Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [142]
Epilogue: Super Bowl XLII
On January 20, 2008—exactly seventeen years after Matt Bahr’s last-second field goal sailed through the Candlestick Park goalposts, ending the 49ers’ bid for a three-peat—the New York Giants met the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.
Although billed as a matchup between the Giants’ unproven quarterback Eli Manning and aging, future Hall of Famer Brett Favre, defense decided the outcome of this NFC Championship Game.
New York’s all-time career sack leader, Michael Strahan (his first sack of that 2007 season pushed him past Lawrence Taylor), and all-pro defensive end Osi Umenyiora completely shut down Green Bay’s running game, yielding just twenty-eight yards. Still, after sixty minutes, the game remained tied, and sudden death was needed to determine the NFC’s representative in Super Bowl XLII.
The Giants intercepted Favre—playing his final playoff game for the franchise he led to Super Bowl glory—on the second play of overtime. Three snaps later, head coach Tom Coughlin sent his kicking team out to attempt the game-winner. If his forty-seven-yard field goal was good, kicker Lawrence Tynes would complete an improbable upset victory over the seven-point-favorite home team.
Punter Jeff Feagles placed the ball from long-snapper Jay Alford—Zak DeOssie snapped for punts, not field goals—and Tynes nailed the kick through, sending New York back to the Super Bowl.
“The thing I’m most proud of is the way we hang together and the way we never say die,” Coughlin said. “No matter what the odds are, we keep scrapping, we keep working and finding a way to win.”
Eager Giants fans would have to wait fourteen days to see their team try and win its first world championship since January 1991. But the Giants coaching staff didn’t complain about the extra week in between championship game and Super Bowl: it would give them more time to prepare for their opponent’s incredibly explosive offense.
The New England Patriots won every game of the 2007 regular season, then won both of their home playoff games to claim the AFC’s Super Bowl berth. As usual, head coach Bill Belichick’s defense was fantastic that year, allowing just 17.1 points per game, fourth best in the league.
But it was the Pats offense that was historic. League Most Valuable Player Tom Brady, all-pro wide receiver Randy Moss, and a unit that set a new record for touchdowns, could seemingly score at will.
“It will be our job as an offense to try to hold the ball as long as we can,” Eli Manning said. “You can’t afford to have three-and-outs and get their offense back on the field. We have to move the ball, control the clock and when you get close to the end zone, you have to score touchdowns.”
Although they represented different conferences, New England and New York were familiar with one another. The previous December, on a cold Saturday in the Meadowlands, the Patriots defeated the Giants 38-35. Giants Stadium was a familiar place for each team’s head coach. Both Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin had once been “whipping boys” there under Bill Parcells.
Five weeks later, the two Parcells protégés squared off again, this time with the Lombardi Trophy on the line.
“It makes me feel proud,” said Parcells, who a month earlier ended his third retirement to become executive vice president of the Miami Dolphins. “But it’s been a long time since I worked with them. They both have gone on and established themselves on their own merit.”
The Patriots, a team chasing a perfect season, were naturally favored to win. As two-touchdown underdogs, a victory for Coughlin’s Giants would qualify as one of the Super Bowl’s greatest upsets.
“There is a way to win all of these games,” Parcells said prior to the game. “I went into a Super Bowl against one of those (heavily favored) teams, and we won. It can happen.”
Beneath the retractable roof