Miracle Moments in New York Giants Football History by Tom Rock

Author:Tom Rock
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781683582953
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2019-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

Scott Norwood’s field goal attempt in the final seconds of Super Bowl XXV was wide right, allowing the Giants to hold on to a stunning victory. (Copyright © New York Football Giants, Inc.)

The ball sailed past the upright, about a foot or so outside the scoring zone.

Wide right.

The Giants were champions.

The Giants celebrated the win, mostly unaware that they were also celebrating the end.

There were hints. Because of the war, there was no parade planned back in New York or even in New Jersey. There was no White House invitation. Even in the immediate aftermath, there was no real party for the champs.

In fact, their time in the postgame locker room represented their last moments together. There were three separate buses to bring them back to the hotel, where they were greeted not by a lavish party, but by a table with some sandwiches. The Giants may have won a Super Bowl, but the country was still at war, and this wasn’t the time to be throwing gala bashes.

“The ballroom we used for the locker room at the hotel, that was kind of our headquarters during the week, and it was a busy place,” Bavaro said. “Now it was just a big empty dark ballroom. It was kind of depressing.”

There was a little table along one of the long walls, and it was filled with wrapped deli sandwiches. Next to it was a cooler with sodas in it. The players single-filed off the bus, walked into the virtually empty ballroom, grabbed a sandwich and a Coke, and went up to their room. That was how most spent their night as champions.

They didn’t even fly back to New Jersey together the next day. Some went home. Others stayed in Florida to vacation with family or went to other locales.

Inside four months, 49-year-old two-time Super Bowl winning head coach Bill Parcells resigned, citing health issues. There had been rumors right after the game that Parcells might leave, but none of the players fretted much about it, because they assumed his top lieutenant, Bill Belichick, would take over.

Belichick, though, wound up taking the Browns job before Parcells announced his departure. The Giants hired Ray Handley to replace Parcells.

“That was officially the end,” Carl Banks said. “It just didn’t feel the same anymore. The decisions that were made in the coaching area just, they just didn’t sync up with the type of players we were. Some of it was change for the sake of change. Some of it was ego because you had new coaches who wanted to prove that they were better than Bill Belichick or Bill Parcells. It just didn’t work.”

It wasn’t just the coaches. Players who had been part of the identity of the championship teams also left.

One of them was Bavaro, who required knee surgery and knew he would never again be playing for the Giants.

“The Giants and the doctors were telling me my career was over, and I had no reason to doubt them,” he said. “I figured my

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