It's NFL History Nerd Time!!!

You've been warned   Today's topic is...why the Fins and Giants somehow went 18 years between their first and second meetings.

From 1970-77 the NFL's interconference scheduling formula was...way to complicated and convoluted for me to explain here. Let's just say that back then, matchups were scheduled years in advance and divisions did not face each other. That would not start until the 16-game schedule was implemented in '78 and even then it had an exception which we'll get to in a bit. Let's just say that after their initial game in '72 the Fins and Giants were next supposed to meet in '76.

But WAIT~! In '76 the Bucs and Seahawks were added, and because the schedule was still 14 games that meant a previously arranged interconference game had to be eliminated from every other team's schedule. In '76, that game for Miami was the Giants (in '77 it was the Cowboys).

That shouldn't have been a big deal, because in '78 the AFC and NFC East were scheduled to face each other. But WAIT~! According to the new setup, teams that finished last in the now two 5-team divisions the season before did not play a 4-game interconference schedule. Instead they faced the two last place teams from the other conference and the second last place team from their own conference twice. This explains why the Fins faced the Chiefs twice in '89. So guess who finished last in the NFC East in '77?

And yes, the Giants also finished last in '80. And '83. Finally in '86 they avoided that fate--by winning the Super Bowl. At last the two teams were going to play again, and as a 14-year old who'd already been studying NFL history for years I was excited about it

But WAIT~! The players chose the '87 season to strike (again) and this time the owners decided to bring in replacement players. But a week of the season needed to be cancelled to give teams time to sign those players. And naturally, that just happened to be the exact week the Fins-Giants game was scheduled! (And yes, I was a bit peeved about that.)

In '90 both teams avoided finishing last in their divisions the season before, and there were no strikes or expansion teams being added or any other events to keep the second meeting from happening--18 years after the first. And of course the Giants won easily 20-3   But that's the story of how the vast majority of people born the year of the first game had already graduated high school by the time the second game rolled around.

BTW the Jets and Cardinals also went 18 years between games, but that's not even the record. The record belongs to the Chiefs and Eagles, who went an astonishing 20 YEARS without facing each other      

At least the schedule from '02 on is *one* thing the NFL got right. No more going well over a decade without playing a certain team. (Marino and Elway faced each other in the regular season just TWICE in 15 years, so this was a problem even within a conference. It had also been a problem in the pre-merger NFL as well.)

Great stuff!