Pressure situation unlike any other
Much like he did in Super Bowl XLII, Justin Tuck wasted no time getting after it. Asked the secret to the Giants' defensive success against the Patriots, the defensive lineman put it bluntly.
"That's the only game last year where we played the run going to the quarterback, we had no care for anything else," Tuck said. "So we just pinned our ears back and were coming every play."
The Giants' relentless pressure held the Patriots' record-setting offense to its lowest scoring output of the season (14 points). Quarterback Tom Brady was sacked five times, and hit the turf a total of 12 times.
It was a decisive beating, one that future Patriots opponents - and the Patriots themselves - have surely studied this offseason.
Naturally, it leads to a question of whether others can duplicate the Giants' performance.
It would seem highly unlikely, because to watch Super Bowl XLII is to see a defensive line playing at an out-of-this-world level, a group that should have been awarded the game's Most Valuable Player award, without question.
Consider that on the Patriots' 53 dropbacks, the Giants blitzed with either a fifth, sixth, or seventh rusher just 12 times. That is a stunning ratio given the heat Brady faced throughout the night, and a reflection of how the Giants generated their rush with the standard four defenders, allowing them to often drop seven players into coverage.
"People ask 'What did we do to stop the Patriots?' and to be honest, the scheme wasn't complicated at all," said defensive end Michael Strahan, who has since retired and is now working as an analyst for Fox NFL Sunday.
"Our whole thing was that we knew we could only do so much when you're trying to defend guys like [Wes] Welker, [Randy] Moss and Kevin Faulk, the best third-down back in the league. So we figured the best thing we could do was get to the quarterback and make him play quicker than he was used to."
Still, Strahan might be underselling a few impressive wrinkles that Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo employed.
Defensive end Osi Umenyiora, for example, sometimes dropped into coverage. So, too, did Tuck. When that happened, the Giants still sent a fourth and sometimes fifth rusher, either in the form of a linebacker of defensive back coming off the edge.
So, in essence, the Giants were keeping Brady and the Patriots' offensive line off balance, mixing beautifully not only who was rushing, or how many were rushing, but from which direction the pressure was coming.
Another strategic twist came with the linebackers.
Strahan detailed that when the Giants faced the Patriots in the regular-season finale, whenever linebackers raced toward the line as if they were going to blitz, center Dan Koppen never took them seriously. Because they didn't blitz.
So Spagnuolo threw in a changeup for the Super Bowl by having Kawika Mitchell surge toward the line and sell the blitz with a head fake, drop back at the snap, then explode forward in a delayed blitz. The Giants' first sack came on that play, with Mitchell bursting up the middle untouched as Koppen helped right guard Stephen Neal.
So while the Giants' defensive line deserves tremendous credit for putting forth a remarkable effort, there was also some intricate detail in the plan.
"Things like that made it confusing for them," Strahan acknowledged. "To me, I was like 'Spags, you need to get a life. You have too much time on your hands if you're thinking of this stuff.' "
The Giants' other four sacks, however, came on standard four-man rushes. And on those plays, it was simply exemplary, powerful effort by the likes of ends Tuck, Strahan, and Umenyiora, and defensive tackles Fred Robbins, Barry Cofield, and Jay Alford.
On obvious passing situations, Umenyiora often lined up wide opposite left tackle Matt Light, forcing him to protect in space. Tuck was often lined up over left guard Logan Mankins, so Tuck and Umenyiora would work in concert. On the opposite end, Strahan was giving right tackle Nick Kaczur fits.
Giants defenders simply surged through one-on-one blocks, overwhelming the Patriots' offensive line.
"We came at them and hit them in the mouth," Tuck said. "I think that's what a lot of teams didn't do; maybe they were afraid because of what they could do vertically with their quarterback and wide receivers, and how the screen game would slow defenses down. For us, we had no care about anything else but getting to Brady."
Early success seemed to buoy their confidence, with Strahan detailing that the rushers would make their own plan on which direction they would surge toward Brady.
"We were hitting him with such frequency early on, it surprised the heck out of us," he said. "We came back to the sideline and were asking ourselves 'Are you kidding? Is this real? Are they really trying to block us?' That was the difference in the game for us - we had the ability to make Brady uncomfortable, make him throw balls unlike he usually does.
"He is absolutely the coolest character on the football field. I remember watching him against the Cowboys, he was sacked, fumbled, and the Cowboys returned it for a touchdown, and there is Brady sitting on the field, tying his shoe, totally unaffected by it all. We looked at that and felt like, if there was some way to get to the guy, we had to do it. At the beginning of the game, we didn't think we'd be able to do it like that."
So when assessing if future Patriots opponents can pull off a Giants-like performance, consider the uniqueness of how it all came together in Super Bowl XLII.
It took an MVP-worthy effort from a relentless, talented defensive line that generated pressure mostly with four rushers, a boldness to basically concede the running game, and an overall brilliant defensive plan that mixed and matched not only who rushed, but from which direction.
Not easily executed, and thus, it won't be easily duplicated. 