December 30, 1956: "De-FENSE!"

Sam Huff

December 30, 1956: The NFL Championship Game is played at Yankee Stadium. This was the 1st season in which the football version of the New York Giants played their home games there, after 31 seasons across the Harlem River, at the Polo Grounds, home of the baseball Giants.

The Giants selected linebacker Sam Huff of West Virginia in the 3rd round of the 1956 NFL Draft. He did not get along with head coach Jim Lee Howell, and quit. But before he could get on a plane to go home, the team's offensive coordinator caught him at the airport, and talked him into going back. That coach's name was Vince Lombardi.

The defensive coordinator was Tom Landry, who had been perhaps the 1st player in the two-platoon era to became a great defensive back without also playing on offense. He devised the 4-3 defense, with 2 tackles, 2 ends, and 3 linebackers, and dropped Huff to the position of middle linebacker, which did not previously exist. (Up to then, most teams used a 5-2 defense.)

Huff recalled, "Before, I always had my head down, looking right into the center's helmet. Now, I was standing up, and I could see everything, and I mean everything. I always had outstanding peripheral vision. It's one of the reasons I was so perfectly suited for the position."

The Giants had a good offense, with quarterback Charley Conerly; running backs Frank Gifford, Mel Triplett and Alex Webster; end Kyle Rote; and offensive tackle Roosevelt Brown. But, for the 1st time in NFL history, it was a defense that caught everybody's attention. Before the various Fearsome Foursomes (at least 3 teams had lines nicknamed that), before the No-Name Defense in Miami, before the Steel Curtain in Pittsburgh, before the Doomsday Defense in Dallas, before the Jets' New York Sack Exchange, and before the 46 Defense in Chicago, there was the Big Blue Wrecking Crew.

The tackles were Dick Modzelewski and Rosey Grier. The ends were Jim Katcavage and Andy Robustelli. The linebackers were Sam Huff, flanked by Bill Svoboda and Harland Svare. The cornerbacks were Ed Hughes and Dick Nolan. The safeties were Emlen Tunnell and Jimmy Patton. They were so good, a new chant rang around the rafters of the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium: "De-FENSE! De-FENSE! De-FENSE!"

Huff said, "Landry built the 4-3 defense around me. It revolutionized defense, and opened the door for all the variations of zones and man-to-man coverage, which are used in conjunction with it today."

Gifford, the 1st in a long line of great tailbacks at the University of Southern California, was the glamour boy on offense, but Huff became that on defense. And on December 30, 1956, with the field at Yankee Stadium frozen solid, the Giants played the NFL Championship Game against the Chicago Bears. They were a far cry from the "Monsters of the Midway" who had dominated the NFL in the 1940s.

Three weeks earlier, on December 9, the Bears were playing the Chicago Cardinals at Wrigley Field, in a game that would be depicted in an episode of the ABC sitcom Happy Days. Ed Brown, playing quarterback for the Bears, threw an interception. Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard, said he wanted the other quarterback put in. His friend Ralph Malph, played by Donny Most, said of that quarterback, "He's washed up. He's old. He's 30. He's got no future." Richie said, "George Blanda has 2 or 3 good years left."

The Bears won the game, 10-3. And, while Brown got the Bears into the Championship Game, Blanda kept on playing and playing and playing, until the 1975 AFC Championship Game, played 16 days before that episode of Happy Days aired.

Record-wise, the Bears were better, 9-2-1, compared to the Giants' 8-3-1. But the game was no contest. Especially since, echoing their 1934 Championship Game win over the Bears, the Giants wore sneakers instead of shoes with cleats, getting better traction on the frozen field. This would finally be outlawed -- too late for the Bears.

Tunnell returned Blanda's opening kickoff 53 yards. Just 3 plays later, Triplett ran 17 yards for a touchdown. On the Bears' 1t play from scrimmage, Brown fumbled a handoff, and the Giants recovered. On their next drive, Brown was intercepted by Jim Patton. Both times, Ben Agajanian kicked a field goal, and the Giants ended the 1st quarter up 13-0.

