5 Under-the-radar Giants to watch against Cleveland Browns in Week 15

The ringer: Middle linebacker Sam Huff versus Jim Brown

Yes, DPD has included a ringer in this article. Sam Huff isn’t exactly an under-the-radar present-day Giant, but we had to include old Sam because he was and still is the Giants’ answer to Jim Brown. He’s just someone that every Browns fan needs to know about. Sam Huff and Jim Brown are both still living, and they will always be present whenever the Browns and Giants tangle with each other.

Nowadays, the Browns’ greatest rivals are the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens. But in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, the Giants and Browns were among the hottest rivalries in football. The confrontations between fullback Jim Brown of Cleveland and middle linebacker Sam Huff were legendary and yet both players and teams respected each other. The rivalry actually started in college, with Brown playing for Syracuse and Huff at West Virginia University.

“I always say Sam got famous from tackling me,” joked Brown years later.  There was a certain amount of truth to that.

For his part, Huff had this to say about Brown, “He was smart. He’d psyche you. I would hit him and hit him and he’d get up, pat me on the back and say, ‘That was a nice tackle, big Sam.”

The two arch-rivals were fierce competitors but became friends after retirement. From the outside looking in, the impression is that they genuinely had mutual respect for one another.

New York won it all in Huff’s rookie season of 1956. Then the Browns made it back to the NFL title game in Jim Brown’s rookie year, 1957, but lost to the Detroit Lions. Then Cleveland didn’t win their conference championship six straight years. The Giants won the conference championship five of those six years, blocking the Browns from the title game, only to blow the NFL Championship each time.

Sam Huff and the Giants defense were able to shut down the Browns running game when it counted. In 1958, the Giants beat the Browns 10-0, holding the Browns to 86 yards of total offense. At that time, football players continued to play with concussions, and based on accounts of the game it sounds like Jim Brown probably played with a concussion because he was nearly knocked out by a gang tackle.

New York’s defense also featured defensive tackles Rosey Grier and Dick Modzelewski; plus linebacker Cliff Livingston, who were all developed under defensive coordinator Tom Landry who left the Giants to coach the Dallas Cowboys in 1960.

The Giants hired a young genius coach of their own in Allie Sherman, andNew York beat out the Browns three straight years to win the Eastern Conference Championship in 1961, 1962, and 1963 but did not win the NFL Championship.

Nevertheless, coach Sherman was given a 10-year contract after the third conference championship. However, Sherman had inherited the powerful defense from Landry and wanted to put his own identity on it. He decided it was time to trade all four of his defensive star players, including Sam Huff to Washington and Dick Modzelewski to Cleveland in 1964. Both made the Pro Bowl for their new teams.

Modzelewski, who would later become the Browns’ defensive coordinator, was unquestionably one of the keys to the Browns winning it all that year. That was also effectively the end of the Giants/Browns rivalry as the Giants went 2-10-2 after all those clever trades.

The Giants would never again finish above .500 for Sherman, who was finally let go after the 1968 season. He went 24-43-3 after his promising initial three year run of conference championships. But like Frank Sinatra, he did it his way, with his own players, after getting rid of the Tom Landry era stars.

If there is one thing that you as a Browns fan remember about the Giants, remember that Jim Brown battled Sam Huff and the Giants his entire career including college and pros.

Sam Huff as his number one opponent on the football field overall, without question. Heck, I would not be surprised to find out that old Sam might have tried to date Raquel Welch while she co-starred with Brown in Hollywood movies.