10 Things We Learned Last Night
NFL. Here, in no particular order, are 10 things we learned about the Patriots in last night’s 17-14 loss to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII:
1. Six years after Tom Brady found glory that night in New Orleans, it was easy to see that same shine coming off Eli Manning last night in Glendale. The Giants quarterback was named Super Bowl MVP — the second straight year a Manning won a Super Bowl MVP, and the second straight year a Manning ended the Patriots season shy of their ultimate goal. Eli earned every inch of it. He finished 19-for-34 for 255 yards and two touchdowns, but he was at his best down the stretch when he out-Bradyied Tom Brady. Down by four with 2:42 remaining, Manning engineered a helter-skelter last minute drive that went 12 plays and chewed up 83 yards and just over two minutes. The highlight included one absolutely ridiculous play where he narrowly escaped a sack and simply flung the ball up for grabs, only to see wide receiver David Tyree wrangle the ball away from Rodney Harrison. “Eli played great. Even when we had him in our hands, he was able to slip us and throw the ball up in the air as a Hail Mary and have their guy come down with the ball,” Harrison said. “It was extremely disappointing.”
2. In the battle of strength against strength — the New York defensive line against the Patriots’ offensive line — the Giants held the edge last night. New York needed to get sustained pressure on Brady if they wanted to have a chance to win the game, and they did it. They got him five times, three times in the second quarter alone. The five sacks were the most sacks Brady has suffered this season, and were tied for the most times he’s been sacked in a game for his career. The New England offensive line was hobbled when it lost right guard Stephen Neal with an injury, and were forced to turn to utilityman Russ Hochstein. They made some halftime adjustments, but by then, it was too late, as New England ended up with its lowest point total of the year. “They have some great pressure schemes, obviously some great pass rushers,” said Brady, who finished 29-for-48 for 266 passing yards and two touchdowns. “Once we kind of got the idea what they were doing, I thought we handled it much better, but we just didn’t get the ball in the end zone enough.”
3. Stopping the Patriots offense starts with hitting Tom Brady, again and again. And again. According to Giants’ defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, New York hit Brady six times in the first quarter, throwing off the Patriots quarterback and leaving him shaken early on. “All week long, we talked about, even though he got the ball out, even if he completed the pass, we needed to hit him to somehow disrupt him,” Spagnuolo said. “We thought that if we did it early, it would pay off in the end.” It did, as the Giants kept coming, eventually hitting him nine times on the night. According to Brady, the Giants learned from their regular-season meeting, and were able to throw some different looks at them as a result. “They did some things that were a little bit different. They mixed it up quite a bit,” Brady said. “They just put a lot of pressure on your offensive scheme. At times we handled it well, and at times, we didn’t.” The Patriots did a better job of handling it down the stretch, putting together their best drive of the night in the fourth quarter when Brady engineered a 12-play, 80-yard drive where Brady went 8-for-11 for 71 yards. But Manning answered with a classic drive of his own to end it. “We played them five weeks ago and it was a three-point game,” Brady said, “and they made enough changes and really eliminated what we did offensively.”
4. After a great postseason stretch of 10-plus straight quarters where they kept the Jags, Chargers and Giants out of the end zone, the Patriots defense ran out of gas down the stretch last night at the worst possible time. For all the talk of New England’s record-setting offense, it was the defense that made the difference through much of the postseason. The Patriots held Jacksonville without a touchdown in the second half of their win in the divisional playoffs, kept San Diego out of the end zone in the AFC Championship and held the Giants to a single field goal through the first half of last night’s game. But it started to catch up with them down the stretch, and New York broke through when Manning found Tyree with 11:05 remaining in regulation for the Giants’ first touchdown of the night. And down the stretch, the Patriots’ defense didn’t have an answer — the Giants converted a fourth-down and a pair of third-down chances on their final drive. “Even all the way down to the 4th and short, they made it by a foot or something,’ said linebacker Tedy Bruschi. “Maybe we had a couple of balls that went off our hands, but we had our chances. They were the ones who executed in the most critical time of the game, and all I can say is congratulations to them.”
5. Randy Moss was thisclose to being a Super Bowl hero. It would have been a storybook ending to the season for the wide receiver — after he hauled in the six-yard catch from Brady with 2:42 left, it looked an awful lot like Moss was going to be the man who helped bring another title to Foxborough. (He finished with five catches for 62 yards, both playoff high’s for Moss as a Patriot.) But in the end, he had to yield the hero’s mantle to the Manning to Burress combination that topped the Patriots. It was a wild ride for Moss this season, and afterward, Moss sounded more bummed out than anything, understandable when you consider the outcome of the game. “There’s no good memories,” Moss said when asked about his best memories of the season. “Nothing that happened during the regular season even mattered because we didn’t finish it up. Basically, nothing really matters — we didn’t win the game at the end when it counted. The season was exciting, don’t get me wrong. But it was definitely a disappointment.”
