A Retrospective on the 1956 NFL Championship: Giants’ Triumphs and Trials

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This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is popping broadcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another edition of our championship series before the Super Bowls.

And we are having a great time doing this.

And we have a New York Giants historian, a repeat guest.

Here on the Pig Pen we have Warren Rogan.

And Warren, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, thanks for having me.

Glad to be back.

Always love talking football with you.

And you know, for me, what's better than talking New York Giants football even though, even though it's torture to watch them these days.

Yeah, that's the beauty of history.

You go back and pick any era in history that you want to talk about and have a great podcast on it.

Can you believe it's been that long, four years ago since we've done that.

But yeah, so, so why don't you tell us a little bit about what's, what's going on with, with your projects these days in football history?

Sure.

You know my podcast, Sports Forgotten Heroes, I try to follow the seasons.

So right now I'm mostly into baseball, but during the football season, it's obviously a lot of football.

In this past year, did some, some really cool football shows.

Giant wise, Mel Hine was a great subject, as was Frank Gifford.

And what I liked about the Frank Gifford podcast was that I think, I believe that most people when they hear of Frank Gifford, they think of the television analyst, the play by play guy, the Guy that was synonymous with Monday Night Football and of course, his marriage to, you know, the, The.

The.

The famous.

Yeah, yeah.

But I don't think a lot of people think of Gifford in terms of a football player, and the dude was great.

I mean, he was a great football player at usc, Southern Cal, where he wound up in the College Football hall of Fame.

And he was a great hall of fame player for the New York Giants.

You know, he played in the defensive backfield, he played halfback or, you know, a running back, and he was a receiver as well.

And the other big project that I have going on, you know, and you were a really nice inspiration, is I wrote my first book.

The name of the book is.

Yeah, congrats on that.

Yeah, thanks, man.

The name of the book is College All Stars versus NFL Champions.

And it's a really, I think, a really cool concept.

It's.

You know, we get into these barroom discussions, Right?

Yeah, Trivia.

You know, do you think that they.

A team, a college team can beat an NFL team?

And the answer is usually 99.9% of the time, people say there's just no way.

Because if you think about it, the best college football teams have, you know, just a handful of guys who are ever going to make it to the pros, and they might not even be starters.

Some of them, you know, Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, you know, Texas, you might get four or five guys a year, get drafted and.

And go to the pros.

But the rest of them, they.

They the worst professional football players.

The guys number 53 on the roster of an NFL team is usually number one, two or three on a college football team.

Right.

They were seniors.

They're not.

They no longer have college eligibility.

Gathered for a few weeks of practice up in Chicago, and to start the exhibition season, they would take on the defending NFL champion.

And the NFL team didn't want to lose this game.

They flat out didn't want to lose this game.

In the beginning of the series, it was more about giving the NFL coverage, right?

Making the NFL a popular game.

Cover.

College football was the game back in the 30s, especially in the early 30s, most people didn't think of the NFL's a marquee league back then, because they weren't in the marquee markets and they were having trouble gaining traction.

So this was also some sort of a.

A PR stunt by Arch Ward to help popularize the NFL game.

And at that time, the Bears and the packers and the Giants were really good teams, but you had teams like in.

In.

In Akron, you know, Pottsville, you know, you know, all these different places.

But as time went on, the NFL got better and better and better.

And believe it or not, the college teams won this game almost 25% of the time.

They won nine of the 42 games played, and that's nearly 25%.

The last one was the most shocking of all.

1963.

So, yeah, so they played the defending NFL champion, and then when it became the super bowl champion, they played the defending super bowl champion.

And Lombardi was none too pleased.

So I wrote a book about it.

Fun.

It covers a lot more than just the games.

It, it talks about, you know, the risk that some of these players took by playing in a game without having signed their contract yet with an NFL team.

So they risk their NFL career.

Talks about the.

How the games evolved over the course of time, how the league, the NFL evolved, how some of college football evolved.

