Once the competitive juices started flowing, the Giants were incapable of stopping the torrent from overtaking their emotions. They were locked in an intense, combative game with the unbeaten Patriots, taking it to them and loving every minute of it.
“To be honest, once [Giant coach Tom Coughlin] put us out there I doubt anyone would come out,” linebacker Antonio Pierce said. “We had a chance to make history.”
The Giants did not make history, nor did they prevent the Patriots from moving inexorably closer to perfection.
But they came so close.
“There’s nothing but positives,” Coughlin said. “I don’t have any negatives about this game. We had everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
That’s an astounding remark from the coach after a 38-35 loss at pumped-up Giants Stadium, further evidence of the uniqueness and strangeness of an evening where the regular season came to an end.
Early in the third quarter of a game fueled by immense hype, the Giants led 28-16, giving the mighty Patriots all they could handle. The scent of an upset, though, only served to empower the Pats, who leaned on the brilliance of Tom Brady and Randy Moss to score the next 22 points to escape with their prize intact.
The Patriots became the first team in NFL history to finish a regular season with a 16-0 record and the fourth to go unbeaten in a regular season, the most recent being the 1972 Dolphins.
Next up for the Pats on their path to perfection is matching the ’72 Dolphins by sweeping through the playoffs and winning the Super Bowl, which would allow Bill Belichick’s marauders to stake a claim as the greatest team of all time.
This was a spirited and at times uplifting playoff primer for the Giants, who next weekend – most likely Sunday at 1 p.m. – face the Buccaneers in an NFC wild-card game in Tampa.
Eli Manning, in a performance he can build on, tossed four touchdown passes – two to Plaxico Burress – and, enjoying the moderate temperature and lack of wind, played better than he has in months.
“I don’t know of any better way to prepare for the playoffs,” Coughlin said. “This is the momentum, if you will, we were looking forward to.”
Coughlin and Pierce pointed to the closeness of the game as reason for great encouragement – “We didn’t get blown out and we covered the spread,” Pierce said – but others took no solace in battling the Pats to the wire.
“I didn’t learn anything new. … I knew we could compete with them,” receiver Amani Toomer said. “We didn’t do much of anything. We lost.”
Manning’s three-yard scoring pass to Burress with 1:04 remaining pulled the Giants within three points, but they failed to recover the onside kick, ending their gallant upset bid.
As promised, Coughlin put all his starters on the field, determined to go at the Pats as hard as possible for as long as possible before resting some of his key players. He kept his starters on the field the whole way.
The hope was that the Giants could compete and remain healthy, but they were not that fortunate. Kawika Mitchell, the valuable weak side linebacker, went down in the first quarter with a sprained knee and was not able to return.
In the second quarter, center Shaun O’Hara limped off with a sprained knee. In the fourth quarter, veteran cornerback Sam Madison exited with an abdominal strain.
At times, it was hard to believe what was transpiring out on the turf. The Giants led 21-16 at halftime and then extended the lead when Manning tossed what might be the best pass he’s thrown this season, rolling to his right, pump-faking and drilling a 19-yard rope that Burress hauled in while dragging his feet along the right side of the end zone. That made it 28-16 with 9:12 left in the third quarter. Game most certainly on.
That storyline was not to the Patriots’ liking, and they marched 73 yards, with Laurence Maroney scoring from six yards out to narrow the deficit to 28-23.
It was a game effort from the Giants but they faded down the stretch. Brady (32 of 42, 356 yards, 2 TDs) was basically unstoppable, as was receiver Wes Welker (11-122).
Brady with 11:06 remaining heaved the football as far as he could, and Moss, on a busted coverage, simply ran past safety James Butler for an easy 65-yard scoring play, putting New England up for good, 31-28, after a successful two-point conversion run by Maroney.