Gifford and Summerall Confirm It: New York Football Giants A Team Divided

Donovan McNabb was about 50 years too late in his ignorance of the rules.

McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback who confessed last month to not knowing that regular season NFL games can end in a tie, would have been right in place in Yankee Stadium on December 28, 1958. That’s when the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts played for the league championship in a game dubbed as the greatest ever. But first, it was the most mysterious ever.

“I remember turning to one of our captains, Kyle Rote, and asking him, ‘What do we do now?’,” comes the recollection of Pat Summerall, the Giants’ kicker in 1958.

The fourth quarter ended with the teams tied, 17-17.

“Kyle said, ‘I think we have to play some more. Let me find out from the coaches’,” Summerall added, chuckling.

Summerall and Frank Gifford were the Giants representatives as the NFL held a media conference call on Friday to celebrate the upcoming 50^th anniversary of that game, which ended when the Colts’ Alan Ameche bulled into the end zone from the two-yard line, punctuating the first sudden death overtime in NFL history. The Colts were represented in the call by running back Lenny Moore and receiver Raymond Berry.

But it wasn’t that game, as historic as it was, that piqued my interest. It was the long-standing legend that the Giants were a team split right down the middle: offense vs. the defense.

“It wasn’t friendly at all. They (the defense) didn’t like us,” Gifford said when I raised the issue.

The Giants of the 1950s were the first pro football team that truly became more known for its defense than its offense. And with good reason. Andy Robustelli. Jim Katcavage. Dick Modzelewski. Sam Huff. These are names that are cherished in New York. And often it was they, not the offense, who provided the points, enabling the Giants to win another ballgame. It got so much that the P.A. announcer at Yankee Stadium introduced the defense before games – something unheard of prior.

“I remember one day in Cleveland we kept going three-and-out, three-and-out,” Gifford recalled. “Then we come off the field after having to punt again, and there’s Huff standing on the sidelines, waiting for us.

“’Can’t you guys hold them off for a little while?’, he says.”

“I wouldn’t say it was friendly at all,” Summerall said about the in-fighting between the proud Giants defense and the beleaguered offense. “I remember we were about to play the Cardinals in Buffalo, and this was after a stretch where all we were doing was scoring by field goals. And someone comes up to me and says, ‘What does it feel like to be the whole Giants offense?’ So there was a lot of that stuff going around.”

The feeling was mutual, according to Gifford, a double threat back and receiver in those days.

“We didn’t much care for them, either,” he said flatly. “At times it got pretty heated.”

The divide even spread to the coaching staff. The head coach was Jim Lee Howell, but his two top assistants would end up in the Hall of Fame. Coaching the offense was Vince Lombardi; coaching the defense was Tom Landry.

“There was a rivalry between the two units, no question about it,” Summerall said. “And the rivalry carried over to Lombardi and Landry. They would be congenial and everything, but when Vince would look at Landry…there was a mutual feeling of hostility, let’s put it that way.”

Giants offensive coach Vince Lombardi with Frank Gifford

Yet the Giants were winners in those days, as they’re winners now – fractious relationships among the ranks and all. Another example of why all that rot about chemistry and mutual admiration is a bunch of horse manure. If you have the talent, you’ll win. Like the Oakland A’s of the 1970s, who battled themselves in the clubhouse almost as much as they battled the Orioles and the Tigers on the diamond. Yet all they did was win three straight World Series. They even hated their owner. Actually, that might have been the common denominator that pulled them through: their almost universal disdain for Charlie O. Finley.

But this is indeed the 50^th anniversary of the game that many say put the NFL on the map. It was televised nationally, and a local labor dispute added to the national exposure, according to Summerall, who like Gifford is now 78.

“There was a newspaper strike in New York at that time,” he pointed out. “And because of that, I think more papers sent their own writers to cover the game, instead of just taking the New York feeds. So that added to the coverage, as well.”

There was some controversy on the field, which added to the game’s lore. Gifford was stopped short on a key fourth quarter play – when all the Giants and their fans thought that he made the first down. And Baltimore’s Steve Myhra kicked the game-tying field goal that Summerall, among others, thought was no good.

And, maybe even more astounding, was the moment when what appeared to be a drunken fan wandered onto the field, holding up play for several minutes. The story goes that the “drunken fan” was actually an NBC employee, who was told to “stall” while the network frantically tried to repair a cable that had been kicked out of its socket by overzealous fans. Not sure if it’s true, but when order was restored, so was NBC’s signal, so there you have it.

Like any anniversary of any length, the participants can never seem to believe it’s actually been that long.

