more quarterbacks have joined the list: Joe Kapp in 1969, Peyton Manning and Nick Foles in 2013, and Drew Brees in 2015, whose seven came against the Giants. Nobody has thrown eight.
A late-career peak
Tittle had come to New York in August 1961, traded by the San Francisco 49ers for guard Lou Cordileone after a decade with that club. The Washington game started the best two-year run of his career. He finished 1962 with 33 touchdown passes, breaking Sonny Jurgensen’s single-season record of 32, and threw for a career-high 3,224 yards. The Giants went 12-2 and won the East but lost the NFL Championship Game to the Green Bay Packers, 16-7, at Yankee Stadium on December 30.
In 1963 he raised his own mark to 36 touchdown passes and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. Washington, after its unbeaten start, faded to 5-7-2. Tittle entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971 and died on October 8, 2017, at 90. Sixty-four years on, his seven touchdown passes against Washington remain the most by any Giants quarterback in a single game.
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