HISTORY -- vs. Dallas Cowboys -- Part ONE

[Giant Obsession]

The Dallas Cowboys came into the league in 1960.  They played their first 11 years at the Cotton Bowl.  They were coached by former New York Giant player and defensive coordinator Tom Landry, who would go on to coach them the first 28 years of their existence.

Overall, the series is lead by Dallas and stands at 42-59-2.  they have met once in the playoffs, a game won by the Giants.

At first glance, this appears to be a rather benign rivalry, compared to the Eagles and Redskins.  But there is much woven into the fabric of this rivalry.  Most obvious is Dallas very first head Coach -- Tom Landry.  He was a player drafted out of Texas who played his whole career with the Giants as a DB and fill in Punter.  He retired from playing in 1955, but prior to that 2 years earlier was named an assistant coach...one of the last player/coaches in football.  Upon retirement he was immediately named Defensive Coordinator. 
If you combine their records...3 coaches who served as Defensive Coordinators for the New York Giants have accounted for 625 wins and 7 Super Bowl victories....Landry, Parcells, and Belichick.

In their inaugural season of 1960, the Cowboys were to finish 0-11-1 (last year of the 12 game schedule).  But that tie came late in November at Yankee Stadium on a late Dallas TD pass to finish the game at 31 all. 

1961 -- In a season where they won 4 games, their last victory of the season was again at Yankee Stadium.  An Allen Green 32 yd. FG in the 4th quarter defeated the eventual Eastern Conference Champion Giants.  the Giants would finish at 10-3-1.

As the Giants finished 1962 and 1963 again as Eastern Division Champions, they dispatched Dallas with relative ease.  But then the worm turned.  The Giants were about to enter their "Dark Ages" in 1964 winning only 2 games, while Dallas kept steadily improving winning 10 games by 1966 and playing in the NFL championship.  That same year the Giants won once, and were defeated by Dallas by scores of 52-7 and 17-7.   In fact, from 1964 thru their first meeting in 1980, the Cowboys were 26-4-1...a winning percentage of .854.  In those 31 games the Giants average 12.6 points/game as what had become known to football as the "Doomsday Defense".

Needless to say, the 2 teams through those years never played a "key" game against each other.  But, for Giant fans there were 3 games of interest...2 seemed significant at the time and 1 had surrounding events which affected the Giants and Cowboys for years to come.

1968 -- The Giants came into the game with a 5-3 record trailing the Capitol Division leading Cowboys by 2 games.  This early November game with a season ending December meeting at The Stadium still to come was the Giants ultimate chance to make inroads in the division.  Fran Tarkenton opened the scoring with a 22 yard scramble TD run in the first quarter and early in the 2nd quarter safety Bruce Maher picked off Don Meredith returning it 89 yards to the 5 yard line. Tarkenton followed up 1 play later with a TD toss to Joe Morrison.  Dallas answered back  with Meredith TD passes to Lance Rentzel and Bob Hayes to tie the score at 14 at the half.  midway through the 3rd quarter Tarkenton caught the Cowboys in a blitz at his own 40 and hit Homer Jones on a quick slant for a 60 yard TD an the Giants never trailed again winning 27-21 and pulling within a game of Dallas for the division lead. 
While the Giants would win the next week to take their record to 7 - 3, they would suffer a heartbreaking defeat to the Rams in Los Angeles the next week and limp home with a 7-7 record.  Dallas loss to the Giants would be the last game they would lose that year as they finished at 12-2.