The first ever broadcast television broadcast of a game.

And it talks about some of the NFL stars or college stars, excuse me, that actually appeared in the game who you might not think about.

Guys like Gerald Ford, Byron Whizzer White, Alex Karras from those Detroit lion teams that talking about on.

On your podcast.

You know, Alex Karas was a famous television star too, right, Burgess?

So there are.

There are a bunch of different guys I talk about, and it was, it was always been a goal of mine to write a book.

Like I said, you gave me some inspiration.

I went out, I spent the time to write the book, and I'm happy to say it's being published and it not coming out for a while.

You know, that's the downer.

But I'm really excited about it and I can't wait for it to hit the stands.

Yeah, well, that is, that's awesome news.

And I'm.

I'm glad that you were able to get a publisher, too.

And don't worry, that year will go by really quick.

And, you know, 13 months from now, you'll be looking back and say you only remember this conversation.

It'll be all happiness and everything.

So when you get that first copy in your hand, you'll love.

And when you do, let us know and we'll have you on and talk more about this.

You know, this game because it's a lot of great stars, like you said, and even some college hall of Famers besides NFL hall of Famers.

But yeah, some great games.

I remember a few of them because my Steelers were in it the last.

They weren't.

And it wasn't like.

And, and we have to remember these games weren't like, they didn't throw like the third string in.

They wanted to win.

Yeah.

Bradshaw and Jack Lambert, they were playing in that game, the whole game, just like they would have week one in the NFL.

So, yeah, great, great game.

They absolutely did.

Yeah.

We'll never see that again.

So.

No.

Yeah.

But.

Yeah, but tonight we're gonna go back a little bit, you know, in between this.

So some of these guys played in that game.

Maybe we're talking about some of them tonight here in this 56 season and your Giants.

So what can you tell us about the 56 season, the NFL?

Well, you know, the Giants did win the NFL championship that year.

They.

They beat The Chicago bears 47 to 7 in the NFL championship game.

And like, like it was in earlier between the two teams back in the 30s.

The Giants beat the Chicago Bears 30 to 13.

And it was in a.

The field wasn't in good condition, snow and all.

And the Giants played in sneakers, and that gave them better traction on the ice than the cleats did.

With cleats, you're, you're.

Because you're above the ice.

You have no grip.

You're.

You're sliding.

And the Giants were able to.

They thought about it.

Somehow.

I forget the story, but they wore sneakers.

They did the same thing again in 56, and they beat the Bears 47 to 7.

Now, interestingly, they also played the Bears during the regular season, and they played 17, 17 tie.

The Giants were a pretty good team back in the 50s.

They.

They were always in contention, but they never made it to the championship game.

And 56 was a big deal for the Giants because they, they won the NFL championship in 25, 34 and 38.

And like I said, they were always a contender, but they never seem to be able to get over the top.

The Bears were better, the packers were better.

So while they won in 25, they lost in 33, they lost in 35, they lost in 39, they lost in 44, they lost in 46.

And they had a pretty good, they had a really good team.

They went 8, 3 and 1 during the regular season.

And they had some, they had some studs on that team.

You had Frank Gifford, you had Sam Hoff, you had Roosevelt Brown, you had Emilyn Tunnel, and you had Andy Robustelli.

To the interesting thing to me, and I, and I don't.

The quarterback that everybody associates with the Giants back then was Charlie Connerly.

The guy was a, you know, he was a stud and Connerly was in the Pro bowl, you know, or it was a pro, was named pro, you know, was a Pro bowl player.

But Don Heinrich was the starting quarterback.

So I don't actually understand the mechanics there because like I said, the Giants regular season, they were 8, 3 and 1.

Heinrich's quarterback record that year was 8 wins, 3 losses and 1 tie.

Charlie Connolly was never the quarterback of record, but he played quarterback more often than Heinrich.

