The

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

was the franchise's 54th season in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

. In their first ever season that had a sixteen-game schedule, the Giants looked to improve on their 5–9 record from 1977. The season saw the Giants get off to a hot start. They beat newcomer

Tampa Bay Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater in ...

in Tampa 19–13, despite being a 1 point underdog. After a close loss to the rival Cowboys 34–24 the next week, the Giants beat the Kansas City Chiefs 26–10 and the San Francisco 49ers 27–10 to start the season 3–1, their first 3–1 start since 1969. However, the Giants then started to struggle, losing to the

Atlanta Falcons The Atlanta Falcons are a professional American football team based in Atlanta. The Falcons compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The Falcons joined th ...

23–20 and the Cowboys again 24–3. Following wins at home against the Buccaneers and Redskins, the Giants went on a downfall, which saw them lose their next 6 games and 7 of their last 8. In week 12, the Giants played their arch-rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, in a crucial game that saw the Giants fumble away the game on Joe Pisarcik’s fumble and Herm Edwards fumble recovery for a touchdown that won the game for Philadelphia, 19-17. The play was dubbed the “Miracle at the Meadowlands”. The Giants never recovered from this game, getting pummeled on the road to the 3–9 Bills, 41–17, despite having a 10 point lead in the 4th quarter. In their final game, a rematch with Philadelphia, the Giants lost 20–3 to end the season 6–10.

Offseason

Draft

The Football Database
Retrieved 2016-Nov-01.

Roster

Regular season

The Miracle at the Meadowlands is the term used by sportscasters and

Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...

fans for a

fumble A fumble in gridiron football occurs when a player who has possession and control of the ball loses it before being downed (tackled), scoring, or going out of bounds. By rule, it is any act other than passing, kicking, punting, or successful ...

recovery by

cornerback A cornerback (CB) is a member of the defensive backfield or secondary in gridiron football. Cornerbacks cover receivers most of the time, but also blitz and defend against such offensive running plays as sweeps and reverses. They create tur ...

Herman Edwards Herman Edwards Jr. (born April 27, 1954) is an American football coach and former cornerback who was most recently the head football coach at Arizona State. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for ten seasons, primarily with the Phil ...

that he returned for a

touchdown A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Ameri ...

at the end of a November 19,

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...

NFL game against the

Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands or The Swamp) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and it primarily hosted sp ...

. It was seen as miraculous because it occurred at a point in the game when the Giants were easily capable of running out the game's final seconds. The Giants had the ball, and the Eagles had no timeouts left. Everyone watching expected

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

Joe Pisarcik Joseph Anthony Pisarcik (born July 2, 1952) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for eight seasons, from 1977 through 1984 after playing high school football at West Side Central Catholic H. S. (late ...

to take one more

snap Snap or SNAP may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Snap'', the original release title for the 2013 film ''Enter the Dangerous Mind'' *''Snap'' (TV series), a CITV programme * ''The Stanly News and Press'', a newspaper in Albemarle, North Carol ...

and kneel with the ball, thus

running out the clock In sports, running out the clock (also known as running down the clock, stonewalling, killing the clock, chewing the clock, stalling, time-wasting (or timewasting) or eating clock) is the practice of a winning team allowing the clock to expire thr ...

and preserving a 17–12 Giant upset. Instead, he attempted to hand it off to fullback

Larry Csonka Larry Richard Csonka (; born December 25, 1946) is a former professional American football fullback who played for the Miami Dolphins for the majority of his career, along with the New York Giants for three years, and a short stint with the Mem ...

and botched it, allowing Edwards to pick up the ball and run 26 yards for the winning score.

Schedule

Note: Intra-division opponents are in bold text.

Game summaries

Week 4

*Television Network:

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

*Announcers:

Don Criqui Don Criqui (born October 1, 1940) is an American sportscaster. He holds the record for longest-tenured NFL broadcaster in U.S. TV history, calling NFL football for 47 seasons (1967-2013) on NBC and CBS. Criqui's final NFL broadcast came on De ...

and

Tom Matte Thomas Roland Matte (June 14, 1939November 2, 2021) was an American professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) in the 1960s and 1970s and earned a Super Bowl ring. He attended Shaw High School in ...

Joe Pisarcik threw a 29-yard touchdown pass to Al Dixon early in the game and Bobby Hammond set up two other touchdowns with long runs as the Giants are so far surprising the football world with a 3-1 record with a win over winless San Francsico. New York's Larry Csonka became the sixth player in NFL history to rush for 7,000 yards and he himself scored a 1-yard touchdown run in period 1 while Willie Spencer of the Giants scored a 1-yard touchdown run in period 3 while Joe Danelo kicked two field goals of 28 and 52 yards to provide the Giants scoring that day.

Week 12

Week 14 at Bills

Standings

References

New York Giants on Pro Football Reference

Giants on jt-sw.com
New York Giants seasons

20th century in East Rutherford, New Jersey Meadowlands Sports Complex {{NewYorkGiants-season-stub