1970 -- Again, an early November game  -- this time at the Stadium found the 4-3 Giants facing the 5-2 Cowboys.  The Giants circumstances are what gave this game even added importance.  After adding a speedy, shifting halfback named Ron Johnson to the team via trade and having retooled their offense the previous season, this was the best Giant team in the last 7 years, or so the pundits thought.  They immediately opened the season falling into an 0-3 hole, one of the losses coming on a referee mistake in New Orleans.  Undaunted, the Giants righted their ship and won their next 4 games to bring us to this contest.
A Tucker Frederickson fumble and a staunch Dallas defense gave the Cowboys a 17-6 lead late in the 2nd quarter.  But then Tarkenton lead a skillful 2 minute drill to get the Giants to the edge of FG territory...the Dallas 47.  With seconds remaining Pete Gogolak kicked his personal best 54 yard FG on the final play of the half to close the gap to 17-9 and provide what seemed an emotional lift as the players poured forth in celebration on their way to the locker room.
New York took the 2nd half kickoff, but after a handful of plays, Frederickson fumbled again and shortly after Dallas converted the miscue into another 3 points and a 20-9 lead.  Again the Giants regained their composure and on a 14 play drive which consisted mostly of Johnson runs mixed in with an occasional Tarkenton pass and scored late in the 3rd period to cut the margin to 20-16.  At this time Alex Webster ordered an onside kick which was executed perfectly and recovered by "Little" Mean Joe Greene in Dallas territory.  After 2 first downs, the drive bogged down, but Gogolak missed a short attempt on a day when he had already connected from 40, 42, and 54 yards.
Dallas and New York would trade punts and eventually New York would start a drive from inside their own 20 with 9 minutes left.  On an almost mirror like drive of the one a quarter earlier New York would come to rest at the Dallas 13, facing a 3rd and 7 with just over 3 minutes left.  The Giants started to break their huddle, when Tarkenton called them back and changed the play called.  He had Ron Johnson run a straight line route directly at All Pro safety Mel Renfro and make a sharp cut to the right when he got in end zone.  Tarkenton hit Johnson 2 steps out of the cut for the go ahead touchdown and the Giants lead for the first time all day.  Furiously Dallas tried to drive into FG range in the waning minute but a surprisingly stifling Giants defense rose to the occasion holding them just short of midfield and insuring their 5th victory in a row.  On the day the vaunted Dallas offense gained but 263 yards.
The Giants that year would actually have qualified for the playoffs as Divisional Champs but a season ending rout by the Rams at the Stadium and a Dallas victory in their final game played later that day prevented such an occurrence.  Dallas would lose but 1 other time in the regular season and go on to play in Super Bowl V, losing to the Colts on a Jim O'Brien FG.

When 1974 rolled around the Giants were back into a state of rebuild.  Tarkenton had returned to Minnesota, Ron Johnson, while still a good back, had been greatly reduced from being a "special" back because of knee and thigh surgery and the general wear and tear of heavy use.  Their drafting had been abysmal.  The Rocky Thompson and Elridge Small 1st round selections were to become legendary....and not in a good way.  They got a nice season out of Norm Snead at quarterback in 1972, but his talents were never all star caliber, and they were diminishing by the day. The only effective player on offense was Bob Tucker, and he was to soon to become disgruntled with the situation and demand a trade. On defense, they had actually become a decently effective unit, certainly not a "Steel Curtain" of Pittsburgh fame, but able to keep the club competitively in most ball games.  The only trouble was, they had trouble scoring.  They had failed to find a young quarterback of ability to find suitable for grooming....a problem that had plagued them for over 25 years.  They constantly plugged that problem with trades for veterans such as Tittle, Tarkenton, and Snead.
The '74 season opened with 2 straight losses and 30 points scored.  Then the Giants travelled to Dallas and amazingly played their finest game of the last 5 years, beating the Cowboys 14-6.  And while the win was satisfying, the fact they got to look at a Dallas team with the one "commodity" they craved sit on the bench must have been burned in their brains.  Roger Staubach had finally after 3 seasons wrested total control of the QB situation from Craig Morton.  Morton was tailor made for the Giants...a 31 year old, 9 years in the league veteran who had been successful in his playing time with a superior talent team.
The image of Morton must have burned brightly in the brains of Wellington Mara and Andy Robustelli the next 3 weeks as the Giants scored a total of 17 points in 3 consecutive losses to stand at 1-5. Norm Snead, Jim del Gaizo, and Carl Summerell were all dismal at QB.  Adding to that mounting pressure was the fact that in less than 2 years the new stadium in New Jersey (Giants Stadium) would be opening with an extra 15,000 seats to fill and no solution to the QB position on the horizon.
Thus, they bit the bullet, and acquired the disgruntled Morton on October 22, 1974 for a 1st and 2nd round draft choice.  What was to hurt for the next 12 years was that 1st round round pick was the 2nd choice in the draft.  The Cowboys selected a player who would almost instantly become an All Pro and later elected to the Hall of Fame...Defensive lineman Randy White...nicknamed "manster" for half man and half monster.
Morton, well in his 3 seasons at starting QB he won 1 game in the rest of '74, 5 in '75 and finally 1 in 1976.  The Giants averaged around 13 points in his combined starts over that 3 year period.  The Giants were dismal, but all the seats in the new Stadium sold out and the light bulb finally went off in Wellington Mara's head that Giant fans were loyal...no matter what.  They were going to be there whether the team was a playoff contender or a basement dweller.  The era of the quick fix was now dead and gone.  It was time to build through smart drafting.
So, I personally have always credited Dallas trading us their head case QB as a major link to the future success which the Giants were about to experience in a few short years.  The end of the "Dark Ages" was coming very shortly.

