The Last Drive

To get a sense of how improbable the last drive by the Giants were. On a 3rd and 10, a pass to Toomer, to make it 4th and 1. A run by Jacobs to get the first down.

On a 3rd and 5, with Manning about to get sacked, he breaks free and makes a 32 yard pass to Tyree, who catches it by wedging the ball between his hand and helmet and falling down.

On a 2nd and 11, he makes a pass, which is in the receiver's hands, but eventually drops it. The advantage was that the clock doesn't tick, which is important, since the Giants are burning timeouts to keep this drive alive (they had all three timeouts, plus the two minute warning, effectively a fourth timeout). The next play is a pass to Steve Smith, who is a little short of the first down, takes two steps to get to first down, before he is shoved out of bounds. That one was also key, since it's 3rd down.

Finally, a lovely deep lob to Plaxico Burress to give the Giants the 3 point lead, leaving the Patriots with a little over 30 seconds to make it across the field and score the winning touchdown, which, by the way, never happened.

In general, while the two-minute drill is the one people remember, of teams that come back at the last moment, it's generally pretty hard to score. Teams with leads at the end of games usually win. It's better to be up and have to prevent the other side from scoring than down and try to score. The defense, needless to say, came up bigger for the Giants than the Patriots.

This was a nice game that wasn't determined by last minute field goals, but by the majority of the players on the field. And the win was all due to an improbable drive at the end.

People say the Patriots looked vulnerable, and they did. But people would still have penciled in that team as the best ever if that last drive doesn't succeed. They would have said fans were whining if the final score had been 14-10, a score that would have signaled victory, but not a definitive one.

So, the defenses kept this game interesting all the way to the end, which is as much as one can hope for in a Superbowl.