Craig Morton, surrounded by his luggage and weighed down by his doubts, waited at LaGuardia Airport for his ride to arrive. It was Oct. 23, 1974, a Wednesday, giving the veteran quarterback four days to prepare for his first game with the Giants after 9 1/2 NFL seasons with the Cowboys.
But these were not the Yankee Stadium-based Giants whom Morton had followed as a youth, the team that had been led in the early 1960s by one of his boyhood heroes, Y.A. Tittle, and that had appeared in the NFL Championship Game six times between 1956-63. These Giants were in shambles, shunned by New York City politicians after announcing plans to build a stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands and forced to play in the antiquated, no-frills Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, for 12 games — five in 1973 after Yankee Stadium closed for renovations and seven in 1974.