No. 44
SMU
'60 SEASON ROTE'S BEST
"Kyle Rote, completing a decade of professional football with the Giants, enjoyed the greatest pass-catching year of his brilliant career in 1960.
The former SMU All-American and Giant co-captain caught 42 aerials for 750 yards to far surpass his previous best year of 1955 when he nabbed 31 for 580 yards.
Kyle's great performance, which included 10 touchdown receptions, placed him tenth in the overall league standings. But it might be well to note that he was only four catches behind the No. 5 man, Pete Retzlaff of Philadelphia.
And it also might be well to remember that Kyle played the last half of the season with his broken left hand taped in a heavy cast."
-The Official New York Giants Newsletter, February 1961
ROTE TO HAVE HIS DAY
"Veteran Giant co-captain and end Kyle Rote will have a 'day' at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, October 29, when the Maramen play the Dallas Cowboys. Kyle will also be honored by the Section Five Club that night with a dinner dance at the Biltmore Hotel.
He is in his eleventh season with the Giants."
-The Official New York Giants Newsletter, May 1961
He was possibly at his offensive best in '60 when he played with his broken wrist in a cast. He established career highs in passes caught (42), yards gained (751) and touchdowns (10)."
-1961 Pro Football Handbook
"The New York Giants have been getting clutch production for a decade from Kyle Rote, an old SMU grad. Kyle made himself into an end, only in his case the transition was more radical. One of the most brilliant halfbacks in college annals, Rote was almost knocked out of a pro career by bad knees. To lessen the strain, he was finally switched to end and has performed there almost exclusively since 1955. At 33 he comes his finest season with the Giants, with 42 catches and the reputation of being the trickiest man to cover."
-Murray Olderman, Sports All-Stars 1961 Pro Football
"The old Mustang from SMU had one of his most satisfying seasons in 1960. Even with the handicap of a broken finger in mid-season he caught 42 passes and broke away for 10 touchdowns, both career highs.
He has the trickiest moves of any receiver in football. Operations have left him with knees that hamper his cutting and forced his switch from halfback, where he was a fabulous All-American. He has also carved out a new career for himself as a radio broadcaster."
-1961 Fleer No. 69
FOOTBALL BY ROTE
"The Giants have the gamest man in pro football- Kyle Rote. He's played on practically one leg.Outside the Stadium it was dark and most of the big crowd was gone. Three young women, football wives, waited near the curb where there was a streetlight.
Kyle Rote, the end, came down the clubhouse steps and, seeing his wife, moved quickly toward her. Instinctively, Betty Rote looked down to see how he walked. This is the way it is with Kyle and Betty Rote.
'Every day of my life,' says Kyle Rote, 'there is concern for my knees. I'm careful getting out of bed and I'm careful in the shower. At night, I'm careful climbing into bed so I don't catch the left leg, the bad one, under me.
'It's sort of a family joke with us now.'
Rote, on this November evening last fall, walked away from Yankee Stadium with no trace of limp or a misstep. The New York Giants had won and Betty had watched her husband play great football this day but until she saw him come toward her she would still not be completely confident the 'family joke' was still a joke.
Kyle Rote has, as he puts it, 'concern' for his knees because a surgeon cut most of the cartilage from his left knee after his first year with the pros, and two years after that he banged his right knee so badly he thought he was all washed up- at 25.
This, however, was six years ago and Kyle Rote is still punching out a living in a game that makes some people shudder. At 31, he approaches his eleventh season with the Giants. Measured by pain and worry, this is a long time.
Of the injury, Kyle says, 'In a contact sport somebody is going to get hurt. Without any cartilage, my knee is pretty loose but they tape it up good and, all in all, I've been damn lucky.'
There are football people who argue that Rote, a former speedboy out of San Antonio via Southern Methodist, 'might have been one of the greatest' if he performed on two sound knees. His fans claim there is little that a man with two good knees could do that Rote hasn't done, with one exception- play in more games. There have been times, in the early years, when Kyle couldn't stand, much less run.
The Giants think well enough of their 'bad' leg boy to pay him more than $15,000 a year, and his teammates continue to make him a co-captain, head man of the offensive unit.
'Kyle is one of the few ends in the league,' explains Coach Jim Lee Howell, 'who will get double coverage by the defense. If he never caught a pass for us, and this is unlikely, he'd be of value as a decoy. The reason we throw so much of our halfbacks, Gifford and Webster, is because the other club is watching Rote.
