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Former New York Giants Running Back Randy Minniear Dead At 79

Randy Minniear, running back for the New York Giants in the late 1960s, died Aug. 13, according to his obituary.

Minniear’s cause of death is not currently public. He was 79.

Playing college football as a fullback with Purdue University, the Giants picked Minniear in the 20th round of the 1966 NFL Draft, and Minniear saw his first action in the 1967 season. Earl Morrall was quarterback of the team back then.

“They rate him as the greatest backup quarterback of all time,” Minniear said in 2021 on the Thursday Night Tailgate podcast. “And that’s one of the things they say about me. I was the greatest benchwarmer of all time. I will tell you this, while I was down there on the end of the bench by the water bucket not one was stolen in five years.”

Minniear also played with Fran Tarkenton, a Hall of Fame quarterback, in 1968 and 69.

“He’d almost kill you running pass patterns because you’d have to change your pass pattern and run from one side of the field to the other while he was back there scrambling all over the place. But he could throw, smart, hard-worker and he just had a flair about him that I just loved,” Minniear said of Tarkenton in 2021.

Scoring four touchdowns in 19 contests with the Giants, Minniear was also a fan of playing games at Yankee Stadium.

“Absolutely incredible,” he once said. “I got a thrill, even though I was there for four years, every time I walked from our locker room we shared with the Yankees and I walked down that wooden ramp into the dugout and you look around and think, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I don’t think there’s anything like the old Yankee Stadium. It was the thrill of a lifetime to play in that.” (RELATED: Legendary Boxing Coach Chris Martin Dies Unexpectedly At 59: REPORT)

Minniear scored his last touchdown as a New York Giant in 1969 against Vince Lombardi’s Washington Redskins, going on to play for the Cleveland Browns in 1970 before retiring.

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