National Football League

Giants aren't fooling anybody now

Published Jan. 24, 2012 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

There are all kinds of unique burdens teams must come to grips with on their way to greatness. For the iconic franchises — the Yankees, the Lakers, the Red Wings, the Steelers, and yes, we’re awful close to including the Patriots in that group now — they play not just against their opponent but a generational standard of excellence. Then the other end of the spectrum there are the tragically sisyphean cases — the Cubs, the Bills — always rolling that boulder up the hill, only to watch it roll back down just before getting to the top.

Everyone else falls somewhere in between, from the upstarts that must overcome the pressure of being there for the first time, to the veteran team trying to turn back the clock for one last run at glory.

So within that context, perhaps it’s time to marvel a bit at the New York Giants, who made the Super Bowl with a 20-17 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.

Because once again, the Giants have done it a different way, tempting fate and then grabbing hold of it, arriving at their championship moments on the road nobody else would choose to travel.

Once might be a fluke. Twice is a measure of who they are.

The Giants still have one more game to win to be called champions, but for the second time in five seasons they’re back at the precipice, doing what seemed impossible just six weeks ago.

It’s almost uncanny, the similarity to 2007 when the Giants seemed like a minor threat down the stretch, then won three straight playoff games on the road and ultimately toppled the unbeaten Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Only this time, it might have been an even more difficult task to get there. On Dec. 17, the Giants were a 7-7 football team, having lost five of their last six. They seemed destined to miss the playoffs. Tom Coughlin, who hadn’t had a losing season since 2004, was one more loss from this one perhaps being his last.

And then they beat the Jets. Then they beat the Cowboys in a win-or-go-home finale for the NFC East title. A Hail Mary at Green Bay here, an overtime fumble in San Francisco there, and so here they are, and the natural question is how it all came together like this for a second time.

“How?” Coughlin said Sunday night. “By just staying the course, never saying never, trying to encourage at every point throughout the season whether it was good or bad, not denying any of the facts, but nevertheless seeing we had a talented team, believing in that team, thinking if we could only get all of these pieces together, maybe we would have a chance to make ourselves recognized.”

But with the Giants, you start to get the sense they couldn’t do this if it wasn’t hard, that they couldn’t win a championship without the survival instinct kicking in. That is the Giants’ burden. Only after they’ve exposed their worst can they dig down for their best.

“We clicked it on at the right time,” defensive end Justin Tuck said. “We’ve kind of tried to downplay it, but I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t feel like ’07. For whatever reason, when we get into these playoff games, we seem to know how to win.”

Nobody can know for sure how or why the Giants have come to take on this persona. Necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps. Some luck, of course, plays a role. But regardless, it’s part of their story, and it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence.

And the common elements are undoubtedly Coughlin and Eli Manning.

Coughlin, at age 65, is the ultimate coaching survivor, confident enough in his career and his legacy to ride out whatever might arrive at his doorstep. No matter whether the Giants were an early season surprise at 6-2 or floundering at 7-7, Coughlin stayed steady, buoyed by his years of accumulated wisdom and confidence that he had good enough players to be dangerous.

Never has that been more valuable than in a game like Sunday, when the Giants couldn’t move the ball and had to simply wait for the 49ers to make a mistake.

“I always felt like we were in contention to win the division, even when things weren’t going as well as we’d have liked them,” he said. “We’ve had five straight single-elimination games. Somehow, some way, we’ve found a way to scratch our way to a win.”

And then there’s Manning, who has never played as naturally or elegantly as his brother but has often played just as effectively in the most pressurized moments. Eli, the more workmanlike Manning, has now won five road playoff games, more than any other quarterback in NFL history. That doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, either.

“He just, you know, he always plays above his character — what people may think of him,” Giants receiver Victor Cruz said. “He’s getting hit, he’s getting up, brushing himself off and plugging away onto the next play and making all the necessary plays that we have to have to keep the chains moving.”

And now they’re moving once again, onto Indianapolis, where the Giants can slay the Patriots for a second time. Once again, they’re underdogs. By now, they probably wouldn’t be comfortable with anything else.