The New York Giants have appeared in five NFC Championship Games in their history, winning all five. Three of those games are among the 14 greatest upsets in the history of the game, which officially began in 1970. All three of those wins came on the road.
Here they are courtesy of USA Today’s Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar.
January 22, 2012
New York Giants 20, San Francisco 49ers 17 (OT)
Very few people expected the 9-7 Giants to beat the 13-3 49ers in this conference championship game — Tom Coughlin’s team had already lost to Jim Harbaugh’s squad, 27-20, in Week 10 of that season. But the Giants would not go away in this game, and in overtime, San Francisco receiver Kyle Williams’ fumbled punt return set kicker Lawrence Tynes up for a game-winning field goal halfway through overtime. It was Tynes’ second overtime game-winner in a conference championship game, matching his effort in the 2007 season. The Giants’ ultimate result that season was also eerily similar: a Super Bowl win over an allegedly better Patriots team.
The football gods were in the Giants’ corner that season but they earned everything they got. That championship game was one of the hardest-hitting contests in memory. Anyone who has any doubt regarding Eli Manning’s Hall of Fame worthiness, I urge you to re-watch this game. What a courageous and poised performance.
January 20, 2008
New York Giants 23, Green Bay Packers 20 (OT)
The Giants under Tom Coughlin were able to beat the Patriots in two different Super Bowls despite seemingly overwhelming odds against them, and in both cases, the road to those Super Bowls carried them through conference championship games that went to overtime and were ultimately decided by Lawrence Tynes field goals. Tynes had missed a 36-yarder at the end of regulation, but in the first drive of overtime, Brett Favre threw a crushing interception to Giants cornerback Corey Webster, and Tynes made up for his previous miss with a 47-yard boot. It was Favre’s lass pass for the Packers, while the Giants went on to shock the previously undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl’s biggest upset.
This illustrates how much of a factor Plaxico Burress was for this team. He caught 11 of 13 targets for 152 yards in the game. The next year, with the Giants coasting to the No. 1 seed in the NFC, he foolishly blew up his career — and the Giants’ chance to repeat as Super Bowl champs — when he shot himself in the leg.
January 20, 1991
New York Giants 15, San Francisco 49ers 13
The 1990 49ers were as stacked as any other team in NFL history. They’d beaten the daylights out of the Broncos, 55-10, in Super Bowl XXIV and then matched their 14-2 record from that year. They finished first in points scored and third in points allowed, and it seemed that the 12-4 Giants were just another minor obstacle to be shooed away. Vegas agreed, making San Francisco an eight-point favorite. But the Giants denied the 49ers the opportunity to become the only team to win three straight Super Bowls in a bruising game that perfectly fit the temperament of head coach Bill Parcells. Big Blue kept the ball for nearly 39 minutes, Matt Bahr kicked five field goals, and Joe Montana suffered a broken finger and bruised sternum late in the game that would have prevented him from playing in the Super Bowl had the 49ers made it. As it turned out, Parcells’ Giants handed the Bills their first of four straight Super Bowl losses with a 20-19 heartbreaker when Scott Norwood’s potential game-winning field goal went wide right.
The Niners were angling for the NFL’s first three-peat of the post-merger era but the Giants had different ideas. They were still stinging from their 7-3 Monday night loss at Candlestick six week earlier. There was a lot of bad blood coming out of that night and the Giants were ready for the Niners’ physical brand of football and met them blow for blow the second time around. It would be the third time in five years the Giants beat Joe Montana in the postseason and the second time they sent him to the hospital.
The Giants’ other two NFC Championship Game appearances were both blowouts — a 17-0 manhandling of the Washington Redskins on January 11, 1987 and the January 14, 2001 41-0 whitewashing of the Minnesota Vikings. Both games were played at Giants Stadium.
