I am a Genius!

I want to know how many “experts” picked the Giants to win last night? It couldn’t be more than half dozen in the whole country but I can count myself as one of them (not that I count myself an “expert” but rather picked the correct winner of the game). I never thought I would be so happy to see the New York Giants win. However, last night when time expired on Super Bowl XL-Deuce, I was pretty elated. I was happy to see the unstoppable machine that was the Patriots defeated, happy that yet another year will pass, since 1972, without a team going undefeated, happy that the Boston area will not win every major championship this year and happy that Bill Belichick lost. I went into the game not really rooting very hard for NY but by the end of the game, I was pretty excited to see them win. The Giants accomplished a tremendous feat: they took on the top three offenses in the NFL (Patriots, Packers, Cowboys) and beat them all in succession. Oh yeah, and each one of those teams beat NY in the regular season.

The Giants came out and were the aggressor pretty much the entire game. New Yawk had twice as many yards rushing than the New England, had more passing yards and the NY defense sacked Brady more times (5) than he has been sacked in the last 4 years. The Giants were a 13 pt. underdog but it sure didn’t look like it from the way they played. I kept waiting and waiting for Eli to throw a crucial interception (he did throw one although the Patriots didn’t convert it into any points) , for a Giants RB to fumble to ball or for a New York player to commit some horrible penalty that would give the Patriots a leg up. However, that never happened. The defense played well and Eli played well.

Let’s just look at the last month in the life of Eli Manning. A month ago the sports world was dismissing him as mediocre at best. I doubt if anyone predicted Eli to have the type of success he had in the post season this year. To win the Super Bowl, all this mediocre QB had to do was beat the quarterback who will start next Sunday's Pro Bowl (Tony Romo), then the quarterback who would have started the Pro Bowl if he had not withdrawn (Bret Favre), then the quarterback who won the Most Valuable Player trophy this year (Tom Brady) and the undefeated Patriots, already being called the greatest team in history…all on the road. Now, Eli is on top of the world and has definitely earned my respect.

The Patriots meanwhile learned the hard way what the Mavs found out last Spring: it doesn’t matter what happens in the regular season if the team doesn’t win the title. But then again, that’s pretty much true of all professional sports. Timing seems to be everything in sports. When a team peaks and starts playing it’s best will quite often determine it’s post season fate. The Giants were not the best team but a 10-6 team that got hot and played it’s best football the past 4 weeks. That made all the difference.

I could say more about the game but there really isn’t any need. There isn’t any need to rehash bad decisions (like the Patriots going for a 4th and 13, which they failed to pickup, when they could have kicked a makeable 48 yard field goal). There isn’t any need to say how Belichick showed his true colors when he left the field, and his team, before the game technically ended. And there isn’t any need to replay one of the biggest choke jobs in NFL history.

The game spoke for itself…