Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [23]
“I felt like I’d finally reached the end, I felt like I had reached the bottom. There wasn’t any further that I could go. And I felt disappointed. I felt empty.”
2
Quarterback Lack
Very early into an eighth decade of professional football, the collective body of New York Giants fans had been familiar with cruel and crippling home losses. Members of the older generation lamented losing to Johnny Unitas’ Baltimore Colts at Yankee Stadium in the 1958 NFL Championship Game. But at least that one was somewhat honorable. The overtime defeat clinched professional football’s unyielding place in American culture.
The franchise’s transition to brand new Giants Stadium in October 1976 also came with home-field frustrations. “Big Blue,” as the team was sometimes called, lost their first three home contests, the last two by shutout. By the time of the “Miracle at the Meadowlands” (the Philadelphia Eagles impossible last-second victory in 1979), New York had been so bad at home that such an absurd, fluke defeat was almost laughable.
“Laughable” also describes that 38-12 rout by Washington in October 1987. Instead of the defending Super Bowl champions, scab, replacement players filled in for the striking NFL Players Union. New York lost a third home game in twenty-two days. Most horrified fans stayed home anyway, electing not to watch the faux-Giants drop to an 0-4 record.
Any history-conscious New Yorker who walked into the East Rutherford, New Jersey, stadium on Saturday, December 15, 1990, had to be aware of the team’s occasional brush with embarrassing or painful home losses. But when the Giants sulked off the Meadowlands AstroTurf later that afternoon, their fans had never known anything like this.
Following a remarkable 12-4 regular season in 1989, the Giants squandered home-field advantage in their first-round playoff showdown with the wild-card Los Angeles Rams, losing in overtime. At the start of the next year, the team held high hopes, which they fulfilled through two-and-a-half months. A wonderfully balanced New York team won each of the first ten games of the 1990 season.
Sitting out all of training camp to protest his contract did not keep linebacker Lawrence Taylor from reclaiming his position as the league’s best outside linebacker. He posted three sacks in the season opener against Philadelphia—just five days after returning from his holdout—then recorded another and returned an interception for a touchdown the following week at Dallas. The thirty-one-year-old did not need a preseason to knock the dust off his revolutionary pass-defense skills. With Taylor, Leonard Marshall, Carl Banks, and Pepper Johnson, the Giants featured the best and most feared front seven in the NFL. By Week Eleven, the “Big Blue Wrecking Crew” ranked first in the conference in yardage and points allowed and were ranked first in the NFL in rush defense. The only team to allow fewer yards (fifty-five) and points (one) was the Miami Dolphins, who the Giants dominated 20-3, in late September.
Throughout the 1980s, the Giants defense had largely overshadowed the offense. But at the start of the new decade, New York’s scoring attack seemed every bit as potent. After ten games, quarterback Phil Simms was the league’s number-one-rated passer, the running attack averaged over 120 yards per contest, and with only ten turnovers in ten games—the lowest in the NFL—the Giants embodied head coach Bill Parcells’ ideal offense.
By the start of Week Twelve (the team’s bye came in early October), every aspect of the Giants 1990 team seemed flawless. Even Sean Landeta’s punting was tops in the NFL.
“Each week, you get another win and you get