January 20th is famous because every four years we inaugurate the President of the United States. For New York Giant fans it’s a great day because they pulled off two of the greatest upsets in NFL history on this date.

Let’s get right to them with the help of Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar.

January 20, 1991: New York Giants 15, San Francisco 49ers 13

The Giants were the only team standing the way of the 49ers’ ‘three-peat’ after standing up them six weeks before in a 7-3 battle of attrition that was one of the grittiest Monday night games ever played.

In the rematch, the Giants knew what they had to do. They still couldn’t score a touchdown but Matt Bahr’s five field goals stood tall as the defense did the rest, knocking Joe Montana from the playoffs and hospitalizing him for the second time in five years. The team of the 80s were dead again at the hands of Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick’s Giants.

The 1990 49ers were as stacked as any other team in NFL history. They’d beaten the daylights out of the Broncos, 55-10, in Super Bowl XXIV and then matched their 14-2 record from that year. They finished first in points scored and third in points allowed, and it seemed that the 12-4 Giants were just another minor obstacle to be shooed away. Vegas agreed, making San Francisco an eight-point favorite. But the Giants denied the 49ers the opportunity to become the only team to win three straight Super Bowls in a bruising game that perfectly fit the temperament of head coach Bill Parcells. Big Blue kept the ball for nearly 39 minutes, Matt Bahr kicked five field goals, and Joe Montana suffered a broken finger and bruised sternum late in the game that would have prevented him from playing in the Super Bowl had the 49ers made it. As it turned out, Parcells’ Giants handed the Bills their first of four straight Super Bowl losses with a 20-19 heartbreaker when Scott Norwood’s potential game-winning field goal went wide right.

January 20, 2008: New York Giants 23, Green Bay Packers 20 (OT)

The Giants were just the visiting team in this game as the Packers appeared poised to advance to the Super Bowl now that the top-seeded Dallas Cowboys had be eliminated from the postseason. But what everyone forgot was that the Giants were the team that knocked them out. If they could in in Dallas, they could surely win in Green Bay. On a frigid night in Wisconsin, they did just that, stunning the Packers en route to stunning the undefeated Patriots in the Super bowl.

The Giants under Tom Coughlin were able to beat the Patriots in two different Super Bowls despite seemingly overwhelming odds against them, and in both cases, the road to those Super Bowls carried them through conference championship games that went to overtime and were ultimately decided by Lawrence Tynes field goals. Tynes had missed a 36-yarder at the end of regulation, but in the first drive of overtime, Brett Favre threw a crushing interception to Giants cornerback Corey Webster, and Tynes made up for his previous miss with a 47-yard boot. It was Favre’s lass pass for the Packers, while the Giants went on to shock the previously undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl’s biggest upset.

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