In the 2nd quarter, Alex Webster scored on a 3-yard touchdown run. Rick Casares ran the ball in from 9 yards to put the Bears on the scoreboard. They would not get on it again. Before the half was out, Webster would score another touchdown, and Henry Moore would block a punt in the end zone, making it 34-7 New York.

As Huff and the dee-fense continued to shut the Bears down (if not quite shutting them out), the Giants carried out the kind of ball-control offense that Bill Parcells would use for them 30 years later. In the 3rd quarter, Conerly threw a 9-yard touchdown pass to Rote, although Agajanian missed the extra point. In the 4th quarter, Conerly threw a 14-yard pass to Gifford. Final score: Giants 47, Bears 7. It wasn't a "miracle on ice," it was a massacre on ice.

This began a run of 8 seasons in which the Giants would win their Division 6 times, but they wouldn't win the NFL Championship Game again. In 1958, the Giants hosted the Baltimore Colts, and lost in overtime, in what has become known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played." In 1959, they had a rematch at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, and the Colts won again.

By that point, Lombardi was gone, having been named the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. In 1960, Landry was named the 1st head coach of the expansion Dallas Cowboys. That season, the Giants lost the Division title to the Philadelphia Eagles, after a fumble-forcing tackle by Chuck Bednarik knocked Gifford out for the rest of the season.

Gifford sat out the 1961 season, while Allie Sherman was named the Giants' new head coach, and Y.A. Tittle replaced Conerly as quarterback. They won the Division again, but lost the Championship Game to Lombardi's Packers on a snow-strewn Lambeau Field on New Year's Eve. In 1962, with Gifford returning, it was Giants vs. Packers again, this time at Yankee Stadium, again with the field frozen, and the Packers won. In 1963, on yet another frozen field, the Giants went out against the Bears at Wrigley Field, and lost a tough battle.

All the while, Huff became more and more famous. He was named to 5 Pro Bowls. Time magazine had placed college football players on its cover before, but Huff became the 1st NFL player on it, for its issue dated November 30, 1959.

In the 1960 preseason, the CBS news program The Twentieth Century approached Huff, offering to put a microphone on his uniform for practices and an exhibition game, to show TV viewers what a football game really sounded like. Hosted by Walter Cronkite, it was titled "The Violent World of Sam Huff," and it aired, perhaps appropriately, on October 30, Mischief Night.

How successful was the program? The next day, a CBS executive wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, and wrote nothing on the envelope except "Number 70." No actual name, no return address, nothing except "Number 70." Three days later, the letter was delivered to Huff's locker at Yankee Stadium.

The U.S. Postal Service employees knew exactly what, and who, it meant. Even before Lawrence Taylor was born, Huff might have been a better linebacker.

The team seemed to get old all at once in 1964. Huff was traded to the Washington Redskins, Tunnell was already gone, and 1964 would be the last season for Tittle, Gifford and Robustelli. Roosevelt Brown lasted 1 more season. The Yankees, too, seemed to get old overnight between the Autumn of 1964 and the Spring of 1965. Yankee Stadium became a very different place through its closing for renovations in 1973.

In October 1976, the Yankees would be back in the World Series, in a renovated Yankee Stadium; while the new Giants Stadium opened in the New Jersey Meadowlands. It took until 1981 for the Giants to make the Playoffs again, and the 1986 season before they won another title.

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December 30, 1956 was a Sunday. Actresses Sheryl Lee Ralph and Patricia Kalember were born.

At the time, the NCAA did not permit college football games, even bowl games, to be played on Sundays. Baseball was out of season. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Rochester Royals, 96-88 at the old Madison Square Garden. Kenny Sears scored 33 points for the Knicks. This would be the last season in Rochester, as the Royals moved to Cincinnati for 1957-58.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Syracuse Nationals, 105-92 at the Boston Garden.

* The Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 104-99 at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In spite of the defeat, the Warriors' Paul Arizin scored 35 points. This would be the last season in Fort Wayne, as the Pistons moved to Detroit for 1957-58.

* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 100-93 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Bob Pettit scored 41 points and had 18 rebounds for the Hawks.

And there were 2 games in the NHL. The Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0 at the Chicago Stadium. The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens were not scheduled.