The improbable leap and grab takeaway by Giants linebacker Chase Blackburn on a reckless Brady bomb early in the fourth quarter is the play that felt like it turned Super Bowl 46 more than any other. Others will point to the wide-open Welker drop with four minutes to go. Or the acrobatic Manningham sideline catch to launch the final Big Blue scoring drive.
The Blackburn interception didn’t directly produce or lead to points. But it ended a Pats march that felt like it was going wherever Brady wanted it to go. The risky deep throw was the second straight post-season game Brady heaved one for the heck of it only to watch it end up in the hands of an opponent. Given the luxury of solid protection most of the night, Brady’s error seemed egregious. It was the lone turnover of the game.
What wasn’t dissected much in the aftermath of this thriller was the G-Men’s handling of the ball inside the 20, down 2, with two minutes to go. You don’t want to score too quick and give Brady the ball with two timeouts and a lot of clock. On the other hand, you can’t get too tricky and risk the outside chance you get nothing when you’re in easy-pickins range of a trey.
On NBC, Collinsworth chastised the Giants and Ahmad Bradshaw for accepting what appeared to be New England’s invitation to score with 57 seconds left.
This is what it sounded like on the Giants flagship radio station WFAN as Bob Papa and Carl Banks argued the merits of a TD with about a minute left vs. winding it down for a Tynes chip shot. This call starts with 1:04 left in the game. The Giants have second down and six from the six.
It’s a tough decision. The way it played out was dramatic. The scenario seemed to sneak up on both the NBC and WFAN crews. Both were unable to issue clear opinions on the benefits/drawbacks of strategy options available to both teams. What happens if Bradshaw deliberately sits down on the one and the Giants fail to punch it in on third down? The clock would have gone down to about 10 seconds for the game-winning FG attempt but we’ve seen short kicks get missed. Imagine the criticism had Bradshaw sat down on the 1 and the Giants somehow lost?
-I avoid Hall of Fame debates given the apples to oranges aspect of determining fitness for enshrinement but some guys are so meaningful to their sport, you just assume they’ll waltz in when their name appears on the ballot. Bill Parcells is one of those guys. When it was reported Saturday evening that Parcells wasn’t among the new class of six invited to Canton , it came as quite a surprise. The minimum eight writers who kept Tuna out this year likely want him to sweat a little. The delay is wrong and unfair if it’s punishment for Parcells being a vagabond – or a difficult interview. “In the last 25 years, you could count on one hand guys who had a bigger influence on the league than Bill Parcells,” said Mike Francesa on Sunday. “Like him, don’t like him. He’s still a Hall of Famer. I’m sure this (rejection) hurt him a lot,” said Francesa. Among those on the 44-member selection committee are Bob Glauber of Newsday, Gary Myers of the Daily News, SI’s Peter King and ESPN’s John Clayton. It’s likely that all four of those guys voted Parcells in. His eight-plus detractors likely won’t identify or explain themselves. You just hope those handful of scribes who dislike Parcells let go of their personal feelings and give Tuna the honor he deserves before he dies.
-The over/under on Gronkowski receiving yards was 75.5 a few hours before the game. That suggested to me that people in the know had information the big tight end was feeling good. Turns out Gronkowski was nowhere near his usual self. He looked slow on the routes shown by TV and appeared to be running mostly straight ahead. Although, at the end, he was the guy who had the best chance of hauling in Brady’s hail-mary throw as time expired.
-The crowd sounded dead. I was expecting a little more noise and a little more of a pro-Giant tilt than what I heard through the television.
-While Sunday’s Daily News ran a photo of the alleged Cashman lover-turned-stalker on the front page, the Post elected to do something much more creative and interesting with its cover. Using an image composed by the artist Robert Silvers, the Post printed a wrap-around front/back page featuring Giants QB Eli Manning. The Silvers work used a self-patented technique called “photomosaic.” Set behind he Post masthead and the headline “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants,” the mural combined 2000 photographs of Giants in action over the years. Some five-thousand tiny tiles of different-sized photos were arranged to generate a portrait of Manning poised to pass the football. It’s the kind of thing you’d like to see more of from this city’s two main tabloids. I sat there at the breakfast table staring at the Post cover for a good ten minutes.