“Frank called me this spring and told me this year was the 50^th anniversary of that game,” Summerall said. “I didn’t believe fifty years had passed.

“But then we were in New York this summer, a bunch of us, and when we all tried to get out of the van we were being driven around in, I realized that it indeed had been fifty years,” Summerall added as we all howled.

“We were a band of brothers,” Gifford said. “And we all kept in touch. It’s very, very special.”

Divided and all.

Lions, Giants Each Haunted By Boneheaded Play Calls In Days Of Yore

I’m not sure what the nickname is for it, but it never got the snazzy moniker of the Immaculate Reception or The Holy Roller, or the Hail Mary. Or even the Ally Oop. And certainly not the Miracle in the Meadowlands.

The Lions have had their strange moments, that’s for sure, but of all the curious play calls and decisions they’ve made over the years, perhaps none haunted the franchise as much as an ill-advised pass play called in the huddle during the late stages of a rain-soaked game in Green Bay, in October 1962.

The Lions, growing into a serious title contender in 1960 and ’61, visited the Packers. Each team was 3-0. For most of the game, the Lions’ vaunted defense handled the Packers’ famous running attack in the muck in Wisconsin. The Lions nursed a 7-6 lead with just a few minutes remaining.

Then the Lions were faced with a third-and-long near midfield. But even if they didn’t convert, all they needed to do was punt, pin the Packers deep into their own territory, and Green Bay would have maybe 90 seconds left to drive into field goal position — which on a bad weather day would have been inside the 30-yard line.

But then Lions QB Milt Plum faded back to pass.

“My God, he hasn’t passed all day! What’s he doing?,” DT Alex Karras said to Joe Schmidt (according to Karras years later).

The pass was headed for the sidelines, but the Lions receiver slipped in the mud and DB Herb Adderly intercepted. He ran it back deep into Lions territory. A few simple running plays later, Paul Hornung booted a field goal. Packers win, 9-7 — without even scoring a touchdown.

“The whole defense was absolutely violent. Joe Schmidt was absolutely violent. I was so mad, I could have killed somebody,” Karras related about the mood in the locker room after the game.

Naturally, everyone wanted to know who called the pass play, when a running play would have been safer.

“None of your business,” Plum told Karras.

That’s when Karras lost it, and hurled his helmet across the room, missing Plum’s noggin by inches.

Karras said that the mood was so funereal on the plane back to Detroit that “even the writers, who were normally like pallbearers, were trying to cheer us up.”

The Lions later manhandled the Packers on Thanksgiving Day in ’62, but by that time it was too late. Green Bay won the West with a 13-1 record. The Lions finished 11-3 — their third loss coming on the last, meaningless Sunday of the season. Had they not blown the game in Green Bay, it might have been the Lions in the league championship game that year, not the Packers.

Karras and others still believe that that loss in Green Bay in 1962 so divided the team and so hurt morale, that the Lions never really recovered.

“It was like guys started to think, no matter what we do or how good we play, something is going to happen to screw it all up. That we’ll never win anything,” Karras said.

It’s a mood and a belief that continues to dog the Lions today, some 45 years after the debacle in Green Bay.

The New York Football Giants, who invade Ford Field Sunday, were also victimized by a strange play call. But this one was much more famous, though the implications were far less. Call it the amenities of playing in New York/New Jersey.

The 1978 Giants were a bad football team. They were going nowhere in the standings. But they were about to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles at home — and the Eagles WERE a good football team. The Giants had the ball inside their own 30-yard line, under a minute remaining. The Eagles had no timeouts left. All Giants QB Joe Pisarcik had to do was fall on the ball, for goodness sakes.

For reasons that still go unknown, Pisarcik tried a handoff to Larry Csonka. The exchange was poor, and the ball dropped to the turf. You’ve seen this play a hundred times, no doubt. And you’ve seen DB Herm Edwards (yes, THAT Herm Edwards) scoop up the gift and waltz into the end zone for the winning score.

Edwards about to pick up his freebie and run with it to glory

A Giants assistant coach got fired the day after the game. The play came to be known as the Miracle in the Meadowlands. And it served as a constant reminder of the Giants’ ineptitude in the late ’70s, early-1980s. Until someone named Bill Parcells came along to end the nonsense.

I’ve never seen footage of the Lions’ silly pass play in Green Bay in 1962. But I’ve read about it for years, rendering my seeing it irrelevant. I HAVE seen the Giants’ blunder countless times, but that play hasn’t nearly the same impact as the one the Lions made — the one that I never saw.

Proof that memories can resonate without moving pictures to showcase them.