Some games are more important than others: New York Giants upset New England Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII
New England Patriots have joined an exclusive club. They are the only team to go 18-1 in a season without winning the Super Bowl. The New York Giants made the most of their defensive strength, their powerful defensive line, in order to slow down and at times flat stop the Patriots high-flying offense.
New England Patriots didn’t choke and you should consider people who claim they choked ignoramuses. The Giants beat them in the trenches, they beat them in field position and they beat them in clutch plays. The biggest factor was that they controlled the line of scrimmage on both side of the ball mot of the game. The Patriots were clearly anticipating New York’s aggressive pass rush but couldn’t counter it.
On the Giants final drive the defense had three opportunities to intercept Eli Manning, and missed all three of them. They also failed to sack Manning on a critical play that set up the final score of the game. They also failed to stop New York on a fourth-down play. Four chances to make game winning plays and one chance to set up a game winning play and Patriots defense blew all five opportunities on that last drive.
Give the Giants their due. The Patriots have shown this season that they aren’t just bunch of pretty-boy touchdown-makers but also tough guys who can grind it out in close games. But the Giants beat them anyway.
The key to the loss was the pitiful performance by the offensive line which has been anywhere from solid to spectacular this season, with maybe a couple of pinches of shaky thrown in in a couple of games. Yet throughout this season I hesitated to upgrade them from 2006 assessment of them (”above average but nothing special”) and I pointed out during the pre-season that left guard Logan Mankins isn’t the superstar offensive lineman he is often made out to be. Giants defensive tackle Justin Tuck got far too much penetration against Mankins, which made it almost impossible for quarterback Tom Brady to move up to escape outside pressure. The line collectively, as well as runningback Kevin Faulk, failed to handle New Yorks various and often excellent blitz packages. It seems as if defenses were able to decode the Patriots pass-protection schemes during the last few games of the season and that caught up with the Patriots today.
