Having your birthday fall on Super Bowl is not a good thing for your liver, or for your ability to make it to work on time the next day. Needless to say, I was somewhat...not prepared...to post about the Super Bowl last night. Any post I would have made would have been nothing but a breathless series or incoherent, expletive-filled exclamations. And we already have one writer for the blog who provides that with every post. (Editor's Note: Zing.)
I spent the first three quarters trying to decide how to sum up what some people might call a "gripping defensive struggle," while others would say it "sucked on toast." And then the fourth quarter came, and then...well, at this point you know the rest. But here I am, on Monday morning, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Eli Manning didn't just win the Super Bowl, he's he's now a Super Bowl legend.
To quote John Wayne, the whole thing rigoddamneddiculous.
With 2:42 left, and the Patriots having just scored a go-ahead touchdown, I was sitting at my friend's place and thinking my Super Bowl Prediction Haiku was going to be pretty damned prescient: the Giants had hung around, but the Patriots decided at the last minute to do just enough to win. Yes, it was going to be another underwhelming win, but it was going to be 19 in a row this season, and it would be pretty tough to argue with that.
And then...Eli Freakin' Manning.
You know who leads their team the length of the field for a Super Bowl-winning touchdown with less than two minutes to play? Joe Montana. And apparently now, Eli Manning. I mean, once Tom Brady threw that touchdown to Randy Moss, we all knew that it was over, right? Even with as "magical" of a post-season as Manning had been having, there was no way to recover from the kidney punch that was that touchdown drive by the Patriots.
Unless, of course, you pull off one of the most incredible plays in Super Bowl, if not (especially given the context) NFL history:
(On a side note, let's not forget that Asante Samuel had a chance to wrap up the game on the previous play, when Eli and...yup...David Tyree...got their routes mixed up and a pass wound up right in Samuel's hands. Make that play, and it's 19-0, and we're here contemplating
how Eli Manning could throw an INT with the game on the line.)
The hype leading up to the Super Bowl about Eli Manning always felt like a joke waiting for a punchline to me. Every time someone suggested that Eli Manning had "arrived" I was waiting for the rimshot.
"Eli Manning is aving one of the best playoffs of any quarterback in recent memory."
BA-DUM!
"The Giants have a chance to shock the Patriots if Eli continues to play like this."
BA-DUM-BUMP!
It turns out the joke was on the Patriots. Eli Manning pulled off perhaps the most stunning touchdown drive in NFL history, and in the process slew Goliath, rescued America from a deep national depression, made sports safe for kids and the dads to enjoy without fearing that an ogre-like figure in a hoodie would ruin it for everyone, and someone saved the dogs from the Puppy Bowl from a house fire.
And for the Patriots? Finishing the season with one loss for them probably has to be a bit more bitter than the 1985 Bears. I thing I will say is that the criticism of Bill Belichick for walking off the field with one second left is pretty baseless. Remember that the clock originally had run out after the Patriots' fourth down conversion attempt failed, and that's when Belichick started walking across the field. Once he's three-quarters of the way over and has already shook hands with Tom Coughlin, what's he supposed to do, go back to his sideline and coach the last kneel-down?
Still, seeing The Hoodie and The Golden Boy have to eat this loss certainly didn't make me weep.
The bottom line is that it's a day later, I'm sober, and I still can't make any sense of what happened in the Super Bowl. Depending on the arc of the rest of Eli Manning's career, this is either going to be looked back on as a defining moment, or one of the flukiest, strangest moments in Super Bowl history.
2 comments:
What, not mention of Eli/Joe comparisons?
Eli Manning is the next Jeff Hostettler. There I said it.
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