CHAPTER 19

ANYTHING YOU CAN DO

In the off-season, Peyton hosted Saturday Night Live, unveiling heretofore hidden talents for subtle, self-deprecating, even cruelly cynical Eli-style humor, if it was in step with cultural cool. The show, which aired on March 24, began with a monologue in which he said he had met his goals for the season—including “appearing in half the nation’s TV commercials”—and calling out in the audience Archie, Eli, and Olivia, the last “a real disappointment to us . . . she never made it to the NFL.” The best sketch found him working with kids at a United Way–style camp, where he barks complex signals, tells a kid who missed a pass, “You suck!,” tries to break into a car with a crowbar, and tattoos a kid’s leg with the image of his face. Then he sits with the group, beer in his hand.

“I’ll kill a snitch,” he tells them. “I’m not saying I have, but I’m not saying I haven’t. Whatever. You kids don’t know [bleep].” The sketch ends with a voice-over saying, “Spend time with your kids, so Peyton Manning doesn’t.”

Tom Condon, meanwhile, dealing with reality, restructured Eli’s contract, garnering him a $5 million option bonus, a $1 million roster bonus, and a $900,000 restructure bonus. His salary increased to $6.5 million, with additional bonuses down the line. This show of confidence in Eli came as the general feeling around the Giants was that they were on the cusp of their awakening as an honest contender, needing just a few tweaks. Tom Coughlin hired a new quarterbacks coach, Chris Palmer, another of his old Jaguar adjutants, who made some changes in the off-season practice routine, having Eli spend long hours working on patterns with Plaxico Burress and Jeremy Shockey. It was something Peyton did in endless reps with Marvin Harrison and Dallas Clark, mind-melding the most dependable guns of the attack.

But the Giants’ ’07 season opener, in Dallas on Sunday night, was a bummer. Eli burst out of the gate, throwing a 60-yard touchdown to Burress on the first drive. The Cowboys, with Tony Romo, got back some of it with a field goal, then took the lead on a Marion Barber TD run, and by the fourth quarter Romo had thrown three touchdowns for a 38–22 lead. Tenaciously, Manning accounted for two touchdowns in three minutes, cutting it to 38–35 with four minutes left. But the Giants defense went limp and Romo uncorked a 51-yard touchdown to Sam Hurd to put it away, 45–35. While both quarterbacks threw four touchdowns and combined for nearly 700 yards, the Giants defense was suspect.

Worse, a number of Giants came away hurt, including Eli with a bruised shoulder. With the Packers coming in next, Coughlin could not risk resting him, but Manning’s blah game, and Brett Favre’s three touchdown passes, sent the team down 35–13. Finding themselves playing for their lives after just two games, game three was a tough nut in D.C., and in the third quarter the Redskins led 17–3. The season appeared lost. But a comeback began, and on a key third-and-eight, Eli picked up 21 on a pass to Shockey, preceding a short Reuben Droughns touchdown run. Then, in the fourth quarter, Droughns ran in another for a 17–17 tie. Getting the ball back with 7:33 to go, a ’Skins pass interference penalty set up Eli’s laser to Burress from 33 yards for the lead. Now it was up to the maligned defense, and it bent—far, but with the ball on the Giants’ one-yard line, three times they held, the last on fourth down when they hit the runner for a two-yard loss.

That thrilling quarter saved the season, one that would have more magic in store. They won six in a row, seven of eight, nine of 11, and two days before Christmas they were 10–5 and in the playoffs. Eli’s numbers overall were middling, throwing for 3,336 yards, his quarterback rating only 73.9, but he was Mr. Clutch. He took the team from behind to win with six game-winning drives, most in the league. When Shockey went down for the season with a fibula injury, things kept rolling with Kevin Boss; so much so that Shockey, the frequent All-Pro, was traded to the Saints after the season.

Meanwhile, the Colts defended their title almost with a yawn. They won their division at 13–3, as Peyton threw for over 4,000 yards and 31 touchdowns versus 14 interceptions, his passer rating 98.0. There was a possibility the Mannings might just decide the Super Bowl between themselves if everything broke right. And because the Giants were in as one of the two NFC wild cards, with no chance to catch the division-leading Cowboys, they normally would have taken it easy in the regular-season finale. But this was no meaningless game. Eli was the only thing that stood between the Patriots and history.

