Ernie Accorsi, the former Giants general manager who helped steer some of the franchise's most important modern decisions, died peacefully Saturday at 84 while surrounded by the love of his family.
His death closes the life of an executive whose name has long been tied to the Giants' rise under pressure. Accorsi was the second general manager to be inducted into the Giants Ring of Honor, and the team credited him with helping shape its direction through the moves that brought Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning to New York.
Accorsi's imprint on the Giants went well beyond those two names. He was the team's general manager from 1998 to 2006, a nine-year stretch in which the Giants won two NFC East titles, reached four postseason berths and advanced to Super Bowl XXXV. He had previously spent four seasons as an assistant under George Young, building the kind of front-office resume that later stretched across a 37-year career.
That record also included successful stops with the Baltimore Colts and the Cleveland Browns, and in his last 16 years as a general manager he put together nine playoff teams and six division champions. He served as co-chair of the General Managers Advisory Committee as well, a role that reflected how widely his judgment was trusted around the NFL.
There was, however, one odd turn in the story. Accorsi retired at the end of the 2006 season, and the Giants won the Super Bowl the following season and again in 2011 without him running the front office. That does not erase what he built. It only shows how hard the standard he left behind was to sustain.
Born on Oct. 29, 1941, in Hershey, Pa., Accorsi's football life circled back to that town in one of its earliest moments. He saw Johnny Unitas throw his first pass in a Colt uniform in a 1956 preseason game there, and later saw Unitas throw his last pass while working for the Baltimore Colts. For the Giants, though, his legacy will be simpler than any one game or one season: he helped change the course of the franchise, and the organization now has to remember him without him in the room.
The unanswered question is how the Giants will mark his death beyond remembrance. For now, they are left with the same thing fans are left with after a figure like Accorsi is gone — the proof of what he built, and the names that will forever be attached to it.
