9. 1981-82 New York Jets. Back-to-back Playoffs, and the 1982 AFC Championship Game. But that was it.
8. 2009-11 New York Jets. They made back-to-back AFC Championship Games, winning 4 Playoff games, all on the road: At Cincinnati and San Diego in January 2010, and Indianapolis and New England in 2011. But they couldn't get over the hump. Or, as head coach Rex Ryan might have preferred to say, they couldn't get their foot in the door.
7. 2000-02 New York Giants. An NFC Championship but a Super Bowl loss, followed by a losing season, and another Playoff season but a 39-38 Playoff debacle in San Francisco.
6. 1927 New York Giants. They won the NFL Championship with an 11-1-1 record. (No NFL Championship Game, under any name, until 1932.) They also finished 2nd in 1929 with a 13-1-1 record that remains the best, percentage-wise, in franchise history.
5. 1933-41 New York Giants. 9 seasons, 6 Eastern Division titles, 2 NFL Championships (1934 and 1938). New York's 1st great pro football team, led by Mel Hein, perhaps the greatest center in NFL history, and the aptly-named running back and kicker Ken Strong.
4. 1968-69 New York Jets. They won Super Bowl III, and the AFL Championship Game 2 weeks earlier. Would you believe that those were the only postseason games that Gang Green won in their 1st 22 seasons of existence? And they've still never been to the Super Bowl since, going 0-4 in AFC Championship Games.
3. 2007-12 New York Giants. 5 seasons, 2 NFC Eastern Division titles, 2 Super Bowl wins (XLII and XLVI). Not the best football team in Tri-State Area history, or the most productive, or the flashiest. But because Eli Manning and his teammates beat the New England Patriots in both Super Bowls, this is the most satisfying gridiron aggregation ever to set up shop within a 50-mile radius of Times Square. And their Super Bowl XLVI win, on February 6, 2012 -- 6 years ago -- remains the Tri-State Area's last World Championship.
2. 1956-63 New York Giants. 8 seasons, 6 Eastern Division titles, but only 1 NFL Championship, in 1956. Their close defeats in the 1958 and 1963 NFL Championship Games meant that what was probably the best team in New York Tri-State Area football history, led by Charlie Conerly, Y.A. Tittle and Sam Huff, was also the most frustrating.
1. 1984-90 New York Giants. 7 seasons, 3 NFC Eastern Division titles, 2 Super Bowl wins (XXI and XXV). The 1986 Giants of Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor set a Tri-State Area record with a 14-2 performance, and ended the Jets' 18-year run as the most recent NFL titlists in the area. Perhaps they weren't as good as the 1956-63 edition of Big Blue, but they were more accomplished.
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