Giants and the NFL Draft: With the first pick in 1965, they selected . . . Tucker Frederickson
Giants running back Tucker Frederickson fails to elude a tackle by Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Steve Preece on Nov. 24, 1970. Credit: AP/Bill Ingraham
The two-win Giants are currently tied for the worst record in the NFL and slated by Tankathon.com to receive the first overall selection in the 2026 draft. If that holds through the final four weeks of the regular season – due to their remaining strength of schedule it is unlikely but not impossible – this will be the first time in 61 years the team finds itself at the top of the picking order.
“That’s not an honor,” Tucker Frederickson, the running back from Auburn the Giants selected back then, said in a phone interview with Newsday from his home in South Florida this week. “To get the No. 1 pick it means you had a horrible season.”
That was certainly true of the 1964 Giants, who went 2-10-2. And it’s just as true now.
But the Giants getting those rare first dibs for just the second time in their history and not having had it since is one of the least weird things about the 1965 NFL Draft.
For starters, the event took place in 1964. November 28, to be exact. A Saturday, right in the middle of the regular season. The Giants even played a game down in Washington just a few hours after the marathon 20-round event at the Summit Hotel on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan wrapped up on Sunday afternoon, so head coach Allie Sherman was with the team while vice-president Wellington Mara handled the selection process.
Why the rush? Because the upstart AFL was holding its draft the very same day and with the two leagues competing for the same pool of players neither could afford to give the other the advantage of time to negotiate deals with their picks.
So yes, on the same day the Giants had their most recent first overall pick, the Jets were altering the direction of their franchise by selecting Joe Namath with the top pick in the AFL.
Giants fullback Tucker Frederickson at camp in Fairfield, Conn., Aug. 7, 1967. Credit: AP/Harry Harris
Then again, maybe they already had. Both leagues made agreements with college football to wait until after their regular seasons had ended to hold their drafts, but even with that there were reports that the AFL had secretly held its selection process weeks earlier so the Nov. 28 event may have just been play-acting and recreating decisions that had already taken place. The fact that the AFL’s official draft took place over a teleconference call rather than at any centralized location only added to that speculation.
The NFL Draft was adapting, too. The 1965 event — which, again, took place in 1964 — was the first in which the teams were hunkered down at their facilities or in nearby hotel rooms rather than having all of the decision-makers gathered in one big ballroom. The picks were then transmitted by phone or teletype to a representative at the Summit Hotel. Because of this new format, teams were given an unlimited amount of time between picks. When it took 13 and a half hours for the 14 teams to get through two rounds, however, the rules were adjusted and a 15-minute time limit was imposed on rounds 3 and 4 with a 10-minmute cap for the final 16 rounds.
Namath? Butkus? Sayers? Frederickson.
None of that mattered to the Giants as the draft began, though. They had the first pick. The only other time in their history the Giants had the first overall pick was in 1951 when they selected running back Kyle Rote. He helped them win the 1956 NFL Championship and reach the title game four other times.
At this point in 1964, however, the stars who had helped make the Giants the league’s marquee franchise in the 1950s were beginning to fade. Y.A. Tittle and Frank Gifford would both retire after the 1964 season and Sam Huff had been traded to Washington before that season. Rote had retired after 1961 but was still with the team as a running backs coach until 1963. The 1964 season that concluded with a 2-10-2 record was the Giants’ first with a losing record since 1953.
Giants running back Tucker Frederickson against the Buffalo Bills at Yankee Stadium on Dec. 7, 1970. Credit: AP/Spencer Jones
The Giants needed to reload talent to compete on the field, and they needed star power to contend with the AFL in the still new battleground of televised sports . . . a phenomenon they themselves had helped create less than a decade earlier in 1958’s “Greatest Game Ever Played.”
They could have picked Namath, although they would have had to outbid the Jets to keep him. That’s what the St. Louis Cardinals thought they might be able to do when they selected Namath 12th overall. The Giants also could have taken Dick Butkus or Gale Sayers, who wound up going third and fourth, respectively, to the Bears in one of the all-time great double draft dips; there were reports that Sayers did not fit their “system.” Fred Biletnikoff was available too. All of them became Hall of Famers.
They did none of that.
Frederickson was their choice.
“We had just played Alabama and it was after Thanksgiving and I had stuck around Birmingham for a wedding,” Frederickson said of the day he was drafted. "I was in a hurry to get to the party and I got a call and they said ‘We’re going to draft you No. 1’ and I said, ‘Great!’ It was a surprise to me because I hadn’t even heard from the Giants before that.”
They worked out an agreement on the money during that call and hung up.
“And then the next call was from Denver, they had a pick in the AFL Draft,” Frederickson said. “I said, ‘I just agreed with the Giants, don’t waste your pick.’”
Despite all the talent in the draft, no one thought the Giants were wrong for their choice.
“We were a team in rebuilding mode,” Sherman would say later about that draft. “We looked at quarterback first but we couldn’t get a move on that. So we said we better get ourselves one of the best ballplayers available, especially on offense. We thought Tucker would be the best bet. He was one of the best backs in the country.”
At 6-2 and 200 pounds, the All-American and MVP of the SEC (the same conference that Namath played in) was a very low-risk pick. It was said that Alabama coach Bear Bryant sent Frederickson a graduation card because he was so happy to see him leave the college ranks. He wound up being enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. The Giants also selected Ernie Koy, Chuck Mercein and Spider Lockhart in that same draft, and they traded for Earl Morrall to play quarterback for them.
'Being in New York was spectacular . . . '
When Frederickson ran for 659 yards and five touchdowns to make the Pro Bowl as a rookie in 1965, it looked as if the Giants had hit a home run. They even had a somewhat promising 7-7 record.
Then a preseason knee injury sidelined Frederickson the entire 1966 season and when he returned in 1967 he injured the other knee. “I was never the same,” he said.
He lasted five more seasons with the Giants but scored just four touchdowns during that time. The Giants began to slip into the malaise that would define the franchise throughout the disappointing late 1960s and early 1970s. After losing in the 1963 NFL Championship Game, the Giants wouldn’t appear in another postseason contest until 1981.
The Frederickson pick was supposed to represent a fresh start for the Giants. Instead, it came to symbolize missed opportunities to select future Hall of Famers and the beginning of one of the worst eras in the franchise’s history.
Frederickson parlayed his time in New York into offseason jobs in securities on Wall Street. Then, after retiring from the NFL in 1971, he had a a full-time career in the business world. He’d eventually get into real estate and help Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman design golf courses in Florida. He worked with Michael Pascucci to develop Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton. At age 82 he is still involved in those endeavors.
He still keeps in touch with some old teammates, too. Bobby Duhon, drafted by the Giants in 1968, is his brother-in-law. At dinner together this week, they decided to call Fran Tarkenton and remember the old times they had together. They certainly weren’t the glory days for the franchise, but for the players they were. And Frederickson said he still occasionally runs into a Giants fan who remembers him. Most of them, like him, have migrated to Florida.
“Being in New York was spectacular, unbelievable,” Frederickson said of his time here. “It was great for me. I’m not so sure it was great for the Giants, but it was great for me.”
Having the No. 1 overall pick is a bad sign, as Frederickson noted. But being the No. 1 overall pick? Even one that didn’t quite work out the way anyone envisioned?
Said Frederickson of that designation: “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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