Best Giants Team-1950s Huff, Robustelli, Gifford
Assistant Coaches - Landry and Lombardi; Rivals -Unitas and Colts
Dec 15, 2008 Grace Lichtenstein
Jack Cavanaugh’s Giants Among Men should be required reading for young fans who think there was no great football in the New York area until the Super Bowl was started in 1967.
The writer, a contributor to Sports Illustrated and The New York Times effectively recalls in his new book the period a half-century ago when the NFL first gained traction as the nation’s most popular pro sport. It did not happen overnight.
Pro Baseball vs. NFL Football
In 1956, the year Andy Robustelli, soon to be a legendary Giant, was traded to New York by the Los Angeles Rams, baseball was still the unquestioned National Pastime, especially in New York City, where three baseball teams still dominated -- the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees. When rookie linebacker Sam Huff joined the team and the Giants stormed to the NFL Championship against the Chicago Bears, the Giants still had to play their early season games on the road. Their home games (originally at the baseball Giants home, the Polo Grounds) were played at Yankee Stadium. It was assumed that the mighty Bronx Bombers would be using the place well into each October postseason.
Cavanaugh reminds us of the years when the T formation was quite a recent invention, when star players like quarterback Charley Conerly also were occasional punters, and when two-way players like Chuck Bednarik, the bone-crushing Philadelphia Eagles linebacker whose fearsome hit on Giants star Frank Gifford put Gifford on the sidelines for an entire year, often played both offense and defense.
Robustelli, a Connecticut native who became a Hall of Fame defensive end, is the player at the center of everything, since he remained a Giants starter until 1964. He was such a leader (as well as outstanding sporting goods retailer) in Stamford. that many of the players soon settled there as well.
Lombardi and Landry in New York
In some ways, two assistant coaches on the great Giant teams stole the players’ thunder. The head coach was Jim Lee Howell, but far more influential were his offensive coordinator, Vince Lombardi and his defensive coordinator, Tom Landry. Not until Bill Belichick became the defensive genius under Giants head coach Bill Parcells in 1985 did the Giants have such innovators calling plays or inventing defensive alignments.
During the ‘50s and ‘60s, offensive stars like halfback Frank Gifford and fullback Alex Webster bloomed, and thrilling playmakers like Jim Brown of Cleveland and Johnny Unitas of Baltimore were among the Giants’ opponents. Unitas’ Colts beat the Giants in the NFL Championship game of 1958, often called “the greatest game ever played.” Cavanaugh tales may convince fans that those Giants were every bit as sensational as later teams.
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