CHAPTER 22

MIRACLE, REDUX

All the Giants had to do next was fly to San Francisco for the NFC championship game and upset another power, the 49ers. Coached by the volatile Jim Harbaugh, the Niners had gone 13–3 on the backs of their punishing defense; ranked first against the rush, they had five All-Pros, three on the first team: linebackers Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman and tackle Justin Smith. They got to the title game by subduing the Saints, by far the best offensive team in the league, and winning on a touchdown pass by Alex Smith with nine seconds left. Smith was unspectacular but reliable, having thrown a modest 17 touchdowns during the season but only five interceptions, mainly handing off to Frank Gore, who ran for over 1,200 yards.

The 49ers were motivated to bring Manning down to earth. All that week, he was being drenched with slavish praise as a miracle worker and a refreshingly understated hero. Damon Hack, for example, with the sort of heavy cream Sports Illustrated usually reserved for Peyton, wrote, “Overshadowed by voluble teammates like Michael Strahan and Tiki Barber early on, Manning has now imbued the Giants with a stoic vibe that seems ideal for the pressure-filled postseason.”¹ Through all this, Archie was looking far more beaten down than his boy. With Peyton sidelined, he had told Olivia that each week was “just three hours of nervousness instead of six.” But after the Green Bay game, looking like he had gone 10 rounds, he confessed that the contest “felt like six hours.” Yet there he was, with Olivia and Cooper, chewing at his fingernails in Candlestick Park.

During a midweek practice, Eli had said to his teammates of the 49ers, “Their lifeline is turnovers, so you’ve got to protect the football. . . . Just don’t give them any points, and we’ll have a chance to win it at the end.”² For inspiration, Coughlin brought to the coast three Giants from previous glory days: Mike Strahan, Mark Bavaro, and Rich Seubert, who addressed the team at their hotel on the eve of the game. Coughlin had also pointed out that the way Brees, in defeat, had carved up the vaunted 49ers defense for 462 yards was their road map. In the muddy, cake-batter turf of Candlestick, saturated by rain and lying under gloomy fog, no one dared lose the ball. Each team stopped the other’s running game, the Giants doing so even though Harbaugh inserted a massive defensive lineman as a blocker. Eli was able to control the ball with short and medium throws. Smith had a strong game, too, throwing a 73-yard touchdown to Vernon Davis early, and after Eli hit little-used tight end Bear Pascoe on a six-yard TD and took a 10–7 lead at the half, Smith found Davis from 28 yards out to take a 14–10 lead.

In the fourth quarter, Eli moved the Giants to the Niners 17. To that point, Manningham hadn’t caught a ball. But the cornerback who had locked him down, Tarell Brown, went out injured, and on third down Eli zeroed in on the scrub, sending Manningham on a post over the middle for the touchdown and the lead. When the 49ers tied it on a field goal, an already exhausting game went to overtime. Although Harbaugh’s defense savaged Manning, sacking him six times and leaving him with an angry red welt on his shoulder, they never could pick him off, even as he was passing more than any other Giant quarterback ever had in a postseason game—58 times, completing 32 for 316 yards. It was the 49ers who made the big blunder. With five minutes gone in the OT, a Giant punt was fielded by Kyle Williams, who ran five yards, then was stripped by Jacquian Williams. The Giants had the ball at the Niners 24, and on third down Lawrence Tynes kicked the game-winning field goal—repeating history, his overtime three-pointer following a Packer turnover in the playoffs four years before.

Archie did not know how many more of these he could stand, his nerves always far more on edge than Eli’s in these pressure-cooker games. And he had another ordeal still to endure: his boy in the cross hairs of Brady and Belichick, still smarting from four years ago.

