NFL: NEW YORK GIANTS WIN SUPER BOWL XLVI
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NFL: New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s completed passes to receivers Hakeem Nicks and Marion Manningham, and the Giants pass rush, proved too much for the New England Patriots defense and the Patriots offense, in spite of New England dominating the first half of Super Bowl XLVI, and starting the game’s fourth quarter ahead, 17-15.
In the fourth Q, a Brady throw was dropped by an open receiver, which could have led to a game-winning TD, even with the Giants TD that happened with less than one minute to final, the Giants soon being handed the Lombardi trophy and crowned the year’s Super Bowl champion, final: 21-17.
Yes, Eli Manning proved that he is an elite QB, and after the fourth Q’s New York TD, with less than 40 seconds of play to go, QB Brady fired some of the longest and nearly complete “desperation passes” of any Super Bowl to date---it wasn’t to be over for the Patriots until it was over, New England again a valiant “we almost made it’’ team, having been to four Super Bowls and losing at each.
But the magic of a Super Bowl competition includes lessons to be learned by NFL teams that during the regular season were playoff contenders, or that made the playoffs and were eliminated in a first round. What did Super Bowl XLVI deliver for these franchises? What were the game winning advantages either team displayed?
For starters, Brady and Manning were certainly adept at seeking and finding the best available options when a play in mind couldn’t possibly work---they mixed it up, threw long, short, handed the football off, didn’t seem to force pre-planned plays against sudden limitations, which emphasizes need for fast-thinking situation-based QB innovation over the pre-set/never-to-be dumped tactic.
Not new knowledge for any NFL team, if the successful pass rush doesn’t win a game, it surely keeps an opposing offense from causing a blowout; it reduces a QB’s options considerably, gets him off his timing, while increasing sack probability. Turning this around, pass protection is key for an effective offense. Significant, however, is that throughout Super Bowl XLVI both the Giants and the Patriots were cagey in the pass rush, using open space to draw a QB or a running back forward where sudden tackling or ball interference could occur. Also demonstrated was the value of speed over strength for linemen responsible for pass protection.
Noted, too, was what could aptly be called “minimum offset,” that is, we didn’t see the Giants or the Patriots continue to sacrifice a particular element of their defense squads so that another element could be reinforced, there was very little double-teaming for coverage of an offense’s wide receiver by thinning a line of defenders needed for forward edges of the pass rush. Doing so usually feeds the opposing offense with additional pass and run options.
Moreover, key to keeping an opposing team from fourth Q scoring is the deployment of a secondary capable of reading a wide receiver’s maneuvering quickly enough to interfere, and being fast enough to do so, an advantage that the Giants seemed to have over the Patriots during fourth Q play.
It was thought that the team executing the better pass rush would be the winning team, but Manning and Brady were both able to escape and evade enough to discover multiple options for getting rid of the football. This turned the screw for both the Giants and the Patriots, in that quarterback-receiver connectivity became the game’s imperative and its win factor. Some of Brady’s incomplete passes should have, could have been otherwise, leading to game-winning points, and it was the Manning throws caught by receivers that pulled the Giants ahead and made them the NFL season’s championship team.
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