Warming up, specialist Pat Summerall tested his injured right leg gingerly, trying field goals at varying distances, wincing a little as he kicked. "You better warm up," he told Don Chandler, the New York Giants' No. 2 place kicker. "I don't think I'm going to be able to kick."
Four and a half minutes before the game ended, with the score then tied 10-10, he tried a field goal from the Cleveland 31-yard line, and the ball slithered to the side of the target.
Now, with two minutes left and the snow interposing a cottony fog between him and the goal posts 49 yards away, Summerall tried again. Charley Conerly cleaned the snow from a spot on the Browns 49 and stretched his hands for the snap. Summerall took the mincing steps which precede the kick and lifted the ball high and far into the whiteness and then looked up to watch its flight. Conerly looked up prayerfully from his kneeling position. The ball, like a sliced golf ball, bored to the right of the goal posts as it took off, then curved and went cleanly through, and the New York Giants, a team which has lived with adversity all season, beat the Cleveland Browns to gain a tie for the Eastern Conference championship of the National Football League.