They're History

THIS TIME the celebration was for the youngest child of a football family, and for the team he helped carry to an unlikely championship. A year ago in Miami, Eli Manning had seen his older brother Peyton transformed by a Super Bowl championship. He had seen Peyton walk into his own victory party so blissfully satisfied that the moment found a place in Eli's soul and changed him as well. "It put a hunger inside me," Eli says. "You always want to win, but after that I felt like I wanted it even more." And now, so soon afterward, it would be his turn. � A second-floor restaurant at the New York Giants' team hotel outside Phoenix had become a thrumming nightclub into early Monday morning, a steady bass beat providing the backdrop to the unmistakable buzz of victory shared with friends and family at another Manning Super Bowl celebration. One floor below, some Giants players and a horde of the team's supporters filled a massive ballroom for another party, and outside in the night a long line of cars snaked nearly the full two miles from Interstate 10 to the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort in Chandler, Ariz., as the desert sky spit raindrops and high winds buffeted the sagebrush along the highway. Drivers wore Big Blue jerseys and wanted only a piece of the delirium.

It was to have been a historic night. The New England Patriots would win their 19th consecutive game and become only the second NFL team, along with the 1972 Miami Dolphins, to complete a season unbeaten and untied. They would fortify the legacy of a modern professional dynasty with a fourth Super Bowl title in seven years. They would prove themselves perfect.

Instead, the Giants completed an unexpected and emotional postseason run with a 17--14 victory in Super Bowl XLII. It was history cut from another cloth, a performance built on the sturdy underpinnings of a ferocious defensive effort, sustained when quarterback Manning and wide receiver David Tyree combined on one of the most memorable plays in NFL history, and sealed when Manning threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with 35 seconds to play. The game will take its place not only as the second-greatest upset in a Super Bowl, behind the New York Jets' epic 16--7 defeat of the Baltimore Colts in January 1969, but also as the culmination of a season in which a team, a quarterback and a coach found themselves linked by a deep resilience and rode it to the top of their sport.

Here in the afterglow Manning, the game's MVP, worked the room, bouncing among groups of friends: those from Isidore Newman, his New Orleans high school; from Ole Miss, where he played his college ball; and from New York. His mother, Olivia, stood talking with Eli's fianc�e, Abby McGrew. Peyton remained in the back of the room, ceding the stage to Eli. "It's just surreal," Eli said over the noise. Past midnight he joined with his oldest brother, Cooper, and together they sang. The selection, of course, was New York, New York.

ON WEDNESDAY morning of last week, at the Giants' Super Bowl headquarters, a press conference had concluded and defensive ends Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora sat together reading a newspaper. A headline posed the question, BRADY: THE BEST EVER?

"Is he the best ever?" Umenyiora said of Tom Brady, the Patriots' superstar quarterback, setting up his partner.

"We'll see on Sunday," Tuck replied disdainfully.

The two fell silent for several moments, until Tuck, turning straight man, seized on another intriguing piece of reportage. When the Giants arrived in Phoenix six days before the Super Bowl, most of the players were dressed entirely in black, a sartorial choice designed to display solidarity, intimidation or humor, depending on which player was asked. But amid the Super Bowl's media saturation, it became big news. Now Tuck found a story claiming that Patriots wide receiver Randy Moss had said he would be wearing black after the game, ostensibly to mourn the beaten Giants.

"He will be wearing black," said Umenyiora, clearly implying that Moss would be mourning not the Giants but his own team. Together the big men laughed out loud.

Throughout the week leading up to Super Bowl XLII, the Giants were loose, the Patriots smooth yet practiced. For Brady, Moss, coach Bill Belichick, wideout Wes Welker, linebackers Tedy Bruschi and Junior Seau, this was another day at work. The Super Bowl would be either a coronation or a colossal upset; it would not simply be an NFL title game. The Patriots had spent the entirety of their 16--0 regular season, including a riveting 38--35 win over the Giants on Dec. 29, and their run through the AFC playoffs denying their pursuit of history, but that larger task defined the game. Some of the New England players even admitted it. "You have to finish," Seau said in midweek. "You have to finish, or it doesn't count to be in that 'great' group."