Eli Does It! Manning Brothers Go Back-to-Back

Tom Petty opened with "American Girl" and didn't play a song less than fifteen years old. Other than that, nothing went as expected on Super Bowl Sunday. Kudos to the Giants for an all-time upset, 17-14 over the previously unbeaten Patriots. Eli Manning---the game's MVP---with a huge 4th quarter, including one of the great Super Bowl plays of all-time, shaking two defenders and then drilling a 45-yard strike to wideout David Tyree at New England's 23 yard-line. (Tyree's off-the-helmet catch maybe even more impressive than Eli's play.) One year after big brother Peyton wins a ring, younger bro Eli gets his.

But the Giants won this game up front, pounding Tom Brady into submission like we haven't seen before. Osi Umenyiora, Michael Strahan and Justin Tuck all with strong attack-mode games. And so, New England's run at perfection is over. Done. Finito. How will history remember them? Surely as one of the greatest Super Bowl losers of all-time. But was this the greatest upset in Super Bowl history? Absolutely not. Probably number two though. The Jets as 17 point underdogs upsetting Baltimore in Super Bowl III was more historically important because it pitted teams literally from two different leagues, with New York's win signifying that the AFL was here to stay.

Few tears will be shed over the Pats' demise, especially considering that New England should be back to the Title Tilt at least a couple more times, as long as the team re-signs Randy Moss, which you'd have to expect they would. But a perfect season still belongs to just one team.

Somewhere Larry Csonka, Mercury Morris and the rest of the '72 Dolphins are smiling....

-JAB