GIANTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL!
-From friend of the Breeze and game attendee Gary Hartman:
"I honestly don't know where to begin. I guess with the one word that continued to define this team. Resiliency. It is truly astounding. Always overcoming. We were 7-7 before that Jets game. 7-7! What an unbelievable, amazing run. Jets or go home. Cowboys or go home for the division. Shutout Atlanta. Knock off the PREVIOUS Super Bowl Champions in Lambeau. Go face the possibly best defense in the league on the road for a chance to play today and take care of business. Then de ja blue. Wa La. SUPERBOWL CHAMPIONS. SUPERBOWL 46 CHAMPIONS. ONE MORE TIME. SUPERBOWL CHAMPIONS. I am so thrilled. Actually the best night of my life. Never have experienced anything like this before. I wasn't joking before when I said I can now die happy. In person, I saw my New York Football Giants win the Superbowl. Obviously no questions about Eli anymore. Hall of Famer. Same goes for Coach. Tom Coughlin is a god as far as I'm concerned. Pass Rush was shit for 3 quarters, but defense came up big when it needed to in the 3rd quarter. Manningham- amazing. Nicks-amazing. Bradshaw coming up big when need be and this whole team was, well, resilient. I'm sitting in my hotel room in Indianpolis with a huge smile on my face. Beyond happy. This is so surreal. We are Super Bowl Champions. Can't say it enough. Now need to get back to College Park tomorrow night, get my car and off to The canyon of Heroes for Tuesday. Can't Wait. WE DID IT. WE WANTED IT MORE. WE OVERCAME EVERYTHING AND ARE NOW WORLD CHAMPIONS. NYG FOOTBALL."
-On Manningham's catch from the NY Times:
"Quarterback Eli Manning took the snap on first down from the shotgun. Manningham was not the first option on the play, but Manning seemed to know where he planned to throw the ball the entire time. Manningham said the Patriot who defended him gave him a cushion of 5 or 6 yards, that he started inside and worked outside, streaking up the left sideline.
The ball arched high, went long and arrived over Manningham’s shoulder, in the only place Manning could have thrown it with success. Manningham told himself to “freeze your feet,” and he stomped them at the turf, conscious of the out-of-bounds line and his position relative to it. “That was clutch,” Nicks said. “We had to get the ball downfield. Someone had to make a play.”
-From SI.com:
"I thought I heard Eli yelling at me to fall down ... I tried," Bradshaw would say, but not unhappily. People can argue about the right and wrong thing to do there. If he had stopped and not scored the touchdown, and the field goal was somehow missed, that would be the worst decision in the history of the NFL. Of course, if he had scored and Tom Brady then drove the Patriots for the win, people would second-guess that too."
From Don Banks on SI.com:
"It's a pretty select club Eli Manning joined here Sunday night. You could almost call it an "elite'' membership to belong to.
Quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl wins have a cache all their own in NFL history, and we had best start wrapping our minds around the reality that Peyton Manning's little brother is in the fraternity, and the Colts' long-time great isn't. That last shall be first stuff really does come to pass sometimes."
-From Peter King's MMQB on SI.com:
"I've noticed this about the guy. Football's his job, and he likes it a lot. But let's say God tapped him on the shoulder tomorrow and said, "I've got different plans for you. You're going to be an architect.'' Manning would handle that pretty well. He is a sick competitor, but he'd figure a way to satisfy that part of his life. Golf with the other architects, Friday night poker, trying to be a better architect than anyone else out there.
"He just doesn't care,'' Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck said by his locker 90 minutes after the Super Bowl. "He doesn't. If we lose the game today, life goes on. He's fine. He'll just start getting ready for next year. That's who he is.''
Fine Fifteen:
It's a wrap. 1. New York Giants (13-7).
The other day, Tom Coughlin said to me, "Don Shula's amazing. Amazing! Look at how many games he's won!'' Shula's won 347. Coughlin won his 154th last night and would be lucky, obviously, to get to 200 one day. But I do think Coughlin's amazing himself, to have withstood the stress of this job with an expansion team for half his career and one of the modern powerhouses for the other half ... and to have won an average of 9.6 games a year."
The Award Section
Offensive Player of the Week
Giants QB Eli Manning. I've come to the conclusion that his laissez-faire attitude is one of the things that makes him a great player. He doesn't sweat the small stuff. How else do you explain the great play late in so many big games? In his two Super Bowl victories, Manning is a 66 percent passer with 551 passing yards and one turnover. And his throw to Manningham with the season on the line ... priceless.
Defensive Player of the Week
Giants DL Justin Tuck. Give credit to the Patriots for sealing off the holes they couldn't seal four years ago. The Giants weren't as successful rushing the passer as they were in the previous Super Bowl against New England, but Tuck did get two sacks, the second of which left Brady with a left shoulder injury that will be painful this morning. While the Patriots shut down the rush of Osi Umenyiora and Jason Pierre-Paul with strong play on the left side of their line, Tuck got the best penetration of the night.
Special Teams Player of the Week
Giants P Steve Weatherford. Other than one sloppy touchback, his day was stellar. His four punts left the Patriots to start from their 6-, 20-, 4- and 8-yard lines.
Coach of the Week
Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. Sometimes you have to take what the defense gives you. Sometimes you have to attack the defense when it's not giving you much, in hopes that your key guys can make a play or two that logic says isn't coming. I thought Gilbride had a great feel for this game. It's not always total rushing yards; number of rushes is just as important when you want to keep the ball away from the other quarterback. The Giants' 28 rushes (4.1 per rush) helped them to 37 minutes of possession time. Gilbride had to figure out what the Patriots were doing on defense, which took a while (like, about 55 minutes). "It was a tough game to call,'' Gilbride said, "because they're a tough team to go against. They don't let you figure out what they're doing very easily.''
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Giants all the way baby. From 7-7 to World Champs. LOVE IT.
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