On this given day, it happened for the Giants

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was hammering his feet up and down, anxiously slapping the ball against his left hand, hurriedly scanning the field to find someone open, but the Giants’ pass rush just kept coming toward him like some wave of lava, incinerating everything in its path.

There was under a minute left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII now, and all that presumptive pregame talk about what it would mean for the Patriots to finish off their perfect 19-0 season or where this Pats team deserved to be ranked in history -- best ever? -- had been belted out of this game with every shocking hit that Brady took. The Patriots were just trying to be better than the Giants on this day, in this Super Bowl. Those other three titles they won with Brady, like their status as 12-point favorites, guaranteed nothing now.

The Patriots were outplayed on both sides of the ball by the time Brady got the ball back trailing by four with under a minute to play, and something Giants wideout Plaxico Burress said earlier in the week came whispering back to mind.

“They’re definitely better than us,” Burress allowed, “but on any given day, on any given Sunday, anything can happen. Any team can beat anybody. So why not us?”

Among all the other things that shockingly crumbled for the Patriots when Burress faked Patriots cornerback Ellis Hobbs out of his boots was Brady’s unblemished status as football’s ultimate closer.

Johnette Howard

Newsday

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Brady knows exactly what went wrong

Tom Brady, meet the heartbreakers.

The super team lost the Super Bowl. The super quarterback didn’t get the job done.

“You score 14 points,” Brady said, “that’s not going to do it.”

He lost. They lost. Believe it or not, Brady and the New England Patriots lost. They lost Super Bowl XLII on Sunday to the we-refuse-to-lose New York Giants. They lost a shot at an unprecedented NFL record of 19-0.

Brady finally lost a Super Bowl. He lost to a 12-point underdog. He lost to Eli, the other Manning brother. He lost a chance to tie Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw with a fourth Super Bowl ring.

The unbeaten were beaten. They scored a lousy 14 points. For much of the night, they were on the verge of not even scoring in double figures.

“That’s our lowest total of the year,” Brady said, “and that got us beat.”

Mike Downey

Chicago Tribune

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This loss can’t be blamed on distractions

They were flappable. They were ruffled. They were shaken. And they were beaten.

And no one was more beaten in this magnificent Super Bowl XLII than quarterback Tom Brady, who played a courageous second half but for the second time in the last two NFL playoffs was outplayed by a Manning.

There were 35 seconds left in this wonderful piece of theater when Eli Manning threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress, and wasn’t that a bit eerie. There were 34 seconds left in Super Bowl XXIII when Joe Montana brought the San Francisco 49ers back with a touchdown pass to John Taylor to beat Cincinnati at what was then called Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami Gardens.

Brady threw for 266 yards, and that doesn’t sound bad, but he was sacked five times and battered for three of the four quarters by a Giants defensive front that seemed to know in advance what the New England blocking schemes would be.

But let’s not go there, and do not let me hear one person claim that the Patriots were distracted by the weekend charges about spying and strangely destroyed videotaped evidence.

This Patriots team hasn’t been distracted all season. What happened in this game is that they got whipped by a Giants team that started the season 0-2 and looked like a longshot even to make the playoffs after losing to Minnesota on Nov. 25.

Brady was so flummoxed at halftime that he could be seen blowing air through his closed lips, as if he were about to boil over.

The Giants won this game because they played spectacular defense in the first two quarters and Manning was just amazing.

Charles Bricker

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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Giants make their own kind of history

Grown men ran around the field like kids scampering at recess. Inside an enclosed stadium, it rained heavily, with brightly colored confetti falling. Yes, when Super Bowl XLII ended, there was chaos, as expected, and history.

That, too.

But the winner wasn’t undefeated. The winner was undenied.

The winner was the Giants, who began the season running in the opposite direction as New England. The winner won a game away from home, for a remarkable 11th straight time. The winner stared down Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and eventually wore him down. The winner was led by Eli Manning, who put together one of the all-time game-clinching drives in football history. And then, madness.

Was Giants 17, Patriots 14 the biggest upset in NFL history? Let the debate begin. But let there be no question about this:

“It’s the greatest victory in the history of this franchise,” said Giants owner John Mara.

It’s the third Super Bowl victory for the original NFL franchise, and definitely the one championship the franchise never anticipated. This time last year, the Giants were in recovery from yet another first-round playoff loss, weighing the future of Coach Tom Coughlin, getting retirement signals from defensive end Michael Strahan and still waiting for Manning, better known as the Younger Brother, to grow up.

Interesting, then, how all three men, as it turned out, made the proudest moment in franchise history possible.

Shaun Powell

Newsday