Sunday night, the New York Giants quarterback victimized the New England Patriots — both their reeling defense that was on the field and Tom Brady’s high-octane offense that was stuck on the sideline — as he pulled off yet another final minutes drive for a come-from-behind victory — his seventh of the season.
This one — to win Super Bowl XLVI, 21-17 — was his biggest.
With his team trailing 17-15 and just 3:46 left in the game, Manning completed 5 of 6 passes and drove the Giants 88 yards for the go ahead score — a six-yard run by Ahmad Bradshaw with 57 seconds left.
That drive — topping a night in which he completed 30 of 40 passes for 296 yards and a touchdown — made Manning the Super Bowl MVP for the second time in four years.
He won the honor in 2008 with an eerily similar final minutes drive to overtake the Pats.
If he seems to have the Super Bowl setting covered — well, he does. That was especially the case this week in Indianapolis, the town where his older, better-known brother Peyton is the quarterback of the Colts.
Eli has been here enough that he knows the city, especially St. Elmo’s the famed downtown steakhouse known for its big slabs of beef and especially its shrimp cocktail whose sauce is all horseradish and fire.
He brought several unsuspecting teammates there as soon as the Giants hit town and coaxed all of them to load up on the cocktail sauce.
“Some people started sweating and kind of half choking,” he said laughing. “Guys eyes were watering. It was great ... and there were no major injuries. Nobody was really hurt.”
You could say the same about Sunday night, except for the hurt part.
The Giants had a couple of guys knocked out of the game, most notably starting tight end Jake Ballard, the Springboro High and Ohio State grad, who suffered an injury to his knee early in the fourth quarter.
In mid December he had partially torn the PCL in his right knee and missed the final two games of the regular season. This time he fell to the turf in Lucas Oil Stadium untouched and soon was clutching his left knee. He was helped off the field and tended to on the sidelines.
Attempting to return to the game — he had had two catches before that — he tried to run on the sidelines, but ended up crumpling to the ground. Earlier in the game back-up tight end Travis Beckum tore his ACL.
With his receiving corps depleted, Manning went to work with his three young wide receivers — Victor Cruz, Mario Manningham and Hakeem Nicks — and took the Pats apart.
The big play in that last drive was a 38-yard pass down the left sideline that Manningham made a brilliant grab on just before he got knocked out of bounds.
It was almost as acrobatic as David Tyree’s leaping grab of a 32-yard Manning heave that Tyree pinned to his helmet before he fell in Super Bowl XLII. That catch — like Manningham’s on Sunday — set up the winning touchdown.
In outdueling Brady for the second time in a Super Bowl — and also beating the Pats in November with a last-second TD pass to Ballard — Manning has shredded those preseason critics who ridiculed him when he gave an honest answer to a question put to him on a New York radio show.
He was asked if he thought he was an elite quarterback in the NFL, an equal to the Pats’ Brady.
He said he thought he was elite and the naysayers treated him like a piñata. They pointed to last season, when he threw 25 interceptions, the most in the NFL.
“I tried to answer what I felt,” he said.
Giants coach Tom Coughlin jumped on that issue after Sunday’s game:
“He is an elite quarterback. He deserves all the credit in the world. That was quite a drive he put together at the end of the game. He put our team on his shoulders once again. As he’s shown all year, he’s amazing in the fourth quarter when the game is on the line.”
Bradshaw, who had embraced Manning at game’s end on the sideline, echoed his coach afterward: “I don’t need to say anything about Eli. I shouldn’t have to say anything about Eli. Two hundred and twenty eight countries just saw Eli. ... They saw exactly what a Super Bowl MVP looks like and what he can do to people.”
This past week — start to finish at the Super Bowl — he made them sweat.
About the Author