Allie Sherman, who coached the Giants into three straight NFL Championship Games before being serenaded out the door by fans, is dead at 91. The family announced he passed away at his Manhattan home Monday.
The son of Russian immigrants and a small but gutsy quarterback at Brooklyn College then with the Eagles, Sherman was an offensive innovator and one of the foremost experts on the T-formation, which revolutionized football in the post-World War II era.
Head coach Steve Owen brought him in to work with the defensive backs in 1949 and he began to convert Charlie Conerly into a T-formation quarterback. He took over as the Giants offensive coordinator after Vince Lombard's departure in 1959 and was named as head coach, succeeding Jim Lee Howell, in 1961. Trading for youth, including QB Y.A. Tittle, he went a combined 33-8-1 in his first three seasons and was twice named Coach of the Year, although the Giants lost three straight NFL title games, twice to the Packers and once to the Bears.
In 1964 the team's foundation, its defense, began to fall apart under him. He traded All Pro linebacker Sam Huff to Washington, a move for which Huff never forgave him. In a game at RFK Stadium during the Giants' 1-12-1 1966 season, Huff screamed at Sherman from the other sidelines and urged head coach Otto Graham to run up the score until it was 75-41. The Giants allowed a record 501 points in 14 games.
Giants fans who had started the chants of "De-fense, De-fense" at Yankee Stadium in the '50s, now turned to the singing, "Goodbye Allie" to the tune of Good Nigh Ladies. Just before he was fired at the start of the 1969 regular season, those who made it up to Montreal for the final pre-season game serenaded him in French. But it got much uglier than that, even to the point of death threats.
Sherman, a truly nice man who didn't deserve the abuse, had to live with those memories the rest of his life although he told people he could take it, that it was worse on his family.
"Allie was a great coach and an even better man," said John Mara, the Giants' president and chief executive officer. "He was a special friend, and I will miss him dearly."
"Allie was special," said Steve Tisch, the team's chairman and executive vice president. "Like my father (Bob), Allie was from Brooklyn. Allie was one of us. Can you imagine being the person hired to replace Vince Lombardi on a coaching staff in 1959? Allie did it, and he did it well."