As I look at it right here, Heinrich was 37 of 88 for 369 yards and five touchdowns.

Connerly didn't start a single game.

Heinrich started all 12 games.

So if you start the game, you are the quarterback of record.

So he was, he was the guy that was getting the stats.

And he was almost 10 years older than Heinrich.

He was 35.

Heinrich was, was 26.

So that's one of those things that I don't really understand.

But here's another interesting thing about the 56 season.

That was the first year that the Giants played in Yankee Stadium.

Up until that point, the New York Giants played in the Polo Grounds.

And you know, people watching or listening, I don't know if they really recognize how close the Polo Grounds were to Yankee Stadium.

You could literally walk from one stadium to the other.

They were right across the bridge, right across the, the river from each other.

So the Giants played in the Polo Grounds and they finally moved over to, to Yankee Stadium because the New York Yankees were such perennial World Series participants.

The NFL had to make an exception to the Giants schedule because you always thought that the Yankees would be in the, in the World Series come October.

So The Giants first three games of the 56 season were all on the road.

And Yankees, right before the Giants got into the stadium in 56, won the World Series with Don Larson pitching the perfect game.

So they went from the perfect game of Don Larsson to the Giants finally getting into Yankee Stadium.

And the giants opened the 56 season beating the 49ers out in San Francisco 38, 21.

Then they lost their second game to the Chicago Cardinals we now know are the Arizona Cardinals.

They lost that game 35 to 27.

And then the Giants started to put together a win streak.

They beat the Cleveland Browns in their final away game.

The third straight game to open the season was an away game.

They beat the Browns 21 to 9.

And they opened up the regular season.

Their first ever game at Yankee Stadium against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

And they beat the Steelers 38 to 10.

Then Philadelphia came to town, they beat the Eagles 23.

And the Giants went to Pittsburgh.

Sorry.

They beat the Steelers again, this time 17 to 4.

I think everybody beat the Steelers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, that's really, you know, going back to what we were talking about before with, with the, the College All Star game.

The Steelers never played in it until they got to Super Bowl.

It's crazy.

You know, they just, they, they were not the team that, that they've been the last half a century.

But, you know, then they beat the Cardinals at home 23 to 10.

Then they went to D.C.

lost to the, then Redskins.

But the Giants finished the season eight, three and one.

And like I said, they were, they were, they were a heck of a team.

Their defense had Rosie Greer on it, Dick Nolan, Jim Payton, Emlyn Tunnel, but they were really a marquee team.

And like I said, they had five hall of Famers on it.

But here's another little interesting tidbit about the 56 giants.

Their coach was Jim Lee Howell.

Their defensive coordinator was a guy by the name of Tom Landry.

Their offensive coordinator was a guy by the name of Vince Lombardi.

So the Giants had on their staff perhaps two of the greatest coaches of all time in Lombardi and Landry.

Somehow they let him get away and obviously both went on to, you know, these historic hall of Fame careers.

And after they left is when the Giants really started to tank.

Yeah, I mean, that's a fascinating aspect.

We've talked about that before on, not on this Series, but some other, some other program.

We talk about Landry and.

And Lombardi being the coordinators and Jim Lee Howell.

Most people have never heard of Jim Lee.

How.

And.

But when you have two assistant coaches like that, you can.

You don't have to use your brain power as much because you got those guys really working for you.

But yeah.

Question about this quarterback situation.

Yes.

Okay.

Between Conner Lee and.

And Don Heineke.

Okay.

He.

Now could this be maybe a playbook out of the Rams from a few years earlier when they were using Waterfield and Van Brocklin as, you know, depending on the situations or every other series or.

I, I'm not sure because I thought about that.

And the.

Heinrich started every game.

So it was more than just let's alternate series.

And Don Heinrich started every game because the quarterback of record is the quarterback, at least the way I understand it is the quarterback who starts the game.

So Don Hy.

So The Giants went 8, 3 and 1 during the regular season and Heinrich was 8, 3 and 1.

