Charlie Conerly Dead at 74

Charlie Conerly, the somber NFL quarterback who in the 1950s helped launch the New York Giants on one of their great eras, died Tuesday after 17 weeks in a Memphis hospital, which he had entered in September for heart surgery. He was 74.

Conerly, for most of his life a cotton farmer near Alligator, Miss., retired from football at 40 in 1961. He had two of his greatest games that season, rescuing Y.A. Tittle both times. In October, he led the Giants over the Rams, 24-14, and in the next-to-last regular-season game led the Giants over the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-24. The Giants reached their fourth NFL championship game under Conerly that season.

“He didn’t say much to me, either,” Giant Coach Allie Sherman said after the Ram game in Yankee Stadium, where a group of visiting writers had been left with one-word Conerly answers to their questions.

“He’s the toughest quarterback in the league, and I guess tough guys don’t have to talk much.”

Granite-faced, a strong, silent Southerner, Conerly was invariably “polite but stoic,” said football writer Don Smith, later vice president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Conerly, by training a single-wing tailback, was fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1947 at Mississippi. He took charge of the Giants a year later as the tailback in what they called their A formation, a single-wing variant.

He made the transfer so smoothly that he was voted the NFL’s 1948 rookie of the year though the Giants struggled to a 4-8 record, losing to, among others, Clark Shaughnessy’s first Ram team, 52-37.

Asked about Conerly, Shaughnessy said: “I didn’t really notice him.”

Shaughnessy had invented the T formation in a previous decade, but not until after the 1948 Giants were buried by the Eagles, Chicago Cardinals, Rams and others did they finally forsake A-formation football in Conerly’s second pro season.

That meant that after mastering one way of playing a complex game, Conerly had to learn a strikingly different way.

He learned in a hurry. “His mind was ideally disciplined for quarterbacking,” Sherman once said. “His success could be traced to his ability to carry out orders.”

It was in the Marine Corps in 1944, between his two football careers at Mississippi, that Conerly, possibly, learned about taking orders.

Old Marines still talk about the day that Conerly’s weapon was shot out of his hands at Guam.

“Damn, I don’t like that,” said the man of few words.

Then he picked up another piece and carried on.

Conerly’s most impressive game was played in 1956, when, against the Chicago Bears, he led the Giants to the NFL championship, 47-7.

But in the East, he might be best known as the loser to Baltimore Colt quarterback Johnny Unitas in overtime in the 1958 championship game--which is still often referred to as the TV tour de force that introduced America to the NFL.

Conerly that time completed 10 of 14 passes for 184 yards--one to halfback Frank Gifford for the go-ahead touchdown, 17-14--to outplay Unitas, many thought. But he was undone by his coach, Jim Lee Howell, who in the last two minutes, still nursing the three-point lead that Conerly earned, ordered a fourth-and-inches punt at midfield. Unitas then tied the game and won it.

Many years later, Conerly was pressed to talk about that punt.

“I guess I’d have done it too,” said the man of few words. “But I wish he hadn’t.”