Best Super Bowl Ever?

You'll have to excuse us (me) for still reveling in my team upsetting the best pro team ever. We'll get back to our juvenile bashing of fat coaches and other basketball programs soon, but I still need to savor this for a while.

Are we looking at the best Super Bowl ever? I know that "best ever" crap gets thrown around a lot -- like when the Pats are compared to the best dynasties ever, before they've won their crowning game -- but there have only been 42 Super Bowls and so it's not hard to run through them and try to figure out what was bigger.

Never has a team been considered more of an underdog. I don't care if there have been larger than two-TD underdogs -- the Giants weren't only going against a superior team, a team that had destroyed everyone and was undefeated. They were going against a team coached and QB'ed by two of the very best out there. Two guys who were unbeaten in the Super Bowl. And the Giants were considered not all that good. They "only" went 10-6 this year. They didn't even win their division. Eli threw twenty picks this year. People were writing stories about how it was time to give up on Eli. At age 25. Solid.

Anyway, so that's the Giants predicament. And they won, with catches like David Tyree's. David Tyree, a guy who had -- get this -- four catches this season, for a total of 35 yards. FOUR!! And he makes this grab.

Was that the best catch I've ever seen? It's up there. Was it simply awesome that it was Rodney Harrison that couldn't break it up? Yes, it surely was.

I always felt like the best Super Bowl I ever watched was Super Bowl XXV, when the Giants beat the Bills 20-19. The Bills had that high-flying, no-huddle, quick-strike offense and the Giants were the slow, plodding, 11-minute drive team. And the two clashed for 60 minutes and it came down to the Scott Norwood missed field goal. To that point, I don't think any Super Bowl had come down to the last play like that. We've been so used to complete blowouts and anticlimactic games. And that one was simply awesome. And yes, I'm biased because it was the Giants, but you cannot deny that was an amazing game -- if you remember watching it. I realize it was 17 years ago.

But last night ranks up there for me and I think it should for many. So many subplots, such a back-and-forth game. A defensive struggle, sprinkled with amazing offensive plays and clutch performances. Tom Brady leads his team down as he so frequently does. He was Tom Brady. He found a way to get them the lead and, presumably, the win. How many times has Tom Brady done exactly that? And to see them score by tossing to Randy Moss as the Giants defender frickin falls down. How discouraging. One of our friends at my house said, "Well, Moss would have caught that anyway." Probably true, but I felt like it was an awful way to lose... Moss being unguarded.

But as Boilerdowd pointed out to me, how weird was it to see Brady leave so much time on the clock? Usually, he seems to find a way to leave nothing. But 2:42 with three timeouts and the two-minute warning is a ton of time... even for Eli!

And I said this. To which my wife said she didn't believe me. I said that it wasn't the clock I was even slightly worried about -- it was the execution.

Speaking of execution, what about rookie Steve Smith (who had eight catches on the season), catching that third down pass with just over 40 seconds left and getting his body past the first-down marker and out of bounds?! Clutch!

So yes, in this rambling run-on of a post... I think this might very well be the best overall Super Bowl ever. The stakes were so high, the upset so improbable... and the game itself was outstanding. The Pats didn't lose, they didn't blow anything. The Giants went in and won -- they took it from the Patriots. And so I don't bash the Pats (I bash their fans more) for not showing up -- I think they did show up... I just think that last night, the Giants were better. If they played ten times, how many would the Giants win? Maybe 2 or 3 times? Doesn't matter... they won last night.

And that final kneeldown, where classy Bill Belichick was already up the tunnel.... below is a shot of it. And how wonderful is it that there's David Tyree, lined up in the backfield, allowed to be out there for the final snap. Don't tell me Coach Coughlin doesn't have a softer side.