Giants Win

The story of Super Bowl XLII -- surprise.

For Giants fans it was thrilling. For fans of the Patriots it had to be like a bad dream.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- The Giants were not even supposed to be here, taking an unlikely playoff path through the behemoths of their conference and regarded, once they alighted on Super Bowl XLII, as little more than charming foils for the New England Patriots’ assault on immortality.

But with their defense battering this season’s National Football League’s most valuable player, Tom Brady, and Giants quarterback Eli Manning playing more like Brady than Brady himself, the Giants produced one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history Sunday night, beating the previously undefeated Patriots, 17-14.

That's right. The Giants weren't supposed to be in the Super Bowl. WE WERE. The Giants weren't going to be able to beat the Packers at home at Lambeau, in those brutal, cold conditions. We were on our way to Arizona.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. The Packers didn't return to the Super Bowl for a fifth time. But I didn't feel like the Packers were robbed. The Packers' loss wasn't due to luck on the part of the Giants. They played better in the NFC Championship game. They earned their place in the Super Bowl.
The Giants came in as major underdogs. They had to face the undefeated Patriots and the god-like figure Tom Brady. Some have proclaimed him to be the best quarterback to ever play the game. Some consider the Patriots to be the greatest team of all time.

Tom Brady didn't look like the best yesterday and the Patriots didn't look like the greatest.

...“It’s disappointing; we came so close to being special,” Patriots defensive lineman Richard Seymour said. “We’re second-class.”

Not exactly. The Patriots still have a 16-0 regular season to cling to, and their offense, for almost the whole season, was unstoppable. But they were crestfallen by their near miss with football history.

It was the first time Belichick had lost a Super Bowl for New England. In recent days, questions had been raised about whether the Patriots videotaped a walk-through by St. Louis before New England won its first Super Bowl in 2002, and several Rams players said they hoped the N.F.L. would conduct a full investigation. The Patriots now face a long, perhaps embarrassing off-season.

And despite his affection for the Giants’ organization, where he worked for 12 years, Belichick was clipped in his postgame comments.

“I mean, look, they played well,” he said. “They made some plays. We made some plays. In the end, they made a couple more than we did.”

Belichick looked positively shell-shocked after the game.

He looked like someone had died.

I hope he snaps back from the loss better than Al Gore did after he lost the 2000 presidential election. I hope he manages to pull himself together after this enormous disappointment. He might get desperate and do something stupid, like spying. I don't think he will. Why would the best coach in the league do that?

...“Every team is beatable, you never know,” [Giants coach Tom] Coughlin said. “The right moment, the right time, every team is beatable.”

That's right. Even the supposedly unbeatable Patriots do lose sometimes, and the team picked the worst possible time to lose.

Of course if you're a Giants fan, the Patriots' timing was perfect.