Belichick’s team came into the Meadowlands in week 17 having won all 15 of their games, gaining headlines not only for winning, but for doing what many NFL people assumed was part of any of their game plans: cheating. This was, of course, the result of “Spygate,” Belichick’s illegal videotaping of the Jets’ coaches from the opposite sideline during the season opener, presumably to steal signals, which got him the biggest fine ever assessed against a coach—$500,000—and cost the team another $250,000 plus the forfeiture of its first-round draft pick. Belichick, at his smarmiest, admitted to “a mistake” only technically, insisting he didn’t use the tapes that game. He denied the league the tapes, but NFL officials confiscated, played, and subsequently destroyed them.¹ Seeing his record challenged, Don Shula, the coach of history’s only undefeated team, the ’72 Dolphins, debited the Patriots, saying Spygate “has diminished what they’ve accomplished,” a common conclusion ever since.²

Both teams prepared as if the game were a Super Bowl, the Giants playing all their starters, even with nothing to gain. While many of their fans sold their seats to Patriot fans, Coughlin was convinced the team would reap enormous momentum from an unlikely win. To do that, they would need to stub Brady, whose numbers that year were inhuman. Given an atom bomb when Belichick traded for the seemingly withered Randy Moss before the season, a great team became greater. At 30, Moss seemed past his All-Pro prime, but with Brady he was reborn. The New England offense, with Brady throwing for over 4,800 yards, was the best in the league, the defense fourth-best. But Manning pumped out four touchdown passes, two to Burress. Brady hit on two, both to Moss, the second of which, a 65-yard bomb that put the Pats ahead in the fourth quarter, was the biggie, and quite historic. It broke two records, Brady notching his 50th touchdown pass, eclipsing Peyton’s mark, and Moss catching his 23rd touchdown. The Pats held on, Eli’s late touchdown closing it to 38–35.

The mind-set coming out of this game was odd; because the Giants had given the Pats hell, it boosted them and pricked the Pats, who seemed vulnerable. The Giants, emotionally wrought all week long, came off the field preening like winners, and should have sounded deluded when they boldly said they’d win the next time around, like in the Super Bowl. Instead, it became a battle cry, and probably one that rankled the Pats. However, the game also gave a shot of courage to other teams who might get a crack at the Pats, the most obvious being the one in Indianapolis.

The Colts’ season was a steamroller in itself. Though overlooked amid the Patriots’ dramatics, they scored the third-most points in the league and surrendered the least. With Marvin Harrison hurt, aging, and on the way out, Reggie Wayne went over 100 receptions. They were more dependent on the rush, scoring the second-most rushing touchdowns, 19. Joseph Addai scored 12 on his own in another 1,000-yard season. Their first playoff game, in the divisional round, brought the Chargers to the RCA Dome. For Peyton, it was a flashback to a nightmare. In November, when the Colts had played San Diego on the coast, he threw six picks, the most he had ever thrown at any level, three to Antonio Cromartie alone. He also threw two touchdowns and had 328 yards passing, and fought back from down 23–0 to make it close, losing 23–21, but the stench of those picks drove him; the Colts didn’t lose again until the finale, when he only played half the game.

The Chargers were generally an awful playoff team, and the Colts were 11-point favorites. Peyton put them ahead with a 25-yard pass to Clark, but it became a touchdown-for-touchdown battle between him and Philip Rivers as they combined for seven touchdowns. Rivers was more economical; he threw only 19 times but completed 14, for 264 yards, while Peyton, his running game static, heaved it 48 times, hitting on 33 for 402 yards. In the third quarter, down 14–10 but on the Charger doorstep, he panicked and aimed a short pass at running back Kenton Keith. Safety Eric Weddle sneaked underneath and snatched it.

Manning did rise up and throw TD passes to Wayne and Anthony Gonzalez, and with 10 minutes left, Indianapolis led 24–21. Rivers was now gone with a knee injury and little-used backup Billy Volek was in. But Volek, helped by a Colt face mask penalty on a third-down pass, took the Chargers to the Colts one, then ran it in for a 28–24 lead with 4:54 left. Peyton would get the ball back twice. The first time, he got it to the Chargers seven. In a strange set of play calls, three straight times he threw a short pass for Addai—and all three fell incomplete. The last series was a four-and-out. Season over.

