One of the matchups on this week’s NFL schedule is an NFC East clash between two long-time rivals, the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles. This week’s Thursday Throwback features a famous game played between these 2 rivals on November 20, 1960, at Yankee Stadium, when a play that became known as “the hit heard ’round the world” took place involving a pair of future Hall of Famers, Eagle linebacker Chuck Bednarik and Giant running back Frank Gifford. The game was a must-win situation for the Eagles, who were enjoying a rare season where they had a shot at dethroning the 2 dominant teams in the NFL’s Eastern Division, the Giants and Cleveland Browns. They were hanging onto a 17-10 lead late in the game and the Giants were beginning to mount a comeback when Bednarik laid out Gifford with a hard, clean hit as the Giant back was attempting to catch a pass over the middle. The hit was so hard it knocked Gifford unconscious, and he had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. He suffered a concussion, with symptoms so bad that he was out of football for 18 months, and wound up retiring.
The two players involved were polar opposites of each other. Bednarik, whose nickname was “Concrete Charlie”, was a hard-nosed intimidating player who took pride in the fact that he was the last of the NFL’s two-way players, playing both linebacker on defense and center on offense. Gifford was a “golden boy” back who played his college career at USC and became a media darling there on the West Coast, then moved onto the pro stage on the other coast, under the bright lights of New York City, where he garnered endorsement deals and, after winning the NFL MVP Award in 1956 while helping the Giants win the league championship, became a player the league tried to push as the face of the NFL. There’s no question that at the time, Bednarik relished in the fact that he knocked the “golden boy” out cold, but as time passed, grew to respect Gifford, especially after the Giant star defended the hit as clean when Bednarik began to get a reputation for being a dirty player.
The iconic photo pictured below of the hit appears to show Bednarik celebrating over Gifford’s prone body, but the Eagle Hall of Famer always insisted that in that moment, he wasn’t even aware of the injury, and was actually celebrating the fact that the hit forced Gifford to fumble, and the Eagles had recovered to basically put the must-win game away. It turned out to be a huge win for Philadelphia, as they went on to win an improbable NFL title, handing Green Bay a 17-13 loss in what turned out to be Vince Lombardi’s only postseason defeat. Gifford’s retirement turned out to be temporary, as he came back in 1962 and switched positions to flanker. As the pro game began evolving the third running back into a second wide receiver, other star runners of that era, like Bobby Mitchell and Paul Warfield, were doing the same. Gifford became an All Pro at that position also, then retired again following the ’63 season to go into broadcasting.
Chuck Bednarik celebrates over the prone Frank Gifford