'Kyle Rote is one of the cleverest ends in the business,' Howell continued. 'He is a real student of the game and often comes up with just the pass play we need to blow the game wide open. He has what we call a 'feel' for the game.'
At SMU Rote was a triple-threat, an All-America. The Giants came up with the bonus pick in 1951 draft and made him their No. 1 choice. After a tough first year when he was out most of the season with his lame left leg, Kyle came on to rival Eddie Price as New York's brightest backfield star since Tuffy Leemans. (In recent years Frank Gifford and Alex Webster have stolen most of the new thunder.)
In 1954 Rote carried the ball only 30 times out of the halfback spot. The following season, with the Giants hungry for ends, Kyle made the big switch from halfback and since then has developed into a great wingman.
Over his ten-year career Rote has scored 31 touchdowns for 186 points; caught 182 passes for 2,956 yards and is sixth among all Giant scorers. Only Frank Gifford of last year's Giants has scored more points and only Gifford has caught more passes.
All this, of course, has been accomplished by a Giant on one knee, by a Giant with a left knee that might give with the next jolt- like the one ten years ago.
'It was in Jonesboro, Arkansas,' Kyle began. 'It was a hot Indian summer day in our fourth week of training. We had been out about two and a half hours so it was near the end of our drill. I ran at this halfback, planted my left foot and cut. My cleats caught and the knee snapped- with a crack.
'I went down and then they had to help me off the field. I couldn't walk.'
This was Tuesday, with an exhibition game against the Bears coming up Saturday night in Memphis. Rote spent the week under the heat lamp and was in the lineup when the Giants kicked off to Chicago. But not for long.
'I saw this big guy coming at me,' Kyle recalls, 'and when I went to cut away from him I planted that left foot again and the same thing happened- it gave and down I went. For the second time in a week, I was carried off the field. What a way to break into the big time!'
'Kyle had a tough time that first year in 1951,' Steve Owen wrote in his book 'My Kind of Football.' 'He had never been hurt in college and felt badly about his knee. He was down pretty bad when I refused to let him play.'
Owen, a Giant player and coach for 28 years, took Rote under his wing because he saw in Kyle the kind of ballplayer he wanted on his club. He said this of Kyle:
'From the first day he reported he did things so naturally and so well and with such rhythm that I had to know he was a great player ... he was a warrior all the way. He was determined to make his mark in big league ball just as he had in college.'
Kyle made his mark as a college great on the afternoon of December 3, 1949 against the national champion, Notre Dame. In the Cotton Bowl before 74,457 persons, Rote scored three touchdowns and barely missed a fourth that would have beaten the great Irish club.
For this performance, Texas sportswriters celebrated him as the individual who had achieved the outstanding athletic performance (by a Texan) in the first half of the 20th century.
The kid who came up as the 'Mighty Mustang' from Southern Methodist spent most of his first year in the stands- tramping up and down the stairs and ramps of the old Polo Grounds building up his weakened knee. While the Giants worked out on the field below him. Toward the end of the year, he played in three games, in spots picked for him by Coach Owen.
The following spring a Dallas doctor opened up the knee and cut out the cartilage from both the inside and outside of the knee joint.
The operation was a success and the 1952 season was Kyle's biggest as ball carrier- 103 rushes for 421 yards. The following year, however, Kyle damaged the right knee and he felt then as if the bottom had dropped out of his career. The trouble came in the opening game, against Pittsburgh.
'We got a touchdown in the first four minutes and I kicked off,' Kyle remembers. 'Coming down on the play I was hit pretty good. My leg got caught when I tried to leap over the block and I twisted the knee. I thought it was the end. This was the blackest.'
The leg, however, was not seriously injured and caused Rote to miss only three games. This time the damaged knee responded to treatment.
The ball player is not big for his job. He is listed as 185 and six feet. His skills are the subtle skills- craft and cunning, a thorough knowledge of his opponents and a desire to excel.
Kyle, by his own admission, has lost the edge of his speed. His knees- and his age- no longer permit him to do what he did five, six and ten years ago. But he has compensated for this.
'My injury has made me aware of more of the game,' he explains. 'Now I look to find things I wouldn't have before I lost my speed. This is a game where you are constantly learning.
'I take the films and go over them play by play, watching a linebacker, then an end and finally the halfback. These are the men who effect me on most plays and I watch to see what each does on every play.