As ignominious as it was—“Implosion” was the headline in the Star— Dungy, his contract up, freely spoke about retiring. Peyton, his ambivalence about the perils of winning driven home in the span of one year, spoke of going back to square one and relearning what it took to win. He included himself in that indictment, with cause. Because if a case could be made that the Colts’ defense, save for one year, never seemed to come up big in these playoff games, there was an equally strong case that neither did Peyton Manning. Dungy rightly says that those Colt teams understood the biblical truism that nothing is ever promised, but that Peyton’s value was that he gave them the right to feel it was. If so, they also understood that the positive energy ebbed when Peyton’s knack for making the big play vanished in the haze. The Chargers would get the Patriots, full of optimism. Antonio Gates, their great tight end, said, “We got something special now.”³ Or so they thought. The Pats pushed them aside, 21–12, moving on to the Super Bowl, looking to close out a perfect season, but they were no doubt just a tad nervous about who was waiting for them.

The Giants, fueled by the glorious defeat in week 17, were still juiced when they blew by the favored Bucs. Next came a higher bar, and one with more history: the Cowboys in the divisional playoff, with Dallas salivating after sweeping their two regular-season games. The bettors made them seven-point favorites, and they would hold the ball 13 minutes longer, gain 106 more yards, and pick up 10 of 16 third downs. Marion Barber ran for 129 yards. But Tony Romo, a Pro Bowler for the second year in a row, went 18 of 36 for 201 yards, his longest a mere 20 yards, as his reputation as a big-game schlemiel grew. Eli was a modest 12 of 18 for 163 yards, but two of those were touchdowns to Toomer. Early in the fourth quarter, Jacobs scored for the lead. The rest of the game saw Romo cranking up but never getting it done. With 26 seconds left, he was close, at the Giant 23. Two incompletions and an end-zone interception later, it was over, 21–17. The Mannings could appreciate his postgame admission.

“It hurts,” he said.

Each of these upset victories fed the Giants’ hunger for more. The NFC championship game would be at Lambeau Field, and the Packers had their own incentive, the 38-year-old Brett Favre having said he’d retire after the season. (He wouldn’t, of course, signing with the Jets, and then the Vikings, perpetuating a tiresome annual will-he-orwon’t-he retirement fandango.) Favre, the greatest quarterback to be born in Mississippi—though, like the second-greatest, his roots had also been transplanted to Louisiana—had broken John Elway’s career records of 148 regular-season wins and 162 overall victories and had broken several passing records, including yards, touchdowns, and pass attempts.

In a throwback year, he passed for over 4,000 yards with 28 touchdowns. Going 13–3 under coach Mike McCarthy, the best the Pack had been in a decade, Favre and his big target, Donald Driver, were bound for the Pro Bowl. Fresh off a 42–20 stomping of the Seahawks in the first round, they were 7½-point favorites.

For the Giants to pull off another upset, they would need to control the ball and keep Favre off the field, and they were aided by treacherous conditions. The temperature at Lambeau was minus-1, the windchill minus-23, reminiscent of the legendary 1967 Ice Bowl game on this same field. The Pack, with a weak running game, could only manage 28 yards on the ground, while Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw would eat up 134 yards, freeing Eli to throw for 251 yards. The Giants owned the ball for 40 minutes, but Favre threw for 236 yards. Early in the second quarter, all he did was make the longest touchdown in team history—90 yards, to Driver. In the third quarter, Eli led an eight-minute march, converting three third-down plays, and a Jacobs touchdown made it 13–10. Favre then came back with a 12-yard TD to Donald Lee. It was 20–20 in the last minute. Eli expertly moved into field-goal range, only to have Lawrence Tynes miss from 36 yards. This brought about that wonderful playoff treat: overtime. With nightfall having turned the field into a slab of ice, Favre tried to find Driver, but Corey Webster picked it off. Tynes, making amends, booted the 47-yard game winner.

For many, Eli had arisen during this crazy dream sequence as Peyton’s better when the pressure was on. He still had the interception bug, but was so calm and collected when staring at a big play that the joke was he actually could make the play in his sleep, because that’s what he seemed to be doing anyway.

This ongoing upset spree, the last delivering their fourth NFC title, created a mythic veneer for the Giants, who now had what they wished for: the rematch with the Patriots, winner take all, on February 3. Coopting any slights from the Belichick gulag, the Giants started right in, with vigor. Burress predicted they’d win 23–17. Brady, yukking it up, answered, “We’re only going to score 17 points?”⁴ It did seem a preposterous notion; the Pats had scored an average of 36.8 points a game, twice going over 50.

