New York Earns Giant Upset

                       By: Patrick Crawley

 

Eli Manning and the New York Giants Stun the World

When I woke up yesterday morning my bedroom smelled like a hobo. It had rained for two days, so I had damp clothes stanking up my laundry basket. Combine that with a jacket fresh with "concert smells" hanging in my closet and you get a pretty rank odor. Taking that awfulness into my nostrils that morning, I couldn't shake a feeling of foreboding. Something was going to go horribly wrong with the Super Bowl. I could sense it.

As the day wore on, I cycled through a checklist of reassurances. The Patriots have Bill Belichick and Bill Belichick thrives when he has two weeks to prepare for games. The Patriots are led by Tom Brady, the larger-than-life, record-breaking quarterback who has won far more playoff games than Eli "Dumbface" Manning. The Patriots have a good running back who looks like The Predator and shreds defenses with about the same ferocity. The Patriots have Randy Moss. The Patriots already beat the Giants this season. The Patriots thrive under pressure, they turn up the intensity in the fourth quarter. They have already staged several late-game comebacks so far this season; against the Ravens, the Eagles and (yes) the Giants. The Patriots are undefeated. The Patriots are the greatest single-season team in history. End of reassurances.

I am not, in any way, a Patriots fan (let's get that out of the way as soon as possible). But with that said I did hope to witness a historical team complete its historical journey this Sunday. As such, the feeling of unease and foreboding troubled me. Would Brady and Belichick blow it? Would this opportunity to witness an undefeated season end in disappointment?

In the end, my uneasiness was founded. The Giants staged a fourth quarter comeback of their own yesterday evening and defeated the perfect Pats 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII.

For the past two weeks, visions of an Eli Manning meltdown danced through my head. I saw three interceptions. I saw multiple fumbles and botched snaps. I saw the scrunched, scared, deer-in-the-headlights Eli Manning face over and over again. But on gameday, those visions were completely unrealistic. Eli didn't melt down at all. Instead he engineered the most relevant drive of my lifetime. A 12-play, 83-yard drive filled with composure, tenacity and big-time plays. In other words, Eli slipped on the Big Daddy pants on Sunday afternoon and earned his Super Bowl MVP with one iconic drive.

What's ironic about Eli's inspired, fourth quarter touchdown drive is that he did it in a way that was eerily similar to Tom Brady. When you run through the plays that led to the touchdown, it seems unlikely that Manning was the engineer. Even after the fact, it's almost too good to be true. Kind of like those old iconic Wild West stories about Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James and Wyatt Earp. You know that the basic elements of the story are true, but you can't help but disbelieve when it comes to the details.

Try this tale on for size: The Drive That Made Eli a Man. It's far-fetched, I know. But try to bear with me.

The New York Giants are down 14-10 in the fourth quarter with 2:39 remaining on the clock. Eli Manning finds himself in his own territory, just barely outside of the 30-yard-line. Facing a third-and-10, Eli makes good on a 9-yard completion to Amani Toomer, followed by a 1-yard bull rush up the middle by Brandon Jacobs for the first down. Another third down approaches. The Pats bring the heat with a full-on blitz. The defensive linemen have their hands all over Eli; one even has a firm hold on the scruff of his jersey. Eli performs an amazing escape from the clutches of the defensive linemen and lofts the ball roughly 30 yards to a waiting receiver. The ball lands perfectly between two defenders, each of whom are swatting at the ball like geriatrics swatting gnats on the Bayou. Somehow the receiver, a special teams throwaway named David Tyree, traps the ball between his hands and his helmet and carries it to the ground for a first down completion.

Now Eli has the momentum. But following a sack and an incomplete pass he must once again prove his mettle on third down. Again Eli comes through; this time with a patient read-and-react play to the right, with rookie Steve Smith as the target. With victory in sight, Eli hunkers down, waiting to finish the kill. Moving into shotgun formation, Eli goes through the motions of his approach. As the ball uncoils into his hands, he notices a flurry of action to his left. Ellis Hobbs, the Patriot defender has slipped and fallen to his knees. Without hesitation, Eli delivers a perfect fade pass to Plaxico Burress in the left flank of the end zone for the dagger-in-the-heart touchdown. His prey vanquished, Eli rushes off the field in celebration, awaiting the glory of victory and the spoils of war.

That sounds completely unrealistic, right? (Other than the part where Eli gets sacked and throws the ball incomplete, of course). It sounds made up, embellished like the Wild West tales. Which explains why so many people that I talked to after the game were completely stunned and awed. This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen to Eli Manning. The gutsy plays, the miracle catches, the fairy tale ending. Those are Tom Brady moments. They sound ridiculous when you apply them to Eli.

Getting back to Brady (which should be the name of a reality show, by the way) I want to know what happened to the Tom Brady we all know. The calm, composed, heroic Brady. The one who makes footballs whistle through the air and land in waiting blue and red gloves. The one who feels his way through the pocket with the deftness of a blind man looking for change. The one who trots triumphantly off the field. Where was he on Super Bowl Sunday?