[Webster29]

Mike:   as usual a great job.  Thanks so much.

I have always been bothered by that tie in 60.   It just teed me off that the mighty Giants could be tied by an expansion team of cast offs.   But their head coach certainly knew the Giants.

I have often thought one of the big reasons for the rivalry between the Boys and Giants, at least from my perspective was jealously.  Of their success and how they did things.   When I first got Sirius Radio I loved to listen to Gil Brandt's stories about how the Cowboys ran their scouting department.  And it ticked me off thinking why the Giants couldn't do things that way.   This was touched on in the series Finding Giants that is being  broadcast now.   The Giants did learn from Dallas but it seemed to take for ever. 

[Giant Obsession]

Bill, thank you for the compliment. 

The reason the Giants were so late to the party, and Mr. Mara admitted this years later, was the misguided edict that the Giants were a New York team and New York demanded a winner or they would not support it. 

Also, the Giants were a "family" business and run that way.  Eventually the chain store teams with their eyes open to the future just went right past them, while the Giants stayed "in house" in how they operated.  there was virtually little change.  "Finding Giants" is a great series, I have watched each episode twice.  the admission of the file cabinet filled with Street and Smith college football report is something I had heard before but never had been substantiated until this series.  Go back and look at our drafts of the 50's and 60's...they were god awful.  In the meantime the marriage of Landry and Gil Brandt elevated a raw expansion team into a championship game in 7 short years....and maintained a degree of excelllence in Dallas for decades.

Finally, because it was such a "family" business, it cost us both Lombardi and Landry.  Jim Lee Howell, whom according to Frank Gifford did very little coaching at all his last 5 years just kept refusing to retire.  Opportunities opened up and they were gone and a year later 'ol Jim Lee decides to retire.

The job would have been Lombardi"s, but really you weren't going wrong with either as your head coach.  And both were strong willed enough to help institute the needed change in how our "Mom and Pop" team was run.

Two books to read...Gifford's book on the '58 title game was superb because Frank really did not write it.  he gathered all the information and got the interviews, but he had a professional write the finished product.  The book will give you a superb insight into the Jim Lee Howell, Lombardi, Landry coaching at that time.  Jim Lee is not remembered fondly by Frank because even gifford realized that he was just hanging on and getting paid and preventing the change that was so badly needed.

The other book "Once a Giant" by Andy Robustelli is the most honest, non self serving book i have read on the Dark Ages.  Remember, Andy was the GM the last 5 years of that era.  I found it to be an open honest look at our team and more specifically the front office.  Andy did not have asn ax to grind, was not trying to deflect blame...he just told it like it was.  I have read that book at least 10 times over the years and is one of the reasons I use Andy in my picture avatar.