At least the Giants were entertaining. When they landed in Phoenix six days before the game at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glen-dale, Arizona, they wore black suits and ties, boasting that they were “dressed to kill.” Seeing it on the news, Randy Moss responded he would be wearing black after the game—to mourn the Giants.⁵

On a technical level, the Giants were convinced that they had the answers. Coughlin swore the Pats had some weaknesses, that they were slow picking up blitzes by defensive backs and the weak-side linebacker—a specialty of Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. They also saw from the film that the Jets had confused Brady by lining up linemen in different slots than usual. The Giants were a voracious sack team—52 on the year, the aging Michael Strahan and the young Justin Tuck combining for 19 of them. Still, it was a grim task. The Giants came in no less than a 12½-point underdog, one of the biggest spreads in Super Bowl history. The Pats had already paid to register the trademark “Perfect Season 19–0.” And Burress, who had been playing on a sprained ankle, slipped in the shower at the hotel, injuring a ligament in his knee, making him cry like a baby when he thought he couldn’t play. He did, but couldn’t practice all week.

Still, this would be a war of attrition. The first two drives took the entire opening quarter, each team slogging a few yards at a time toward the end zone, the Giant drive, spanning 9:59, the longest in Super Bowl history. The Pats led 7–3 at the half and went on a 16-play drive to start the second half, but the Giants held when Belichick went for it on fourth-and-13 from the Giant 31 and Brady misfired. The Giants front four was shutting down the Patriots offense. Brady found his sawed-off receiver Wes Welker 11 times, Moss five, but his longest completion was just 19 yards. Unable to set and throw because of a well-timed blitz or sack, he went down five times, which had not happened since 2003—twice he was cornered by Tuck, who lined up in various positions, and weak-side linebacker Kawika Mitchell was often in his face. His runners gained all of 45 yards; Laurence Maroney, who had gained 244 yards in the first two playoff games, had 36. Brady, the touchdown machine, went without any. Moss would later say he was surprised that the Giants’ intensity “was greater than ours.”

But when the Giants went ahead on Eli’s five-yard touchdown pass to spare receiver David Tyree, it was the preface to the game’s ultimate, and most unlikely, play. A Jersey native, Tyree had been a sixth-round pick out of Syracuse in ’03 but was mainly a special-teams guy, partly due to addictions to booze and pot, for which he was busted in 2004. He managed to salvage a career by affirming a newfound faith in God. But the ’07 regular season ended with him having only four catches for 35 yards. At a pregame practice, he had dropped a bunch of passes. Eli reassured him, “Forget it. You’re a gamer. I know you are.” Not that this seemed to matter when Brady led another long march, passing on 11 of 12 plays, finding Moss with a six-yard touchdown with 2:45 left, leaving the Giants fully spent and, as one reporter wrote, “limping off the field.”⁶

So now the Giants had it at their own 17, down 14–10. Eli, who had thrown a pick earlier trying to force things, kept it conservative. On second-and-five from the Giant 44, Manning went to Tyree down the right sideline, but overshot him. Asante Samuel, his eyes widening, leaped for a sure interception, but the ball slid through his hands. Given life, on third-and-five with 1:15 left, Manning took the shotgun snap and looked deep over the middle, but from the right side, defensive end Jarvis Green closed in. Eli eluded him and stepped up into a crowd of blockers and tacklers, Green clutching a fistful of his jersey. The Giants seemed to ease up, expecting that the play had ended, as did most everyone else—but not Tyree, who when he saw Eli in trouble, broke off his post route and headed down the middle. When Eli slipped free of Green and retreated five yards back to the 33—“That looked like Archie running around at Ole Miss,” Olivia would say—he caught sight of Tyree.

His arm cocked before he set his feet, he let fly a wobbly spiral. As it fell to Earth inside the Pats 25, Tyree, picked up by Rodney Harrison, jumped before Harrison could. Both elevated as if for a jump ball, arms rising high. Harrison, seeing the ball up near Tyree’s head, kept reaching to grab either it or Tyree’s arm. The ball had slipped through Tyree’s hands, but, remarkably, he pressed the ball against his helmet as he fell, securing it. Coming down on top of Harrison, the soft landing helped him maintain control of the ball. Harrison, the ball in Tyree’s hands, violently rolled over him, trying to jar it loose.

On the Fox telecast, Troy Aikman exclaimed, “My God!” Replays from numerous angles showed what looked like an optical illusion. Nobody could remember seeing anything like what would go down in history as Tyree’s “helmet catch.” On the field, the players and coaches had their eyes glued to the giant screen, the catch seeming crazier with each replay, the Pats in absolute disbelief. The Giants took their second time-out with 59 seconds left. Then Eli was sacked, but on third-and-11 he zipped one to Smith for 12. First down on the 13-yard line, 45 seconds to go. Now, going to Burress on a play the team called a “sluggo”—a slant and go—he took the snap from the shotgun and then took two quick steps back. Burress slanted to the inside, changed course, and cut for the left side of the end zone, freeing himself from cornerback Ellis Hobbs. He turned just as the ball came down right into his hands. The Giants swarmed over Burress and slapped Eli on the helmet as he came off the field. The television camera trained on the Manning brood in their VIP box showed Peyton clapping wildly. Brady had 74 yards to go in 29 seconds. After a sack and three incomplete passes, it was over—17–14.

