As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, it’s widely reported that athletes don’t respond well to lengthy, overly dramatic pep talks. As a fan of sports movies, I’d like to believe that all it takes in order to get that big win is the coach firing you up in the locker room, tearing the place apart, and saying what is needed. In reality what really happens most of the time is the coach gets down to brass tacks, points out what can be improved, leads a little team yell, and it’s back to the field.
All that said, Baltimore coach Weeb Ewbank is remembered as giving one of the best pep talks ever before the 1958 championship game. He famously went around the locker room and pointed out all the failings and rejections of each player before reaffirming their status on their current team. He had plenty of material too. Stars like Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan were leftovers from the failed Dallas Texans. Wunderkind revolutionary player Johnny Unitas had been cut from the Steelers and was playing amateur ball before being picked up by Baltimore. Kicker Steve Myhra was awful that season, but he was a Colt, and the Colts were in the championship.
Coach Ewbank was not excluded from this pointing out of failings either. The ’58 season had him placed squarely on in the hot seat.
New York was confident going into the game. They had defeated a tough Browns team, effectively containing the amazing Jim Brown, to earn the right to play in the championship. Besides, the team had already beaten the Colts earlier in the season in a tough fought game with quarterback Charlie Conerly declaring “we outgutted them.” The Giants were more than ready to take their second title in three years.
The first half of this classic game is about as packed with about as much strange happenings as a sports fan could hope for. The Giants started off the game with a little trick. Backup quarterback Don Heinrich started the game, not Charlie Conerly, the real number one. This was a move the Giants liked to use to gauge the defense. This seems a bit unconventional, and hardly seems like it would really work. It didn’t. Heinrich had one completion and fumbled the ball away and didn’t even last the entirety of the first quarter.
Of course the Colts had no better luck early on. Unitas, who had sat out the previous meeting against the Giants with an injury, did a little one upmanship on Heinrich and not only fumbled, but threw an interception. In a stranger twist, Colt linebacker Leo Sanford went out with an injury, and his backup was kicker Steve Myhra, who actually played a solid game. Again, strange happenings all around.
It was just as well that Myhra could play a little linebacker, since the Colts first chance to score came with a field goal that Sam Huff blocked. The resulting possession led the Giants’ Pat Summerall to put three points on the board at the end of the first quarter.
Despite all the turnovers and strange substitutions, the score was only 3-0 Giants.
Frank Gifford fumbled in the Giants’ first possession of the second quarter, and that set the Colts up nicely. They rattled off five straight running plays, 3-2 in favor of Alan Ameche to Lenny Moore, with Ameche getting the final two yards and the score. Three minutes into the second and it was now 7-3 Colts.
Still more wackiness ensued. The Giants next drive resulted in a punt, which was promptly fumbled 
away by the Colts. So, the Giants set up shop at the Colts’ ten yard line, when Frank Gifford on the first touch fumbled yet again. The Colts set up at their own 14. Unitas led a run heavy drive, himself scrambling for sixteen yards to cap it off with a fifteen yard touchdown pass to Raymond Berry with 1:20 remaining in the half.
That would do it for the scoring, the resulting Giants possession went nowhere, and the half closed out 14-3 Colts, with what was then looking to be a potential blowout.
Johnny U by Tom Callahan features a great play by play recap of the game, used as a reference here.
