Super Bowl XLII
Posted: Sunday, February 03, 2008 by Travis Cody inIs it my dislike of New England that drives my thoughts toward suggesting that the Giants can win today?
Probably.
But I do think that the Giants can win. They have the players with the right skill sets. They have the game plan...it nearly worked when the teams met in the final week of the regular season. The Giants simply must execute and play the perfect game.
You earned your way to Arizona. You're gonna play the game anyway. You might as well have your best game.
Eli Manning must not allow the pressure of being a first time Super Bowl quarterback to force him into making mistakes. He must execute the game plan, keep his emotions in check, and not try to win the game by himself.
The biggest problem in Manning's short career to date has been inconsistency. But starting with that week 17 performance against NE, and extending through three playoff games, Manning has thrown 8 touchdown passes against only 1 interception. That one pick was against NE and it turned the momentum in the game. The Giants had the Patriots and the game was right there for the taking until that single key turnover.
Having a strong running game has been a key factor in Manning's ability to be a game manager. RB Brandon Jacobs is a pounding runner and has the ability to control a game. The change of pace back is Ahmad Bradshaw, who has emerged in the playoffs to give the Giant's an effective duo coming out of the backfield. 
New York's defense has been effective at creating turnovers, mainly due to a combination of one of the best pass rushes in football and an opportunistic secondary.
The Giants are capable of pulling off this upset. In Week 17, NY gave up 356 passing yards and still nearly won the game. The Giants were effective running the football. Manning threw for 4 touchdowns. The key play was the interception Manning threw late in the game.
The New England offense is one of the most talented ever assembled. There's no arguing that point. The Patriots had basically no need for a running game during the regular season. But in the playoffs, Laurence Maroney has rushed for 244 yards in 2 games. A more balanced offensive attack could be bad news for the Giants.
The Patriots have shown that they can win in many different ways. In the two AFC playoff games, Tom Brady was out-gained in passing yardage by both David Garrard and a gimpy Philip Rivers. So if the best offense in the game can win when the best QB (sorry Songbird...I know you will argue for Peyton, but the stats and the circumstances are clear and I hate it just as much as you do) is out-gained statistically, what chance does NY possibly have?
The Patriots scored 67 offensive touchdowns in the regular season to the opponents' 30. The Patriots had 6,580 total offensive yards to the opponents' 4,613. The Patriots scored just under 37 points per game while allowing only 17.
The Patriots are 18-0.
And yet I still think the Giants can win. Mike Celizic, freelance writer and contributor to www.msnbc.com, agrees with me that NY can win. He writes:The Pats are the favorites and they should be. But the Giants aren’t going to roll over. They believe they can win this game, and that means they can win it.
I’ve already said elsewhere that New England will win, but the predictions of writers aren’t worth the electrons that are sacrificed to bring them to your computer screen. I still think they’ll win, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t.
The Giants are that good, good enough to pull off what will go down as an upset for the ages. They’ll have to play a perfect game and force the Patriots into some mistakes. But write this down.
The Giants can win.
Look, I've watched enough sports to see the favorite get beat time and again. NC State in the upset of all upsets over Houston in 1983. The Miracle on Ice when the US beat the Soviets in 1980.
But that's the little guy shocking the big bad bully. I don't see NY vs NE that way. I see it more like Duke vs UNLV in the 1991 Final Four. The previous year, UNLV destroyed the Blue Devils by 30 points in the final game. Both teams returned virtually the same teams to the semi-finals in 1991, and all the talking heads expected a closer game with the same result. Yet Duke believed it could win, and scored the upset 79-77.
That's why I think the Giants can win.
I guess this post is either going to look brilliant or silly by this evening. It's wishful thinking, but here goes...
I'm picking the Giants, 34-31.
I've been wondering if and when you were gonna post your pre-game pick post! Good job and I hope you are right. I'm not a Patriots fan, but then again, I'm also not a GIants fan either. Maybe next year -Go Redskins!