6. Last night, Wes Welker cemented his role as the best low-cost, high-reward pickup the Patriots have ever made. While New England’s other high-impact offensive options were silent, Welker had a sensational game, finishing with a game-high 11 receptions (tying a Super Bowl record) and 103 receiving yards. On the biggest stage possible, he had one of the best nights of his life, and would have almost certainly been named MVP if the New England defense had held up down the stretch. “I’ll tell you what,” Spagnuolo said. “Wes Welker is one good football player. We still can’t tackle him.” Welker came up with a pair of big catches in the Patriots’ fourth-quarter scoring drive, but it was too little, too late. “We should have moved the ball a lot more offensively than we did,” Welker said. “And we didn’t do that all game and we should have.”
7. For all the jabbering that Plaxico Burress did before the game, Patriots fans have to respect him now. The lean wide receiver, who was held to just three catches last night, was at his best when the game was on the line, beating Ellis Hobbs with 35 seconds left that ended up being the clincher. There was much made of Burress as possibly joining the ranks of Anthony Smith and Igor Olshansky as those who made ill-advised guarantees before playing the Patriots, but he backed it up. “For us to come out here and win a world championship tonight — nobody gave us a shot,” said Burress, who predicted a 23-17 Giants win. “We just hung in there and kept executing. We never got down on ourselves.”
8. Ellis Hobbs has a knack for being in the middle of things, both good and bad, and that certainly was the case again last night. The cornerback had himself an eventful night. He started his wild ride with a nice pass defense midway through the first on an attempted Manning to Burress play in the end zone. He was then badly beaten on a 38-yard catch by Amani Toomer down the New York sidelines early in the second, but bounced back to pick off a deflected pass for Steve Smith on the Giants first drive of the second quarter. But he was the last man standing at the end when Burress beat him for the game winner. Afterward, to his credit, he came out to face the media and answered every question, even as many of his teammates declined to speak with reporters. “It was just one on one,” he said of the coverage on the game-winner. “It’s not hard to read when you have nothing out there. You have to protect the inside and I have to respect the slant and the inside route. If our blitz doesn’t get there, all he has to do is shake off of me and it’s a go route.”
9. No one is sure what the future holds for many Patriots. After the game, surrounded by reporters, 39-year-old veteran linebacker Junior Seau refused to say whether or not he would call it a career. “I haven’t thought about the future — I’m having too much fun,” he said. Going forward, Seau is one of several question marks the Patriots have. Cornerback Asante Samuel will likely depart via free agency, and wide receiver Randy Moss is not signed past this season. When asked if he’ll be back next season, Moss exclaimed: “[The loss] just makes me hungry to play football. If I am in a New England Patriots uniform next year, I would love to be in one. If I am not, you know, the show must go on.” In addition, linebacker Tedy Bruschi talked openly about the possibility of retirement at the end of the season, and you have to figure that wide receiver Troy Brown is close to the end of the road.
10. In the end, no matter the final overall record, many will see this season as a missed opportunity. How many times in life will you see the planets align like this ever again? A once in a generation offense that was able to vanquish the rest of the NFL, and a defense led by a collection of veteran linebackers who were considered just savvy enough to make up for advancing age. And at the heart of the whole thing was a quarterback and head coach at the height of their powers. They set all kinds of records, won their first 18 straight and did enough to make Mercury Morris plenty nervous. But in the end, 18-1 isn’t 19-0. As a result, sports historians may consider this team the football equivalent of the 1990-91 UNLV basketball squad: a classic collection of talent, but when it came to closing the deal on a title, they simply couldn’t get the job done. “It’s not worth talking about it now, because it’s over. It didn’t happen,” said Bruschi when he was asked how close the Patriots were to history. “We can look back on this year with a positive attitude and some of the things we accomplished. But when you don’t finish … I mean, that’s what we’re all about. We’re about finishing the task at hand, and we expect to win, because we’ve had success in the past. But when you come up short, I think you just have to tip your cap to the other team. They’re a great team. They’re the World Champions.”
Christopher Price is sports editor of Boston Metro and the author of “The Blueprint: How The New England Patriots Beat The System To Create The Last Great NFL Superpower,” published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. He can be reached at cprice@metro-boston.com.
