Amazing Eli outduels Golden Boy Brady

Johnette Howard

11:38 PM EST, February 3, 2008

GLENDALE, Ariz.

Eli Manning celebrates the game-winning touchdown

Eli Manning won the Super Bowl MVP award with a 19-for-34 performance with 255 yards and two touchdowns. (Getty Images Photo / February 3, 2008)

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 a lava flow, incinerating everything in its path.

There was less than a minute left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII, and all that presumptive pregame talk about what it would mean for the Patriots to finish off a 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 had been outplayed on both sides of the ball by the time Brady got the ball back trailing by four with 29 seconds 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?"

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Among all the other things that shockingly crumbled for the Patriots when Burress faked Patriots cornerback Ellis Hobbs out of his boots -- dipping a shoulder inside, then slipping to the outside for a game-winning 13-yard touchdown catch with 35 seconds to play -- was Brady's unblemished status as football's ultimate closer.

With 2:39 remaining, Eli Manning took the Giants on a 12-play, 83-yard drive that won their first Super Bowl title in 17 years, 17-14. He outdid Brady when it came to last-gasp drives, the element of the game at which Brady is supremely accomplished.

The loss wasn't all Brady's fault and it wasn't over until his very last pass of the game, a desperation heave to Randy Moss with just one tick left on the clock, hit the turf. For a moment before Manning took the ball that one last time, it seemed Brady had lifted the Patriots to their fourth fourth-quarter comeback in four trips to the Super Bowl. All three of their previous championship victories had come by three points, and twice Brady had led late fourth-quarter drives.

"We were up four," Brady said after the game, "but I knew obviously they had time. I had a feeling it was going to come down to us and a few plays. We just didn't get it done.

"To only score 14 points, that's our lowest total of the year, and that got us beaten," Brady added. "Usually we're on the better side of those three-point wins."

Brady was so upset that he didn't bother to stick around as Manning took a knee to run the last second off the clock. He ran toward the stadium tunnel, and so did Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who ran onto the field after Brady's last pass fell incomplete and hugged Giants coach Tom Coughlin. Belichick didn't stick around either as game officials ordered everyone back to their sideline so Manning could take one last snap and kneel down before confetti began to shoot from cannons all over the field.

Giants veteran Michael Strahan along with defensive linemates Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck hounded and hammered Brady all night, gouging out five sacks against an offensive line that had allowed only 24 in the Pats' previous 18 games.

Brady had said that someone was going to make history Sunday night, no matter who won.

The Giants made their own history, as Strahan crowed, "We shocked the world!" He spoke of watching TV last week and seeing everyone, even his pal Howie Long, pick the Patriots to win, and joked, "I had to turn off the TV. One of my friends didn't even believe in me."

Brady might not have believed it. But he had to accept it. By haftime, the one statistic even more riveting than the score (7-3, Pats) was how often Brady had been harassed. He was sacked three times, hurried six times and hit 10 times, by Fox TV's count. Little changed as the second half wore on. Manning was spectacular -- never more so than when he escaped a sure-looking sack and heaved the ball to David Tyree for a 32-yard gain that Coughlin gushed, "had to be one of the all-time great plays in Super Bowl history."

The Giants and Manning had flipped the script.

"That's the position you want to be in -- you want to have the ball in your hands, four minutes left ... you've got to score a touchdown."

That was Manning talking. Not Brady.