“MAKE THEM GO TO MANNINGHAM”

If there was one thing Bill Belichick learned during his tenure as defensive coordinator of the Giants, it was how to eliminate an opponent’s strength. Whether it was slowing down Jerry Rice or Jim Kelly or any of the other vaunted offensive players he faced in big games for Big Blue, he was usually able to pinpoint it and then take them out of the game.

It was a penchant he brought with him to the Patriots when he became their head coach. And it was a philosophy he used when he faced the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012, in Indianapolis. His Patriots led the Giants, 17–15, late in the fourth quarter, and as his defense prepared to take the field to try to make a championship-winning stop, Belichick gave them his orders.

“This is still a Cruz and Nicks game,” Belichick said, reminding the Patriots defenders about the dangerous Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks. “I know we’re right on them tight, but those are still the guys. Make them go to Manningham, make them go to Pascoe. Make sure we get Cruz and Nicks.”

A few minutes later, Belichick got his wish.

So did the Giants.

With the Patriots locking up the top two receiving threats, Eli Manning was able to find Mario Manningham for a 38-yard completion down the New England sideline on the first snap from his own 12 that spurred the Giants to the game-winning touchdown eight plays later.

It wasn’t the most incredible catch in Giants history. It wasn’t the most flamboyant. It wasn’t the most athletic or the luckiest or the most iconic.

But it was the most perfect execution of a pass and catch in a clutch situation that the franchise has ever had.

To many, it is remembered as Manning’s finest throw of the thousands he had before and the thousands he had after. There was a window about the size of a bagel hole where the quarterback could put the ball safely into the hands of his receiver, avoiding the pair of defensive backs converging on the spot while keeping Manningham in bounds.

And Manningham? The player to whom Belichick wanted the Giants to throw the ball? He reached out and pulled the ball in over his shoulder, tapped both feet down in the field of play, and then skidded out of bounds… coming to a stop at Belichick’s feet.

“I kind of turned into Space Jam with the stretchy arms,” Manningham said. “It was great.”

He knew, too, that he got both feet down. Even as the Patriots challenged the call, he was in the huddle with Manning and Nicks insisting he was in.

When he came to a stop, Manningham said he didn’t remember hearing anything from the coaches and players on the Patriots sideline. It wasn’t until a few days later, when NFL Films released the footage and audio it had captured from the game, that the receiver knew about Belichick’s Manningham mandate.

“I understand,” Manningham said. “Take away the hot guys. But it was the Super Bowl, and I was ready to play.”

The door to this championship was similar to the one the Giants beat down to get to Super Bowl XLII, with one exception: they had a home game. The Giants hosted the Falcons in the NFC Wildcard Game on January 8, 2012—the first and so far only postseason home game ever played at MetLife Stadium—and trampled them, 24–2. Manning threw three touchdown passes, and the defense pitched a virtual shutout. The Giants stopped the Falcons on three fourth-down conversion attempts, including a pair of quarterback sneaks in the fourth quarter.

All that did was set the Giants up with the best team in the NFL. The Packers had gone 15–1 in 2011 and cruised to the top seed in the conference. It meant a return trip to Lambeau Field for a January playoff game, although this one was not as cold as the one four years earlier. Nor was it as close. The Giants used three touchdown passes by Eli Manning—including a 37-yard Hail Mary to Hakeem Nicks at the end of the first half—to earn a 37–20 victory. For the first time in a season in which they barely reached the playoffs, the Giants were thinking championship.

“I think we’re a dangerous team,” Coughlin said after the win in a rare public admission of optimism. But that’s who these Giants were all of a sudden. They’d gone from a team that a month earlier needed to win two improbable games just to get into the playoffs to a team that was now two less improbable wins away from a title.

“I like where we are and how we’re playing,” Coughlin said.

Next stop: San Francisco for the NFC Championship Game. Manning had missed a practice that week with a stomach virus, showing some vulnerability to physical ailments for the first time in a career that had seen him play through serious shoulder and foot injuries to that point. But that belly bug was nothing compared to what awaited him in Candlestick Park.

He was pummeled into the soggy turf by the 49ers defense for most of the day, but each time, he got back up, scraped the clumps of mud and grass from his facemask, rolled his shoulders to get his pads back in their proper place, and went back to the line of scrimmage. Defenders hit him 20 times, six of them for sacks.

“We give him a lot of grief about his dorky appearance and he doesn’t look like he has been in a weight room ever,” defensive end Justin Tuck said. “But that guy is tough. He is like the Energizer Bunny. He keeps firing. He is the leader of this football team because of that.”

While he threw for 316 yards and two touchdowns and completed 32 of 58 passes (the last two numbers establishing new Giants postseason records), it took more than Manning’s grit to win the game. It took a special teams takeaway in overtime.

Rookie linebacker Jacquian Williams poked the ball away from punt returner Kyle Williams, and it was recovered by backup wide receiver Devin Thomas. That gave the Giants the ball at the 49ers’ 24-yard line. The Giants would eventually get to the 6 before Manning centered the ball by taking a knee and Lawrence Tynes slogged his way onto the mucky field for a 31-yard field goal attempt. Four years earlier, Tynes had kicked a game-winning overtime field goal to send the Giants to the Super Bowl in frigid conditions on an icy surface. This time, he had to do it in a quagmire.

