 Herman Edwards recovers Joe Pisarcik's fumble. | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | November 19, 1978 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Cal Lepore | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 70,318 | ||||||||||||||||||
| TV in the United States | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | CBS | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Don Criqui and Sonny Jurgensen | ||||||||||||||||||
The Miracle at the Meadowlands was a fumble recovery by cornerback Herman Edwards of the Philadelphia Eagles that he returned for a touchdown at the end of a November 19, 1978, National Football League (NFL) game against the New York Giants in Giants Stadium. After quarterback Joe Pisarcik botched an attempt to hand off the football to fullback Larry Csonka, Edwards picked up the dropped ball and ran 26 yards for the winning touchdown. It is considered miraculous because the Giants were ahead 17–12 and could easily have run out the final seconds, since they had the ball and the Eagles had no timeouts left.
The term "Miracle at the Meadowlands" is primarily used by Eagles fans and sportscasters. Giants fans refer to the play simply as "The Fumble", though that name is generally used outside of New York for a play in the 1987 AFC Championship Game between the Cleveland Browns and Denver Broncos.
For the Eagles, the victory snatched from the jaws of certain defeat served as a morale boost, leading that season to a playoff berth and, two seasons later, the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance. To Giants fans, it was the nadir of a long era of poor results, but the aftermath of this would lead to major changes that proved beneficial for the franchise in the long run. For the sport in general, the main legacy of the game was its contribution to the adoption and acceptance of the quarterback kneel as the standard method for winning teams in possession of the ball to end games under the appropriate set of circumstances.