SUPER Bowl!
By Brian Miller
The New York Giants do it again! In a parallel of four years ago, the NY Giants drove the field at the end of the game and took over the lead with a minute left. Depriving Tom Brady and the New England Patriots a Super Bowl victory.
The game, for three quarters featured a slow simmer to what would be an exciting finish. The G-Men held the first half of the Super Bowl but found themselves down by one at half-time. Eli Manning attempted a comeback early but the Giants could only muster a field goal to answer the opening second half drive for a TD by NE. Down 17 – 9 for their first possession of the second half, the Giants just played sound football.
The Giants finished the game with FG, FG, winning TD down by 2 with 57 seconds left in the game. Two plays however will define the game.
The first was the costly interception of Tom Brady who tossed a floater to TE Rob Gronkowski under pressure. The ball was thrown about 40 yards and an unheralded LB made the INT. The Giants turned that into a FG.
On the final drive, Mario Manningham etched his name alongside David Tyree when between two defenders he caught a holy pass by Eli Manning and managed to get two feet down as he fell out of bounds extending the drive. That catch would prove critical as the Giants would eventually see Ahmad Bradshaw try and stop on the one yard line when NE allowed him to score.
Yes, I said allow him to score. The Patriots defense, with a minute left in the game allowed the RB to burst through the line. Bradshaw tried to stop at the one but his momentum carried him into the endzone for the go-ahead score. The two point attempt failed setting up one final drive by Tom Brady. Flashback to the last meeting in the SB between the two teams. With a perfect season on the line, Brady came up short but this time, it was his receivers who let him down. The first two passes were dropped before a first down was made setting up a hail-mary attempt to win it all.
The final pass with only seconds left darted off NY Giants defenders in the end-zone and a diving Rob Gronkowski narrowly missed what would have been a game winning….no Super Bowl winning TD. Had the ball been tipped a mere foot higher, I would be writing about something else. In the end, Eli Manning was the games MVP and with his second Super Bowl win, ascended to “ELIte” status. Surpassing his much more hyped brother Peyton.
The NY Giants are the Super Bowl Champions and once again they do so as not the division winners, but a wildcard team that made it work when it counted the most, and again, they did it at the expense of the AFC East NE Patriots.
I will say this, I rag on Bill Belichick for a lot of things. I consider him sort of shady. Spygate and whatnot, but tonight, I saw a man who genuinely appreciated what the Giants had done. His embrace of Giants HC Tom Coughlin was sincere and the two exchanged words far longer than many do in this day and age. The New England Patriots get a lot of ridicule from this site and from Dolphins fans, but they always present themselves with class. They were a worthy AFC representative, but, in the spirit of being a Dolphins fan, they lost!
My hats off to the Patriots but it stays off for the NY Giants. Congratulations, NY Giants for being the World Champions!