Naturally billed as “The Sequel,” Super Bowl XLVI was in, of all places, Lucas Oil Stadium—which, when it was chosen, had a decent chance of providing a hometown advantage for the Manning brother whose image was splashed all over its exterior walls. As Peter King pre-codified it, “Peyton Manning’s brother versus Peyton’s archrival in the House That Peyton Built.”³ The Pats, who had gotten here with a too-close 23–20 win over the Ravens, were favored by three. But the Giants were confident—the day before the game, their website began hawking apparel reading “The Giants Are Super Bowl Champions!”⁴ Sixteen players from the ’07 team were on the roster, conditioned to the task of beating the Patriots; one, Victor Cruz, spoke of the team’s “destiny.”⁵ Coughlin had ingrained that mind-set; the night before the contest, he ran a film of highlights from their last six games, choosing as the soundtrack Phil Collins’s grimly foreboding “In the Air Tonight.”⁶

Besides revenge, the Pats had their own leitmotif. Bob Kraft, the leprechaun-like owner, had dedicated the season to his late wife. They also had the second-best offense in the league and the second-best passing game. Meaning, of course, that they had Brady. Eli spent much of the week—when not engaged in practice or entombed by Coughlin’s chalk-talks—hanging with Peyton at his and Ashley’s house with Archie and Olivia, inhaling fast food and then picking Peyton’s brain for insights he might not have already known about the Pats. On Friday night, he treated his linemen to dinner—on Peyton’s recommendation—at St. Elmo Steak House.

The Pats, as they often did, began slowly. Brady, on his very first play, from his own six-yard line, came under a heavy rush and grounded the ball in the end zone for a two-point safety. Eli then led a 10-play drive, throwing a two-yard touchdown to Cruz. After the Pats woke up, Brady hit on two touchdowns in the third quarter to go ahead 17–9. Again Eli was successful with short and medium passes, going 30 of 40 for 296 yards, while Brady, harassed by the Giant front four, was mortal: 27 of 41 for 276 yards, with one pick. But the Giants could only get two field goals closer until given a monumental break when, in the fourth quarter, Wes Welker muffed a long pass that should have been a killer touchdown. Eli now stood on familiar ground, not only from four years ago but from seven times during the season when the Giants had orchestrated fourth-quarter comeback wins. There was 3:46 left, the ball on his own 12, down 17–15, a strangulating defense waiting for them. Upstairs, Wellington Mara’s widow, Ann, pulled out her rosary beads and prayed. “I asked the Blessed Mother to tell him where to throw the ball,” she said. Olivia, on the other hand, was typically calm, saying later, “I have to tell you, I am always happy when the ball is in Eli’s hands.”

According to the play sent in by Kevin Gilbride, Eli was to check the deep safety, Patrick Chung; if he covered Manningham, the sole receiver on the left side, the latter would hug the sideline deep down the field. But Eli never even looked at Chung. Seeing Manningham breaking free, he cranked up and put the ball right into his hands just as Chung and cornerback Sterling Moore both closed in on him. Manningham managed to plant both feet before tumbling out of bounds and came up holding the ball—a dizzying 38-yard gain, longest of the game, this year’s Biggest Catch Ever. “That’s a huge play right there,” Eli would say, without objection. And apparently, one he hadn’t gotten the hang of before now. As Eli’s backup, David Carr, said, “That’s not a throw he’s made in practice or a game on that play all season.”

The Pats seemed to sag—and how familiar was that? Four more completions took it to the Patriots seven with 1:04 left. Then Eli got a little wavy. Knowing what Brady can do on a short clock, he actually didn’t want the Giants to score, but rather to keep the clock running and make the Pats call their last time-out. Only he forgot to tell Bradshaw, who blasted through a crater-sized hole left open intentionally by the Pats, who wanted the ball back. The end zone in his sights, he heard Eli yelling, “Don’t score!” Said Manning later, “I should have said something in the huddle, but I didn’t think of it. I thought about yelling back to him before we snapped the ball but I didn’t want to confuse things.” But shouting to Bradshaw confused the running back so much that he tried to stop short and plop down on the one-yard line, but couldn’t impede his momentum and, twisted like a pretzel, he fell backwards into the end zone. A magnificently strange and wondrous touchdown. The two-point conversion failed, but the Giants led 21–17, and Brady had 57 seconds to make it go away. He got as far as the Giants 49, but with only seconds left sailed a Hail Mary into the end zone, a rainbow that Tuck said was up there long enough for him to write a novel. The Giants slapped it down and it was over.

