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Nobody's Perfect: Giants Pull Off a Super Stunner
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The Giants finished with the fifth-best record in their own conference, forcing them to play all of their playoff games away from home. And their star tight end, four-time Pro Bowler Jeremy Shockey, saw his season end with a broken left leg in December; he was the third Giant to suffer that injury this season.
But the Giants seemed to play better in his absence; their well-played loss to the Patriots in the regular season finale began a stretch in which the team's cool bravado seemed to increase each week, a trend which continued in the run-up to this game.
"I've been saying all year, it's not about everybody else, it's about the New York Giants," linebacker Antonio Pierce said. "All I know is I'm a world champion."
That confidence thrived even as souvenir shops around this Phoenix suburb began selling "Perfect Season" Patriots artwork and even as the debate continued as to whether a win would make New England the best team in NFL history.
The week leading to this point was filled with the pop culture hoopla that sometimes threatens to surpass the game itself, from the parties thrown by Diddy and John Travolta (with ticket prices well into four figures) to the private shows put on by recording artists Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, Akon and others. And amid that backdrop of celebrity ephemera, here were the Patriots, famous for their disdain of individualism, seeking some degree of permanence through perfection.
That perfection and its numerical representation -- 19-0 -- hovered over a relatively tame Super Bowl week, where the only controversies came from Burress's benign prediction of a Giants win and rapper 50 Cent requesting the removal of socialite Paris Hilton from his stage.
A win would have given the Patriots -- who set an NFL record for scoring this season -- four titles in seven years and a new record for playoff wins in one decade, but that success would not have come without controversy. After the first week of the season, the NFL fined Belichick $500,000 and the team $250,000 for improperly videotaping play calls on the New York Jets' sideline. Belichick chalked that up to a misunderstanding of league rules, but the issue has refused to go away, with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recently suggesting Congress might get involved in the investigation into the destruction of those tapes.
But that scandal will now serve merely as a footnote to one of the biggest shocks in the history of this game. The Patriots have been famous for sublimating individual stars for a collective goal, but the Giants claimed that mantle for themselves on Sunday night.
"I know everybody thinks the NFL is a bunch of prima donnas, but we showed today what a good team can do," New York wide receiver Amani Toomer said. "We don't have the superstars and all that like the Patriots. But I'll take a team over superstars every time."
