Giants know they have to hit Brady plenty

Justin Tuck put the Giants' game plan into the simplest terms possible.

"The way to kill a snake is to take off its head," the defensive captain said Friday. "The way to kill an offense as potent as that one is making sure you take care of [Tom] Brady."

Four years ago, the Giants established the Big Blueprint for beating the Patriots. Put pressure on Brady with as few pass-rushers as possible, disrupt the routes of his receivers and enjoy the confetti.

It's a pattern that has worked for other teams over the years, most recently the Jets in the playoffs last season. The Patriots, who had won three of the previous four Super Bowls and were 18-0 when they faced the Giants in Super Bowl XLII, have not won another championship since. They hadn't even won another playoff game until this season.

Now the architects are back at the drawing board, but instead of trying to come up with new ways of beating New England, they're going to rely on what worked in the past. They know at least as well as any other team out there that the more you hit Brady, the better your chances of winning.

"We know we're going to have to get to [Brady] as often as we can if we're going to win this football game, and that's exactly what we plan on doing," Osi Umenyiora said. "It's going to be hard for us to get to him, but whenever we have the opportunity -- because there will be a time when we have the opportunity -- we have to take advantage of that."

"We can rush," Mathias Kiwanuka said. "We can rush with all the best pass-rushing groups out there and we know that. We feel like we're going to get there."

Umenyiora recalled breakfast on the morning of Super Bowl XLII, when he and Michael Strahan were talking about the game and Umenyiora grew serious.

"I was like, 'Stray, in order for us to win this game, we're going to have to get to the quarterback. We're going to have to really get to him,' " Umenyiora recalled. "And he was like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' And I made him put his fork down and I was like, 'I'm dead serious, man, we're gonna have to do this.' And he was like, 'All right, cool,' and he stopped joking around then. He was all business, and we went out there and took care of them."

The difference this time is that the Patriots know their weakness, too. They'll have Secret Service-type security around Brady in the pocket, trying to ensure that he's untouched by Giants hands.

Clearly, the experience of Super Bowl XLII has stuck with the Patriots' offensive linemen. Guard Logan Mankins was asked about the pressure the Giants brought in that game.

"That was four years ago," he said. "Next question."

And the Patriots surely do not like having their quarterback compared to a slithering reptile. "If that's the analogy they're taking, then that's what it is," receiver Deion Branch said. "We have to protect our guy, protect the snake . . . I know the snake is dead if you cut his head off. A real snake. Tom ain't a snake, though. Tom's not a snake."

The Giants want to put him at snake-eye level as many times as possible, though. Get in his face mask. Shake him up.

"Any quarterback can be rattled," Jason Pierre-Paul said. "There's nobody God made that can't be rattled."

Even Brady, whom they plan to turn into a rattled snake.

There will be other areas of the game that are important. The Giants will have to try to run the ball against the Patriots, the secondary will have to cover the Patriots' receivers, and there are those two big tight ends to worry about.

So is it too simplistic to say that if the Giants can focus on accomplishing this one goal -- of putting Brady on his back as often as they can -- they'll win another Super Bowl?

Said Tuck, "I don't think so."