The seventeenth and last week of the 2014 NFL schedule includes a contest between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants, so the final Throwback Thursday feature of the season will be a look at an unforgettable game played between these two teams on November 19, 1978 that forever became known in NFL lore as “The Miracle at The Meadowlands”. Both teams were mired in mediocrity that season, and the game wasn’t very artistic, but Giant quarterback Joe Pisarcik, who wasn’t exactly a darling of the Big Apple media (he was sarcastically dubbed “Off-Broadway Joe”), did enough to put his team in position to secure a win with a pair of touchdown passes early in the game. The Giants held a 17-12 lead and had possession at the two minute warning, thanks to an interception by Odis McKinney. New York ran a couple of plays with fullback Larry Csonka, including one that gained 11 yards and a first down. With the Eagles out of timeouts, all the G-Men now had to do was kneel down and run out the clock. Pisarcik did just that on first down, but Philly linebacker Bill Bergey burst through the line and hit the New York center Jim Clack, knocking him into the Giant signal caller. It was a desperate attempt to force a fumble that failed. However, in an era before the automatic “victory formation” kneel downs of today, Giant offensive coordinator Bob Gibson sent in a standard running play, with Pisarcik to hand the ball off to Csonka, the same play that had just been successful. Gibson’s explanation afterward was that he didn’t want to expose his quarterback to further injury, so in a way Bergey’s charge worked. Also, in that era many coaches considered the kneel down to be dishonorable.
When the play was sent in, New York’s offensive huddle was in shock. Csonka begged Pisarcik not to give him the ball, and the rest of the players exhorted him to change the play and kneel down again. Pisarcik had gotten a lot of heat for audibling out of a play the week before, and being an inexperienced second year man, he demurred to the offensive coordinator. The play turned out to be disastrous, and forever took it’s place in NFL history. The Giants had wasted a lot of time in the huddle arguing over the call, and the play clock was running down when they lined up so Clack snapped it before his QB was ready. Pisarcik bobbled the snap but hung on to the ball, but his handoff glanced off of Csonka’s hip and wound up on the ground. Eagle defensive coordinator Marion Campbell called for an all out 11 man blitz on the play, and Herman Edwards broke into the backfield, scooped up the ball and ran it into the end zone to lock up the improbable win for Philly. The play was costly for the Giant organization. Pisarcik needed a police escort to get to his car after the game, and Gibson was fired the next morning. The stigma of that call was so bad that he never worked in football at any level again. Head coach John McVay and personnel director Andy Robustelli finished the season but were let go afterwards. Ironically, a couple of years later Pisarcik was traded to the Eagles for a draft pick.
Eagle DB Herman Edwards completes the “Miracle at The Meadowlands” deciding play