As the ball went through the uprights, holder Steve Weatherford ripped his own helmet off his head without even loosening the chinstrap and began sprinting around the field like a madman.

“We’re going to the [blankety-blank] Super Bowl!” he screamed.

The Manningham catch in the Super Bowl two weeks later didn’t get the Giants into the end zone. It only got them to midfield, and they still trailed by two points when Manningham’s reception was confirmed by replay with 3:39 remaining. Manning continued to target Manningham on the drive; his next three passes went in that direction before his hit Nicks for 14 yards to reach the Patriots’ 18 at the two-minute warning.

The Patriots wanted the Giants to throw the ball to Mario Manningham late in Super Bowl XLVI. The Giants obliged. (Al Bello / Staff, courtesy of Getty Images)

Now the Giants were in position to almost assuredly score the go-ahead points. It was just a matter of how—via touchdown or field goal?—and how much time they would leave for Tom Brady and the Patriots’ offense to respond.

On the Giants’ sideline, the long Manningham catch had sparked a flurry of activity from the special teamers. Weatherford, Tynes, and long snapper Zak DeOssie were preparing to win the Super Bowl.

“Steve and I always warm up for field-goal snaps near the side where we’re about to kick,” DeOssie said. “We are so excited-slash-nervous because we know our number is going to be called for this pending field goal to get the go-ahead points late in the Super Bowl. Nine times out of 10, you just bring your field-goal team out on the field, and we’re going nuts over there. We’re snapping. Steve’s screaming. I’m screaming. We’re screaming at each other. ‘We’re gonna do this! We’re gonna win!’”

The trio was so sure of themselves that they were discussing who among them might be the MVP. Weatherford, who had the best game of his career on the biggest stage, boldly suggested that he might become the first punter to garner such honors. Tynes, who had already kicked two second-half field goals, said a third might give him the recognition.

“We’re getting each other jacked up and there are more people crowding the sideline now because it’s toward the end of the game and we’re fighting for position to get our practice snaps in and getting more jacked up for a field goal than I ever have in my entire life. And then, all of a sudden …”

Touchdown.

Ahmad Bradshaw went up the middle on a 6-yard run to give the Giants a 21–17 lead with 57 seconds left. Actually, he ran about 5 ½ yards and then tried to stop before falling backward into the end zone for one of the most historic and ill-advised touchdowns in Super Bowl history. Instead of running out the clock and kicking the field goal with only a handful of seconds left, the Giants were giving the ball back to Brady with nearly a full minute left.

Just like the Patriots hoped they would.

“I just yelled: ‘Don’t score! Don’t score!’” Manning said he told Bradshaw after the handoff. “Obviously, he heard me [because] he thought about it. I know it’s tough for a running back. They see a big hole right there going for a touchdown. I think something almost had to pop into his head like something was up, this is a little bit too good to be true… I think he didn’t quite know what to do. He said, ‘Hey, I have a touchdown, I’m going to take it.’”

“It’s a tough feeling,” Bradshaw said of the uncommon urge to not score. “I didn’t think about it and then Eli says, ‘Don’t score! Don’t score!’ as soon as he gives me the ball. It didn’t click until like the 1-yard line. I tried to go down and tap down, but the momentum took me in.”

The Giants attempted a two-point conversion after the Bradshaw touchdown, but failed, and led 21–17. When Tuck sacked Brady on third down, it looked like a game-sealing play for the Giants, but the Patriots converted on fourth-and-16 with 32 seconds left to remain alive. They stayed that way up until the final snap of the ball with five seconds left, when Brady threw the ball into the end zone from his own 42.

The pass was intended for tight end Aaron Hernandez, but safety Kenny Phillips managed to swat it away. Even that didn’t win the game for the Giants, though. The ball fluttered, and Rob Gronkowski dived in an attempt to snare it before it hit the turf.

He could not.

“The first [Super Bowl] was kind of a blur,” DeOssie said. “It was my rookie year, and my head was spinning. I joked with some of my fellow draft picks at the time, at the second one, we joked about paying attention this go-around. I just sort of took time to appreciate the opportunity to be there from start to finish and I remember a lot more.”

Many other players and coaches say any time they walk around Lucas Oil Stadium to this day, if they look closely enough, they find pieces of silver or blue confetti from that game lodged in cracks or stuck to the turf. Is it really from the Giants’ celebration? Maybe. But there is a bucket in the rafters of the stadium, just above the 35-yard line, that can be seen from the field. When the Giants won and the confetti was triggered, that one bucket failed to tip its load into the air. So it remains there, full of tiny slivers of paper and Mylar. Waiting, perhaps, for the next Giants championship.

Giants fans cherish that game, as well. Maybe because there was so much to remember. Like Chase Blackburn’s interception covering Gronkowski far down the field; Blackburn had been out of football and working as a substitute teacher when the Giants called him in November and signed him to become their starting middle linebacker. There was Victor Cruz’s touchdown and obligatory salsa dance. There was a pass from Brady to a wide-open Wes Welker in the fourth quarter that would have all but sealed the victory for the Patriots with a first down, but the normally sure-handed receiver dropped it.

And, of course, Manningham’s catch that sparked the comeback.

At Belichick’s request.