Whole Milk’s Super Bowl Breakdown
Monday, February 6th, 2012I’m exhausted. I have a crazy headache. I haven’t showered (sorry, everyone else in the office). I have red, white, and blue confetti stuck in the soles of my shoes. And my face hurts from smiling so goddamn much. Having just arrived back at Mishka HQ after a half-exuberant/half-despondent flight from Indianapolis that travelled to NYC via Boston (who’s cruel idea was that, by the way?) I can very definitely say that last night’s Super Bowl XLVI was the most exciting, tense, and magical-feeling sporting event I’ve ever attended. Somehow, against many odds, this was because of Eli Manning.
The Manning era for the G-Men has been a strange one defined by a general but uninspiring competence that is punctuated by seemingly impossible flights of brilliance at exactly the right moments. If this is in fact his doing, some sort of 4 year cycle of mental preparation to prime his men for invincible playoff runs, then perhaps Tom Coughlin is secretly the finest coach in the NFL. Then we have young Eli, his hands now weighed down by two hulking, diamond-encrusted rings: accessories he’s much too awkward and sheepish to ever consider wearing once.
It is in part this distinct lack of swagger that has prevented the Giants from building up a new fan base in New York since their last Super Bowl victory, instead letting the braggadocio of the Jets find the limelight with their open aping of the Broadway Joe aesthetic, though they embarrassingly lack the Lombardi hardware to back that up. After watching how that Giants team played last night however, it seems ludicrous not to consider Eli an elite quarterback, and the rest of his squad right up there with him.
This is a man who has outshone Tom Brady, the terminator of Super Bowl performances, not once but twice. The Patriots may have lost last night, but Tom Brady played a monster, monster game (though one that featured 2-3 mental errors that Giselle will certainly get tired of hearing about). He broke Super Bowl records. He threw for 66%, but forget some key (not to mention easy) drops by Hernandez, Deon Branch, Wes Welker, plus the garbage time hail mary to Gronk and that number is back up near 80.
And Eli handily put up bigger, better, and eventually the winning numbers. He was, in a word, unstoppable. Once again he led an improbable and flawless late game drive, culminating in one of the weirdest touchdowns I’ve ever seen s Ahmad Bradshaw seemed to awkwardly breakdance into the endzone, the Pats defense ruefully following Coach Bellichiks eventually ineffective strategy of time preservation. Then there was that pass to Manningham, a explode-out-of-your-seat pinpoint stunner that will define the win (and haunt Wes Welker’s memories as he thinks about the cruel brush of his ball as it passed through his fingers).
I don’t know how everyone felt at home, but the Giants faithful in that stadium weren’t just nervous of the suddenly gigantic seeming 57 seconds Tom Brady had left to gut punch the jints and become a god: they were fucking terrified. Because after all, if Eli can do it, how can Brady not? How can this guy really be better than that guy? Again?? 2 minutes later, Brady stormed off the field helmet in hand and the Coughlin/Manning Giants became the least likely football dynasty in recent memory. What a game. What a night. What the fuck is going on.






































