The New York Giants face off against the Minnesota Vikings this Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. It will be the 29th meeting between the two franchises since the Vikings entered the NFL in 1961.
Minnesota leads the regular season series, 16-10, while the Giants hold a 2-1 postseason advantage.
The teams have had a spotty history, especially early on, meeting just 10 times in the Vikings’ first 30 years in operation.
The first meeting did not come until 1964, a 30-21 Vikings victory. Minnesota won the next two meetings — 40-14 in 1965 and 27-24 in 1967.
In 1969, the Vikings and Giants opened the season at Yankee Stadium. The Giants won, 24-23 (we covered this in a previous post), but the season went off the rails after that game.
The Giants finished 6-8 but needed a three-game winning streak at the end to salvage the season. The Vikings would only lose once more the rest of the season and won the final NFL Championship only to lose to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV.
The Giants and Vikings would play three more times in the 1970s, not a lot for two teams in the same conference, with Minnesota winning all three in 1971, 1973, and 1976.
Then, the NFL schedule-makers somehow failed to schedule a meeting between the two teams until 1986 – the famous “4th-and-17” game in which the Giants came back to beat the Vikings, 22-20, at The Metrodome in Week 12, moving them to 9-2 and send them on their way to their first Super Bowl.
The teams have met 21 times since, three in the postseason — all at Giants Stadium. The Giants won the first meeting, 17-10, in January 1994. The second meeting came four seasons later, with the Vikings pulling off an incredible comeback to win, 23-22, scoring 10 points in the final minute and a half.
In January 2001, the Vikings stormed into Giants Stadium with a high-flying offense and got squashed, 41-0, by the Giants. Big Blue would lose the Super Bowl to the Baltimore Ravens, 34-7, that season.