I have friends who respect Tom Brady, friends who hate Tom Brady and one friend who can't watch a Patriots game for longer than five minutes without mentioning "Brady Magic". But whatever their opinion of America's Favorite Quarterback, none of my friends doubted that Brady would perform well against the Giants. Most believed that Brady would be Brady and the game would come down to one of the "unknown" variables: Eli's performance, the Patriots' defense or Asante Samuel's ability to shut down Plaxico Buress. I believed the same. I had no idea that Steve Spagnuolo's defense could turn The Almighty Brady into such a non-factor. I had no idea that the Brady we all know and love would disappear so quickly and so completely.

But that's exactly what happened. Michael Strahan, Osie Umenyiora and Justin Tuck broke through protection time after time after time and planted Brady on his butt. The pressure was so great that Brady was hustled or knocked down on nearly a third of New England's offensive plays. Brady is probably so sore that Gisele will have to ice him down for a week. (Not that that's a bad thing).

In the end, the defensive line was the game-changer. Tuck finished with 6 tackles and 2 sacks. Umenyiora contributed 4 tackles and constant pressure. Strahan added 3 tackles and a sack. Even little-used DT Jay Alford got in on the action, sacking Brady with a missile-like tackle on the final drive of the game. When everything was on the line, during the Patriots last possession of the game, it was these guys (not Brady) who triumphed. It was these guys (the defensive linemen) who finished as the stars of the game.

Speaking of the defensive line play, it's impossible to mention the strong play of Tuck, Umenyiora and Strahan without giving credit to defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. In the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, head coaching rumors surrounded Spagnuolo (word is, he's headed to fill the Big Man vacancy in Washington) but I doubted his ability to step into that kind of position. In fact, every time Fox showed a shot of Spags on the sideline yesterday, I made fun of his "10-game resume". But Spagnuolo came up huge against the Patriots. His gameplan was amazing; he rendered The Amazing Brady completely ineffective. In case you've been living in a cave for the past few years, that's not exactly an easy thing to do. Especially in the playoffs.

One game, even a Super Bowl, doesn't prove that a coordinator can handle a head coaching spot. But after the way Spagnuolo's defense performed yesterday, I'm willing to at least suspend my disbelief. Spags may be a good head coach in the future or he may fall flat on his face. Either way, he showed on Sunday that he deserves an opportunity to prove himself one way or the other. Don't be surprised if Daniel Synder picks him up soon.

Disbelief was a common theme heading into the Giants-Patriots matchup. Few believed that Tom Coughlin's composed pre-game approach could trump Belichick's singular focus. Fewer still put stock in Plaxico Burress' prediction during media day that the Giants would hold the Patriots offense to 17 points. Brady even laughed at Burress and suggested that the Patriots would score far more than 17. But nobody on the Patriots sideline was laughing when the Giants' front four had their way with Dan Koppen and Brady's other bearded security guards. I'm pretty sure they weren't laughing either, when Burress hauled in the winning touchdown catch. In the end, Brady was right though. The Patriots didn't score 17 points; they managed only 10. That's called karma, Mr. Brady.

I'm sure that the constant rash of disrespect shown to the Giants this week in the media somewhat informed my feeling of foreboding. The Giants had previously thrived against Dallas and Green Bay despite national sentiment that they had no chance of victory. Disrespect seemed to fuel guys like Burress, Strahan and Manning. Thanks to a strange team dynamic, those guys felt little or no pressure in games away from home and, as a result, they took down three NFC division winners in a row. The team was also armed with a genius offensive coordinator (Kevin Gilbride) who everyone forgets to mention for some reason. In my mind, that was the biggest show of disrespect; the Kevin Gilbride sleight. What other coordinator slayed the Buccaneers, the Cowboys and the Packers in consecutive weeks? I'm dying to know.

So while the Patriots sat there, smug and grinning in the madness of the pre-game festivities, the Giants yelped for attention like a little brother. And when people laughed at the little brother and looked at him down their noses, they had no idea that they were helping to craft the perfect storm for an end to the perfect season. These sleights made the Giants dangerous. The laughs and the disbelief, combined with a strong sense of self-belief, created the perfect monster in New York. The Giants were talented, prepared and completely disrespected. This Super Bowl was the perfect situation for them. If they lost, they were a team that made a nice run and was "happy to be there". If they won, they were the team that stopped the Greatest Team in Regular Season History.

Unfortunately, for myself and others, it ended up being the latter. The Greatest Team in Regular Season History is now known as the Team That Lost to Eli Manning. The mythical Tom Brady is now only the really, really great Tom Brady. Bill Belichick is no longer the master-strategist, above all others. Randy Moss is no longer "the missing piece." The Patriots are no longer the slayers, but the slain.

Right now we all feel a bit cheated and a bit overwhelmed with disbelief. But when you think about it, is it really so bad to see the happy-go-lucky kid win football's ultimate prize? Is it really so bad to reward a coach who was able to recognize his shortcomings and reverse his approach for the better? Is it all that horrible to see a smug, business-like organization like the Patriots lose a game that they had attached so much meaning to? Is it so awful to reward a fan-base who unceremoniously supported their underdog team, even in the face of a Goliath-like foe?

As a Buffalo Bills fan, I'm inclined to say yes. Yes it is horrible to see all of those things come true for the Giants. The pain of Scott Norwood's Wide Right is still fresh in my mind, so I hate to see the Giants win anything.

But for all of you who are not similarly entrenched, it has to feel pretty good to see the underdogs win.