Connerly did not have a win, a loss or a tie.

And in the, in the playoffs, ironically, again, Don Heinrich started the game.

He was 3 of 6 for 21 yards.

He is the quarterback of record.

He is the quarterback who got the win.

Charlie Connerly was 7 of 10 for 195 yards and two touchdown passes.

Heinrich only, like I said, was 3 of 6 for 50 yards.

So I'm not sure, you know why that was, but here's another, another cool little tidbit about that season.

You know how the sidelines, the coaches talk to the players in their helmets?

Right.

Right.

That was really the first time that that Happened was a 56 season.

It was the Giants when a coach could connect to the quarterback through a radio, the quarterback had a receiver in the helmet so he could hear the plays that the coach was calling in.

So this is.

The Giants were doing this and a couple of teams are doing it.

But that third game of the season, the one on the road in Cleveland, the Giants used the radio to intercept the Browns calls.

So Landry knew what the plays were and called the defense because he knew what the plays were.

The Browns had a fit.

They went to the commissioner of the league at the time, Bert Bell, and he said that's it.

And Bell outlawed the devices after that.

So that.

That happened during the 56 season as well.

So.

So Landry was intercepting the Browns.

The Browns plays the Giants.

Like I said, they.

They robbed 21 to 9.

Yeah, it's the.

I just, just going back to our Quarterback situation.

I just went back and looked at the 51 Rams.

Now Van Brocklin started two of the 12 games, Waterfield started 10.

Waterfield was seven and three quarterback record.

Van Brocklin was one and one.

So your theory is right.

So the starting quarterback on there.

But I bet you it's a similar situation because Waterfield started the majority of the games for the Rams.

And I think if I remember correctly, one of the strategies were they would have.

Waterfield would throw passes that he did.

Of course they had the great running backs.

He had two waves of running backs to bring in the elephant and the.

I forgot what they called the other ones.

But the speedy guys, yeah, they just pounded people.

But that Waterfield could a good passer too.

And then Brock and coming in with his passing game was a whole different thing.

It just through defense is so off kilter.

I wonder if maybe that's some of the Giant strategy they were.

Sure, I'm sure it was.

It was.

Probably had something to do with getting, you know, just getting the team going and all.

You know, it's.

You know, maybe it was give Heinrich, you know, he was 26.

Give him, I don't know, give him some experience.

I don't know.

Then you get the, the grizzly veteran in there, Charlie Connolly and, and you know, he would.

He was a heck of a quarterback.

You know, I wanted to go back for a second though to Landry and Lombardi because instead of keeping them, the Giants let both of them go and they brought in this guy who was the coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the cfl.

They let Lombardi go, they bring in this guy Ali Sherman and he becomes the OC of the Giants in 59.

And he just couldn't after that that, you know, Jim Lee Howell left and they gave the job to Ali Sherman because he had such experience in, in.

In the CFL and really didn't do that great a job with the Giants.

So it was pretty, pretty interesting there how the Giants.

So, so Gifford was the main running back for the Giants.

Yeah.

So yeah, Gifford, he.

He led.

He led the team in rushing.

He had 819 yards rushing and receiving.

He led the team in receiving as well with 603 yards.

So they also had Alex Webster in the backfield.

He ran for 694 yards and Mel Triplett ran for 515.

So the Giants had three decent running backs.

Well, Gifford was more than decent.

But you know, you got to remember back then they, they only played 12 games.

So if you got a thousand yards rushing back, then that Was a heck of a lot better than, you know, much more meaning, I won't say better, but again, to get a thousand yards back in the 50s during a 12 game season was a lot more difficult than it is to get a thousand yards in a 17 game season today.

But yeah, Gifford led the team in receiving as well.

He had 603 yards receiving.

Kyle Row was number two with 405 yards.

So I mean they had, you know, Gifford ran for five touchdowns, Webster ran for seven touchdowns, Triplet ran for five.