'Just one step on a linebacker- one step- can mean so much. You realize you don't have it in the legs anymore so you've got to get help from somewhere else. You look for every break in the world- just a step makes it better and easier for you ...'
Never was this point more dramatically demonstrated than on November 9, 1959 against the Baltimore Colts who were on their way to the world championship. On this Sunday, however, the Giants and Kyle Rote were to drape themselves in glory.
This was the setting: the Giants, out after their ninth divisional title, were one game off the pace of the league leading Cleveland Browns. Baltimore, undefeated, came to New York as the best of the West.
'We had played the Colts twice in exhibitions and although we lost both times,' Rote began, 'we felt we had learned about them and could beat them. We knew that very definitely we had to win this one to keep up.'
It was a record New York crowd- 71,163. More than 10,000 Baltimore fans had made the 186-mile trip to cheer the Colts. A tense, exciting ball game quickly developed.
On the first play from scrimmage Giant quarterback Charlie Conerly handed off to Gifford who threw the Colts into confusion when he straightened up from looked like an end sweep and tossed 63 yards to Bob Schnelker. Webster bulled over from the 5 and when Pat Summerall converted, New York led by seven.
Baltimore, without its first string quarterback Johnny Unitas, who was out with broken ribs, didn't get into the game until just before the end of the opening period. George Shaw, filling in for Unitas, clicked on the first of three touchdown strikes. The pass went 36 yards to Lenny Moore.
Shaw next hit Ray Berry, top Baltimore receiver, for a 24-yard score midway through the second quarter, and until 5:21 of the third period the Colts held to a 14-7 lead and looked too good for the Giants.
The New York comeback was written by Kyle Rote, an old pro who is a comeback kind of ball player.
The ball was down on the Baltimore 25 and the Giants had just dropped two yards on a first down rush. Out of his left end post, Rote had been running- over and over again- a pass pattern which took him down 10 yards and then into the middle of the Baltimore secondary.
'I told Charlie that I thought I had them set up,' Kyle says. 'I told him to throw it to me on what we call our Z-and-out pattern with a fake to one of his people in the backfield.
'Milt Davis of the Colts had been moving with me pretty good all afternoon. This time I went down 10 yards, broke off to my right at a 45-degree angle and Davis came in with me. Then I planted my foot and cut out.
'Charlie dropped the ball deep into the corner and,' says Rote, 'that's where I caught it.'
But- oh, how he caught it!
News photos of the catch show Rote deep into the end zone- body and arms outstretched- grasping the ball. Davis, in pursuit, is a stride in back of the hurtling figure of Rote.
When Rote hit the ground he landed on his shoulder and skidded out of the end zone, leaving a long, dark scar where he had been. He took the ball about a foot to the in-bounds side of the end zone extremity.
'It was,' Kyle says, 'the best pass I ever caught. It was a perfectly thrown pass.'
The Giants, tying the score with this super play went on to a 24-21 victory. The following week their momentum carried them to an upset triumph over Cleveland. They were eventually stopped- in an overtime period- by Baltimore when they met for the championship, but it was a spectacular season put together by a club nominated as an 'also-ran.'
Out of the great year, Rote's picture-play touchdown was a standout, a great moment.
'A lot went into that play,' Kyle says. 'Years of practice and study which gave me the 'feel' and confidence to be able to go back to the huddle and tell Charlie to call it, and for Charlie to be able to throw it just that way.
'It's hard to compare thrills,' says the ex-All-American. 'People ask me if I can compare the catch with my day against Notre Dame. I think of it as maybe a doctor would. When he starts out he performs a small operation and it's a big thrill. Then he goes on, specializes and acquires more tools. Later he performs brain surgery and, of course, this is a great thrill.
'That Baltimore catch was a piece of brain surgery for me,' says Rote. 'We pulled it off and it was a hell of a thrill.'"
-Who's Who in Pro Football (1961 Edition)
"Kyle Rote (44), the offensive captain of the Giants, goes into the 1961 season needing to catch only ten more passes to break Frank Gifford's club record of 257 receptions. Kyle already holds the Giant mark of 4,003 yards gained on passes.
An All-America half at SMU, the Mighty Mustang was the Giants' bonus draft choice in 1951. He broke in as a halfback, shifted to end after a series of injuries and has become one of the NFL's best wingmen."
-1961 Official New York Giants Program
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