The New York Giants will host the Las Vegas Raiders this Sunday at MetLife Stadium in a inter-conference matchup that was once a rarity.

The two clubs will meet for the just the 14th time since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger. For some reason, the league kept the two teams apart the first three seasons after the merger.

There were — and remain — no common threads between the Giants and Raiders. The Giants were an NFL flagship franchise while the Raiders were the renegades of the AFL behind coach, general manager, commissioner and owner Al Davis.

There was one possible connection as Davis, a Brooklyn native who graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in the 1940s, might have been a Giants fan growing up. That has never been corroborated.

There was an NFL team in Brooklyn from 1930-45 known by several names (Dodgers, Tigers, Yanks) that Davis could have supported as a young man. That is also unknown.

Again, those ties are blurry, leaving the history between these two clubs as thin as histories come. Davis’ first job in football was as a coach at Adelphi University on Long Island in the early 1950s.

One thing that we do know about Davis, who attended Syracuse University, was that he was fan of how the New York Baseball teams were run back in the day.

“I always wanted to take an organization and make it the best in sports. I admired the New York Yankees of George Weiss for their power, intimidation, fear, and big people. I admired the Brooklyn Dodgers under Branch Rickey for their speed and player development. I felt there was no reason the two approaches couldn’t be combined into one powerful organization,” Davis once said, via the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The first meeting between the Giants and Raiders was in 1973, when the Raiders were in Oakland and in their heyday under head coach John Madden.

The Raiders routed the visiting Giants, 42-0. Oakland outgained the Giants 439-185. Both teams committed four turnovers. The only difference is that Ken Stabler made the Giants pay. Norm Snead did not make Oakland pay.

They did not meet again until 1980, one of the worst seasons in Giants’ history. The Raiders won that one, too, 33-17, at Giants Stadium. In 1983, the Raiders beat the Giants, 27-11, out in Oakland.

Since 1986, they meet every four years or so with each team winning five times. The closest the two came to clashing in the Super Bowl was in 1990 and again in 2000 when both teams were in their respective conference’s championship games.

The Giants went on to the Super Bowl in those seasons beating San Francisco and Minnesota but the Raiders lost both times — 51-3 to Buffalo in 1990 and then 16-3 to Baltimore in 2000.

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Monday night’s matchup pitted two teams heading in different directions. In the case of the New York Giants, they were pointing up for once while the two-time defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs were pointing down.

After this game, few should have confidence in either team’s prospects. It was an undisciplined mess marred with penalties, mistakes and errors — forced and unforced — that that led onlookers to believe that these two teams would have hard time beating one of other 30 teams in the league on the night.

The first quarter was all Chiefs, but an early interception in the end zone held the score down to 7-0 in favor of Kansas City. The Giants were way out of synch on their first two possessions with Daniel Jones throwing an interception on the team’s second play.

On their third possession, the Giants drove 85 yards on nine plays and scored on fourth down on the one yard-line when Jones found tight end Kyle Rudolph open in the end zone to tie the game at seven early in the second quarter.

Kansas City went ahead, 14-7 with 6:37 left in the first half behind the running back journeyman Derrick Gore, who scored on a three-yard rush to conclude an 11-play, 68-yard drive.

The Giants clawed back to 14-10 on their next drive with a 23-yard field goal from Graham Gano that was buoyed by a 41-yard screen pass to Devontae Booker and a roughing the passer penalty. Another red zone failure, however.

The Giants had a chance to add more points in the final two minutes but had used all of their time outs earlier in the half. Then back-to-back penalties on the offensive line put the Giants out of field goal range.

After the teams traded punts in the third quarter, the Giants took possession when Logan Ryan jarred the football loose from Travis Kelce and it was recovered by James Bradberry on the Giants’ 43. Eight plays later, Jones hit Even Engram for a five-yard touchdown to put the Giants up, 17-14, with 14:53 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Kansas City then went on another long drive that resulted in a game-tying, 36-yard field goal from Harrison Butker. Leonard Williams stripped-sacked Patrick Mahomes on third down to kill the drive.

Kansas City ended up on top, 20-17, on Butker’s 34-yard field goal after several lapses and penalties aided the Chiefs’ drive. With 1:07 remaining the Giants took possession with no time outs, but failed to drive the ball anywhere near a possible tying field goal attempt.

The Giants squandered a golden opportunity to beat a slumping Kansas City team. A terrible loss that will stick in Giant fans’ craws for some time.

Notes

• The Giants were 10.5 underdogs in this game and covered the spread for the fourth time in eight games this season.
• Kansas City entered the night leading the NFL in turnovers with 17. Mahomes threw an INT in the end zone to conclude the Chiefs’ first drive. Unfortunately, Jones gave it right back with in INT of his own on the Giants’ second play.
• The Chiefs committed 12 penalties for 103 yards but the Giants couldn’t capitalize as they got flagged 10 times themselves for 88 yards, most of them costly.
• The Giants’ use of timeouts and clock management, especially at the end of halves, is so poor it’s almost baffling. Near the end of the first half, they needed to stop the clock on what could have been a possible scoring drive. Then, they only had one time out left late in the fourth quarter as the Chiefs burned the clock at will during their game-winning drive.
• Jones came into the game 0-6 in primetime games. He’s now 0-7. The Giants have now lost their last nine games in primetime.
• The Giants’ wide receivers continued to get banged up. Dante Pettis injured his shoulder while muffing a punt in the second quarter and was forced from the game. Sterling Shepard let the game right before halftime with a quad injury and also didn’t return. Kadarius Toney injured his left thumb early in the fourth quarter but returned.
• Cornerback Aaron Robinson, the Giants’ third-round selection in this year’s draft, made his NFL debut.

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