Gifford caught passes, four passes for touchdowns.

Kyle Rote caught four passes for touchdowns.

Guy by the name of Ken McAfee also caught four passes for touchdowns.

They had a pretty balanced attack.

And this is also before 56 was before Gifford got destroyed by, I can't think of his name.

Yeah, yeah, this is before he got destroyed by Bednarik from, from, from the Eagles.

Yeah, yeah, amazing.

Okay, so defensive side, you mentioned some legendary names there.

You're talking about Sam Huff and Rosie Greer and some of the others.

Yeah, they also happen.

Landry.

Yeah, they also had Rosie Brown, Dick Nolan, you know, they had some.

As I, as I look at it here, Dick Nolan intercepted two passes.

Tunnel was really good.

He intercepted six passes that year.

Sam Hoff, who also went on, you know, he had a great career with Washington as well.

He had three interceptions as, as the middle linebacker.

The Giants, you know, it's, it's a really, it's such an interesting thing to me.

When I think of the New York Giants over the course of history, I always think of a team that was just their championship teams, always had great linebackers.

And their teams these days, the Giants, for whatever reason for years don't value the linebacker the way they used to.

And, and in a way I also think sort of like the running back, the position of linebacker, whether you play four linebackers or three linebackers has been minimized because of how teams stack the defensive front.

And you have to have great defensive backs to, to, to play in the game today.

You know, the aerial attack of the game today is so much more lethal than it was back then.

And you know, you think of the Giants through the years.

You know, you had Sam Hoff and those teams in the 80s, you know, Harry Carson and Carl Banks and you know, obviously Lawrence Taylor and then, you know, even into the 90s with Gary Reasons and that crew.

They've always had great, their championship teams always had great linebackers and they don't have that kind of linebacking today.

I mean you had Bill Svoboda back then and Sam Huff back then.

Their linebackers were just, they were great linebackers for the Giants back in, back in that day.

And those guys quarterback the defense and their, their defense isn't that way.

Yeah, their defense isn't that way anymore.

Huff was the rookie of the year in 56.

He came out of West Virginia and you know, he started 10 of the 12 games.

Three interceptions, you know, recover two fumbles.

They had Jim Cat Cabbage who came to them at a Dayton that year and you know, he was, he was, he was pretty darn good.

Their kicker, Don Chandler, they, they acquired Robustelli from the Rams, Dick Moduleski from the Steelers.

You know, they were.

And they already had Rosie Greer and they had Evelyn Tunnel and Dick Nolan and Jim Payton.

They, they were, they were a solid team.

They were a solid team.

They weren't a dominant team like we see the teams of today in the NFL, but they were a solid team.

They played a great team game.

Like I said, they, they weren't known as a team for one star.

They had many good players and a couple of great players.

Like I said.

Gifford wound up in the hall, Huff wound up in the hall, Brown wound up in the hall.

Tunnel roundup in the hall.

And Roma Stelli also wound up in the hall.

Yeah, last year we did a whole series on, you know, the Giants 100th anniversary season.

So we went through a lot of their players in some of the seasons and you know, tunnel I was not that familiar with until I started studying him and watching some old videos.

This guy was freaking amazing.

I mean, yeah, not only, I mean he, when he got the ball in his hands on an interception, but a lot of kick returns.

This guy was electric.

I mean he would, you know, he would be like Desmond Howard of our era.

You know, he, this guy is like.

He'S probably a guy I should do a show about on sports forgotten heroes, you know, and like I said, it was a team game for them.

Darren.

You know, they, they weren't expected.

They were supposed to be better than the average team.

Their expected record, they were predicted to go 8 and 4.

And like I said, they weren't a dominant team.

They were just a really good team.

They were fifth in the league in scoring.

They were fourth of the league in points against.

So they didn't really dominate any one side of the ball.

They were just really good on both sides of the ball.

