Charlie Evans, who played in the Giants backfield in the early 1970s, died in his Texas home on Nov. 4 at 76.
A cause of death was not announced.
He was drafted out of USC by the Giants in 1971 and spent the first month of the season on the taxi squad, one of the players under contract to the team but not on the main roster.
Those players used an auxiliary dressing room at Yankee Stadium.
“It’s kind of lonely back there,” he told The New York Times. ““Sometimes they forget about you, and when you look in your locker there won’t be any clean sweats, or jocks, or undershirts, or things like that.”
Injuries opened up a spot for him and he scored five touchdowns over three games, including three in a 35-17 win over the Chargers.
That was the final season the legendary Fran Tarkenton was Giants quarterback before being traded back to the Vikings.
“Tarkenton would call his own plays, and you had better do what you were asked to do on each play,” Evans said.
Evans’ best game of 1972 came in a 45-21 win over the Saints in which he ran for two touchdowns and caught a third. He ran for 87 yards on 17 carries.
Unfortunately, his season ended in early November when he suffered a broken leg against the Broncos.
He spent 1973 with the Giants and 1974 in Washington, the final season of his career.
“The hardest thing to realize when you get out of the game is the fact that you don’t get any more freebies,” he later told Newsday. “You don’t get any more checks picked up by people you never met because they know who you are. You don’t sign any autographs. Nobody wants you.”
His body was donated to NFL concussion protocol research, according to his obituary.
Despite health issues related to football, Evans told Newsday he had no regrets about his career.
“It’s part of the game, part of what you love, part of what you wanted to do and the way I look at it, ok, what came along, came along. I can’t do anything about that,” he said.
