Big Blue

East Rutherford, New Jersey, sits across the river from the city whose name the team still carries, and MetLife Stadium is where that arrangement plays out most visibly. Before the current stadium, the franchise moved through the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, the Yale Bowl and Shea Stadium, then settled into Giants Stadium on the same Meadowlands site from 1976 until 2010.

Tim Mara paid $2,500 for the franchise in 1925, a figure that reads strangely against what the club became. The nickname Big Blue has nothing more complicated behind it than the jerseys themselves.

The Giants won NFL championships in 1927, 1934, 1938 and 1956, before the Super Bowl era began, and added four more titles afterward: 1986, 1990, 2007 and 2011. Lawrence Taylor remains the name attached to the defensive identity the club built its championships around, a player who changed how offenses had to account for a pass rusher. Eli Manning quarterbacked both of the modern titles.

Sixteen NFC East division titles sit alongside five NFC Championships. There is no academy pipeline here; the roster is rebuilt every year through the draft and the practice squad.