Giants' crowded quarterback room has avoided any early misery

New York Post

4 days ago

The Giants know how much fun a crowded quarterback room can be, maybe as much as anyone. Back in 1961, 'Chuckin' ' Charlie Conerly was well entrenched as the team's QB1, but he was going to turn 40 two days after the season opener against the Cardinals, and could sense the pull of time.
Then the Giants traded for Y.A. Tittle — not exactly a kid at 35 — and for what became a first-place team, first-year coach Allie Sherman let them battle it out for reps. They both played in 13 games. Tittle started 10 of them, went 8-1-1. Conerly started four, and they went 2-2. Together they threw for 40 touchdowns.
'It was like sitting in a room with two geniuses,' Sherman recalled years later. 'These guys had IQs of 10,000 apiece. I thought I was the smartest guy in most rooms when there was a discussion about offense. But when those two talked, all you could do was listen. They helped each other. They battled each other. They fed off each other. It was glorious.'
The Giants know how much misery a crowded quarterback room can be. In 1983, his first year as a head coach, Bill Parcells saw Scott Brunner and Phil Simms play every day in training camp, and he picked Brunner. Eight years later, Ray Handley had two quarterbacks who'd won Super Bowls in that room — Simms and Jeff Hostetler — and picked Simms.