Giants of '50s had all-star staff

The challenge with any sports book that treads a familiar historical path is to tell us something new.

Ernie Palladino, an old Giants beat confrere, achieves that in his new work, “Lombardi and Landry,’’ whose subtitle sums it up: How Two of Pro Football’s Greatest Coaches Launched Their Legends and Changed the Game Forever.

Coaching staffs of the 1950s were much smaller than today, but no team in NFL – or sports – history has done better than the Giants with Vince Lombardi in charge on offense and Tom Landry on defense.

Palladino chronicles how they got there and why and how they left, and explains how much-dissed head coach Jim Lee Howell actually did a pretty good job knowing what he had on his hands and smartly delegating.

For anyone under 65 or so, the Giants’ 1956 championship team is ancient history, told in black-and-white images. It comes back to life in “Lombardi and Landry.’’