EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- History. Chasing it this year. Remembering it from 2007 and 2011. History was the boiler in the basement that pumped drama into what would otherwise have been a nice little non-conference game in the middle of November.
If it weren’t for the history between the Giants and Patriots, millions of New Englanders wouldn’t have been pacing living rooms, man caves and bars early Sunday evening. If it weren’t for history, the twitching, shifting and sighing in the press box over how to tell the story of a game throbbing with plot-twists wouldn’t have been as pronounced.
And if it weren’t for history, I don’t know if the Patriots would have exploded off their sideline the way they did when Stephen Gostkowski drilled a 54-yarder at the buzzer to beat the New York Giants 27-26.
This is the team the Patriots overcame in 2007 to get to 16-0. This is the team that stopped the Patriots from going 19-0 and laying an undisputed claim to being the best team in NFL history. This is the team that did it again to the Patriots four years later in Super Bowl 46.
This team – this quarterback and this head coach – was on the verge of once again sending the Patriots home with a “1” in the loss column on a day when nobody expected it was coming.
If it weren’t for history, this game wouldn’t have been historic. But it was.
How historic? We’ll find out over the next couple of months. It will either be recalled as a loss averted before the other ones came remembered as a great regular season games from the Brady-Belichick Era.
New England Patriots
Or it will be the closest of the close calls the Patriots will have to survive in order to get to 19-0.
Even if you wanted to compartmentalize this game and insist that 2007 and 2011 had no relevance, Eli Manning wouldn’t let that happen. Not when he was dropping in sideline rainbows and undressing the Patriots defense in a way it hadn’t been disrobed all year. Not when the Giants front was harassing Tom Brady into strip sacks, picks and ill conceived downfield throws.
And definitely not when the final minutes were unfolding. Manning marching the Giants down to the Patriots 5 with the Patriots holding to a one-point lead that a swing of the leg would erase. The math of whether or not to let the Giants score and what Brady could do to pull the Patriots bacon from the fire.
Predictably, Patriots players weren’t having any talk of the importance of preserving an unblemished record.
“You want to win every game you go out and play,” said Danny Amendola. “We understand our circumstance. We understand our record. But at the same time we don’t think about it and each drive, each quarter, each series, each game we have a job to do and that’s what it’s about.”
So no thought to keeping the loss column clean? That wasn’t even a slight motivator?
“We don’t worry about that side,” smiled Amendola. “We worry about the other side.”
The other side – the win column – is at “9” now. Seven games to go. So many injuries to deal with. An offense to reinvent. A defense to examine. All of that, of course, only ladles on another dollop of intrigue to the chase. And it’s a chase that’s going to transform from the pleasure cruise of September and October into a cold-weather slog into the wind. It has to. The games are going to start looking more and more like Sunday’s against the Giants, less like the dissections of assorted Jaguars, Bills and Redskins.
“We managed to find a way to get by,” said linebacker Dont’a Hightower. “That’s what we do. Last year, we had a philosophy of “next man up” and that’s kind of continued. Guys know what we expect them to do and you see with (Bryan) Stork (playing out of position at right tackle), (third string tackle) Cameron Fleming, (backup linebackers Jonathan) Freeny and Bostic, guys are in roles that they might not have been early in the season.”
The Patriots were staggered on Sunday. Starting the game without Jamie Collins and a shredded offensive line, they lost Julian Edelman by the end of the first quarter. By halftime, Manning had thrown for 251 yards (he finished with 361). Brady was strip-sacked twice. There were drops. There were phantom penalties against them. There was a goal-line pick thrown by Brady and the protection was ragged.
But they showed the resilience that this year’s model hadn’t been asked to summon. An answering punt return of 82 yards by Amendola in the third quarter after the Giants got it to 20-10. A lasered 76-yard touchdown pass to Rob Gronkowski down the seam. A huge sack by Rob Ninkovich to back the Giants out of field goal position. A fourth-and-10 completion from Brady to Amendola when the Patriots’ pulse was almost gone. And then Gostkowski’s 54-yarder.
All for a win that, really, means what? The Patriots are going to win their division. They will get a first-round bye. They are probably going to be in the AFC Championship and will likely wind up hosting it, despite what the Bengals have shown so far.
The value of it for them, Hightower insists, was in simply not succumbing on this day in this game.
“(Being undefeated in the regular season) doesn’t really matter at the end of our journey if we’re not getting what we want,” he said. “It would be cool and all, I’m not gonna say that it wouldn’t be, but that’s not what we’re worried about right now. If you’re playing to stay undefeated, then you’re playing for the wrong reason. We’re playing to win, that’s what we do. We’re never playing to stay undefeated or to win by three or to win by seven, we’re playing to win and a win is a win.”
OK. Even so, this win kept the chase for history alive. And, for the Giants, it put the shoe of a painful late loss on their foot. Just for old time’s sake.