The Manning family box exploded in celebration at a victory that proved Eli really was elite. He was the one consoling Brady, the one covered in confetti on the platform at the 50-yard line, the Super Bowl MVP once more. Archie, finally relieved, looked down from the box, later saying, “We’re just kinda pinching ourselves.” He went on, “It’s amazing, really, because Eli wallowed around so much that we didn’t even know if he would like sports.”⁷ Olivia, meanwhile, waited outside the locker room as champagne corks popped inside, next to Abby, the three girls, and Cooper’s seven-year-old son, who had two uncles sharing three Super Bowl MVP trophies. “And we have another one on the way,” she said. “This is my grandson, Arch Manning. Watch out, world.”

Above the din, Eli was saying, “This isn’t about me. It’s about the organization and Coach Coughlin and all our coaches.” But it was about him. And Peyton. Eli had bridled a bit when reporters leaned on the story line that he was trying to transcend Peyton on his home turf. But now, as the waves of media swarmed around him, Peyton was seated next to him, as if giving his blessing to the kid brother who had finally become an equal. Indeed, in the throes of his own uncertain future, he seemed to gush over Eli, explaining their unique, sometimes odd bond.

“I don’t think people understand our relationship,” he said. “I always used to look after him. I used to drive him to school. He used to come to all my games. Our relationship is so much one of support and help. I’ve given him every piece of knowledge I’ve had about playing quarterback, and he gives it to me. Love is what that is. I want to do the best I can for my team, but when that’s done I hope Eli surpasses every record. I hope he wins five more Super Bowls.” Then, “I hope I win five more too.”⁸

It was hard now to think about one without thinking of the other. The Sports Illustrated game story was titled “One Giant Leap for Manningkind,” a pun meant to be inclusive of Manningham but epitaphic of the broad reach of the Manning family. Well into the morning, when the Giants carried on at a nightclub just down the block from the stadium, the Manning clan mostly hung out in one corner, as if it was the throne of ultimate power, of which Eli was now ruling liege. The day after, in the New York Daily News, Mike Lupica swooned hard. Eli, he averred, was “as great a clutch athlete as we have ever had in New York, in anything. Nobody takes his team down the field and does it like this twice with an NFL championship on the line, not Johnny Unitas or Joe Montana or anybody. Only now Eli has.”⁹ There was another parade down Broadway, and he was the toast of the town that winter, of course, burnishing his good-guy cred with charity gigs—though he was not averse to spoofing even that image.

Getting his own appearance on Saturday Night Live, he was in a spot remarkably similar to the “United Way” spoof Peyton had performed on that stage. Surrounded by kids in a “Little Brothers” program, he was asked by a wide-eyed kid, “Are you Eli Manning?” “No, I’m your worst enemy,” he sneered with his best maniacal look, proceeding to hold the kid by his heels over a flushing toilet and aiming a crossbow at another. There was also a sketch with him as “Richard,” a nerd said to have once been part of Cheech and Chong’s act (something not as far-fetched as it seemed) and later “turned into Mitt Romney.”

There was now a new round of Eli puff pieces. Sports Illustrated’s entry, titled “The Big Easy,” floated the theory that Eli had refashioned the hero-quarterback role. To writer S. L. Price, Eli, unlike his brother, “forces us to rethink what we expect in a star.” Wrote Price, “Bart Starr and Bob Griese carried themselves like NASA engineers. Eli Manning, peering out from under a 10-year-old’s haircut, is the NFL embodiment of cognitive dissonance. . . . At certain harried moments Manning resembles no one so much as [Michael] Dukakis in the tank. No wonder his favorite Seinfeld episode is ‘Bizarro Jerry,’ where everything is reversed. In Eli’s world last is first, omega man trumps the alpha males and the lesser quarterback always wins.” Price also revealed the nugget that Eli cheats at Ping-Pong.¹⁰

The article quoted Boomer Esiason, a physically imposing quarterback in his day who only tasted bitter fruit in New York, saying with great envy, “To have two Super Bowl parades and be on the lead float, looking like a bobble-head doll? What is going on here? But that’s the beauty of Eli. I can’t tell you just how amazing his story is. If I had a vote, even if his career ended today, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.” That was surely a stretch, the issue still pending today. Phil Simms, whose Giants passing records he was dismantling, demurred, “No, he is not one of the elites. Because when I hear the word elite, I’m thinking about guys that can make unbelievable plays on the field by themselves.”

Although Eli had a comeback, questioning whether Simms himself qualified for that rank, he let it slide. Winning, he now knew, was the only retort a Manning needed.