And yeah, they were 56.

They, they, they, they caught a couple of teams sleeping.

They went 8, 3 and 1.

So they were only expected to win eight games.

And that's exactly what they did.

But you know, the.

I would say the NFL really didn't have much of a dominant team that year.

The Giants were 8, 3 and 1.

The Cardinals finished second in the east at 7 and 5.

Out west, the Bears, they snuck in by percentage points.

They went 9, 2 and 1.

The Lions, who were a really good, great football team in the 50s, they were nine and three.

So because the Bears tied the Giants and didn't lose to the Giants, the Bears had a better winning percentage of.818 at 9, 2 and 1, as opposed to the Lions, who went 9 and 3.

And you know, that was a, a 750 winning percentage.

And just take a look.

The, the Bears.

The Bears beat the Lions 42 to 10.

And the Lions beat them 38 to 21.

So.

Or the Lions beat the Bears.

I'm sorry, the Lions beat the Bears 42 to 10 in Detroit at the last game of the season was the big deal.

The Lions win that game.

They would have gone 10, 1 and 1 and played the Giants.

But the Bears at home at Soldier Field beat the Lions 38 to 21 to earn the right to play the Giants in the NFL championship game.

And they lost 47 to 7.

Yeah, and this is kind of an odd year, 256 from the standpoint.

And this is a year where none of those three teams are in the championship.

Even though 57 again, you have, you have the, the Lions and the Browns playing again for a championship.

And I think they met three or four times that during that decade.

So it's amazing the, the Browns.

I, I'm not a Browns fan, but I respect the heck out of what that team did in the 40s and 50s.

And I'm actually really happy to see that the NFL is now counting the statistics from the All America Football Conference, which played in 46, 47, 48 and 49.

And there were some pretty weak teams in there, but you still had a really good San Francisco 49er team.

You had a team called the New York Yankees in the aafc, and they were really good, too.

And the Browns won all four of those championships.

And people were saying it was the aafc.

It didn't mean anything because look who they were beating.

They weren't beating NFL teams.

What happened when the Browns got to the NFL?

They won the championship in 50.

Right.

They were that good.

Otto Graham played in 10 straight NFL championship games.

Nobody else has done that.

That's crazy.

He played a 10 championship game.

They had the four AFCs.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

And then the five in the NFL.

Right.

But they were that good a team.

It didn't matter that they were playing in the aafc.

They were that good.

And they came and they proved it.

And one of the fun stories I like is that when they got into the NFL and the first game, they beat the Eagles, I think it was, and the Eagles, that.

Yeah, well, they played that fake game where they kept throwing the ball, so that's why they beat us.

Then the next time they played the Eagles, they threw the ball once and whipped them good with just, you know, running, running, running, running.

But, yeah, I mean, you know, the Browns.

The Browns won the NFL championship in 50.

They played for the championship in 52 and 53 and 54.

They won it again in 55.

You know, in 56 or.

Yeah, they wanted again in 54 and 55.

They were just this machine.

They were.

Paul Brown was one heck of a coach, and he put together one heck of a team.

Just.

Just, just.

That's.

Well, that was my next question I was going to ask you since.

Since we were talking Giants tonight in his 56 season.

And that is a great way to sum up the season.

A great job by you to tell us about your Giants and the College All Star Games here and wrap it up with a Giants victory in that game.

So we're looking forward to your book next year, and we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this great piece of NFL history and Giants history.

Well, I hope I did them justice.

I'm sure there's a lot more little facts and figures everybody could talk about, but, you know, I do.

I do want to say, you know, they won it in 56 and they made it back, but they lost it in 58, they lost it in 59, they lost it in 61 and 62 and 63.

They didn't win again until Phil Sims and the 86 giants.

So the.

The Giants have a championship pedigree, but it comes and it goes.

All right, well, thank you very much, Warren, and we will talk to you again real soon.

You got it.

Anytime, Darren.

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