In our younger days, we all knew the Steelers were going to be lousy every year.  They operated much like the Giants, but without the smarts and luck.  They were the Rooney family business.  Then they hired Chuck Noll, a Paul Brown disciple.  And from a 1 win season in 1969 they blossomed into a dynasty in 7 years, just like Dallas.

It took Lombardi 3 years to turn the Packers around and lay a foundation that survives to this day.

In the meantime, you and I and many others lived through the never ending Dark Ages, always optimistic, always wanting to believe, and never being rewarded.  In 17 seasons that 9-5 1970 squad was the shining star of our "fan" life.  In retrospect, how sad is that ?

[files58]

Your last paragraph says it all. I cried(I was 14 yrs. old) when the Rams beat us 31-3 in the final game. The week before the Giants beat the Cardinals in St. Louis to go to 9-4 and gave me a terrific birthday present. The referee blunder in New Orleans where Aaron Thomas clearly caught a td inbounds in the endzone cost them the division. That's why the 86' season is so special.

[Giant Obsession]

I cried twice...in '67 when we blew the game against Minnesota in Bloomington 27-24 after leading 24-7, and the next year when we lost the Atlanta game after starting out 4-0.

I actually have the highlights of that New Orleans game on my computer in my library.  Sickening how bad that call was.  Plus we should have beaten the Eagles.

the '86 Super Bowl will always be my favorite hands down.  as fans we paid a lot of dues for that.

[BlueMoshik]

GO,

Great job! Though I disagree a little with your interpretation. I don't think the "light bulb" quite went off in Wellington's head at the time you say (the move to Giants Stadium). He and Robustelli still went for the quick fix. Don't forget that in 1976 he personally made sure that the Giants signed Larry Csonka, the over-the-hill diva fullback from Miami. Not only was this done against the wishes of Tim Mara, the owner of the other 50% of the franchise, but Csonka played a key role in the infamous fumble debacle that signaled the downfall of  Andy Robustelli, John McVay, and Wellington as team boss. After that season Tim and Wellington simply could not agree to do anything - specifically, whether to hire a GM or coach first - and that's where the NFL stepped in and Pete Rozelle basically asked the Giants to hire George Young.

[vette5573]

I put the star on the thread so we don't lose track of it when it's time to move it to the History Board. Mike felt it's better not to tack it up so I dropped the two threads.

Thanks for doing this Mike!

[jimv]

Obs, I've been thinking about how tied up Tom Landry is in the Giants/Cowboys rivalry.  It made me go back to the beginning of this thread and recheck something that I passed over.  Landry didn't play his whole career with the Giants.  His first year was with the Yankees in 1949.  The Yankees folded when the AAFC combined with the NFL for 1950.  The Giants picked up Landry as part of its "territorial rights." 

[Giant Obsession]

Obs, I've been thinking about how tied up Tom Landry is in the Giants/Cowboys rivalry.  It made me go back to the beginning of this thread and recheck something that I passed over.  Landry didn't play his whole career with the Giants.  His first year was with the Yankees in 1949.  The Yankees folded when the AAFC combined with the NFL for 1950.  The Giants picked up Landry as part of its "territorial rights."

Jim, you are absolutely correct.  Thank you for picking that up.  Although he was drafted in the 20th round by the Giants, he did play his first year with the "Yanks" in 1949.  A fact I had forgotten mentally and overlooked when researching.  He was a teammate there of the great Buddy Young.

Now if i could only remember where I put the car keys

Thanks for the save Jim.

[jimv]

That's OK, Obs.  It was a confusing year for me back then.  I was concentrating on my second year of college and not watching carefully the team changes.  Buddy Young was picked up by the Bulldogs as in their "territorial rights" pick.  After 64 years the memories grow a little dim.  But, I think i remember the Giants getting Otto Schnellbacher & Arnie Weinmeister the same way.