Giants-Colts could have ended NFL overtime rule at its inception

As Johnny Unitas told it for the rest of his life, as the fourth-quarter gun rattled through Yankee Stadium around 4:30 on the afternoon of Dec. 28, 1958, he and his Baltimore Colts teammates stood on the sidelines wondering: What now? 

On the other side of the field, the New York Giants asked themselves the same. They had trailed this NFL Championship Game 14-3, then rallied to take a 17-14 lead before Unitas took the Colts on a two-minute drill to tie the game with seven seconds left in regulation. 

“The game ended in a tie,” Unitas said, 40 years later, “we were standing on the sidelines waiting to see what came next. All of a sudden, the officials came over and said, ‘Send the captains out. We’re going to flip a coin to see who will receive.’ That was the first we heard of the overtime period.” 

Unitas, captain of the visiting team, called “tails.” 

It came up heads. Giants’ ball. 

And it is worth wondering, more than 63 years later, what might have happened if the Giants had pounced on that golden opportunity. Since this was the first sudden-death game in NFL history, explanations had to be relayed through the sellout crowd, which began to buzz and then roar in anticipation: whoever scored first — field goal, touchdown, safety — would win the game.