The Manning clan could now celebrate the apogee of the dynasty: two seasons, two championships, one for each brother, the younger avenging the older against a shared opponent. It was every bit the classic people were already calling it, Tim Layden in Sports Illustrated codifying “the second-greatest upset in a Super Bowl” after Joe Namath’s victory in Super Bowl III and “the culmination of a season in which a team, a quarterback and a coach found themselves linked by a deep resilience and rode it to the top of their sport.”⁷ The Pats were left in a funk. Eyes glazed, Hobbs said, “I’ve never been a witness to anything like that. Every play went their way. Every play.”⁸ And while Burress’s prediction about the 17 points was dead on, the klieg lights shone most brightly not on the defense that had held the Pats to 274 yards (the Giants had 338), but, as almost always, on the winning quarterback. Given the game’s MVP award and a gaudy Cadillac Escalade, Eli was lionized the next day the way Peyton had been—he was “Mister Cool,” wrote an AP reporter.

For Tyree, it was one shining moment, one immortal catch—which he called “supernatural.” The next year, he injured his knee, then was cut in ’09, to make news trying to persuade the New York State legislature not to allow gay marriage, calling it “sliding toward anarchy.”⁹ Eli, like his brother, was part of something larger than any given game. He knew it, too, saying through the ear-splitting din and champagne-spraying mayhem in the locker room, “It’s just surreal.” He danced into the morning at the team party at their hotel, the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort in Chandler, Arizona, at one point getting up and joining with his brothers to sing endless choruses of “New York, New York.” The headlines in the hometown papers bathed him in adulation—“Super Men—Giants Kick Pats In”; “Big Blue Heaven”; “Eli Leads Greatest Victory Ever”; “Giant Upset.” And yet, Eli had some cynicism about being the toast of the town. “I’ve had a lot of downs in New York,” he said. “A lot of times I’ve thought, Why have I gotten this treatment? Do I deserve this?” But it was really the family that had won. That was what Manning Inc. meant. As another headline put it, “Winning Now a Family Business for Mannings.”¹⁰

After stringing Abby McGrew along for years, Eli now decided the time was finally right for a wedding. She had moved to New York to study fashion, then worked for the Pamella Roland boutique (which offered a crystal-trimmed, shoulder-silk caftan for $6,985). They had been living together in Eli’s Hoboken pad. Then, in the spring of ’07, he took her to his hometown for Mardi Gras. He stopped into an Adler’s jewelry shop and ordered a ring with an emerald-cut stone and emerald-encased diamonds. Then he took her to dinner, got on a knee, and popped the question. They set a date for the spring and, two months after the Super Bowl, made it official at a resort hotel in Los Cabos, Mexico, with sweeping vistas of the Sea of Cortez. A New Orleans high society website noted that Abby wore a Monique Lhuillier gown; Eli, his father, and brothers wore tan suits.

The newest Mr. and Mrs. Manning began making appearances at events like a film society gala tribute to Alice Tully Hall, hosting exclusive charity dinners, and running with her corps d’elite friends on Park and Madison Avenues and out in the Hamptons. For a rebel who once detested such pomposity, he was getting rather comfy with these rituals, even enjoying getting gussied up in a tux and smiling for cameras. While Peyton had consciously avoided wanting to play in New York, for Eli it was a gas. But New Orleans was still in his blood, so he also made plans to build a home in the Garden District, as had Peyton and Cooper. Still, he was comfy in the lap of old-money Yankee aristocracy, and whatever it took to stay with the Giants, he would do. The last step was starting a family, and their first child, Ava Frances, was born in 2010, followed by daughters Lucy in 2013 and Caroline Olivia in 2015—the exact opposite of Archie’s three boys.

Eli had seen intimately how Archie had had to navigate issues like favoritism, life-and-death reactions to games, and constant involvement in matters he thought he had left behind, and he wanted none of that. He was glad to have daughters, knowing he would never be turned inside out watching them play big-time football. It was hard enough watching Archie not being able to kick back and enjoy his senior years, still living and dying on every down.