PHOENIX, Arizona (AFP) — Eli Manning engineered the New York Giants to an epic 17-14 upset of previously unbeaten New England in Super Bowl 42 Sunday, denying the Patriots a perfect championship season.
Giants quarterback Manning earned Most Valuable Player honors, sealing the triumph and the Giants' third Super Bowl crown with a 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with 35 seconds to play in the National Football League final.
"It's the greatest feeling in professional sports," Burress said. "For us to come out here and win a world championship tonight - nobody gave us a shot."
Manning's heroics came after New England's superstar signal-caller Tom Brady had seized the lead for New England with a seven-yard touchdown pass to Randy Moss that gave the Patriots a 14-10 edge with less than two minutes to play.
"That's the position you want to be in," Manning said. "You want to have the ball in your hands, four minutes left, go down, you've got to score a touchdown."
Manning, who drew fierce criticism for inconsistency in the regular season, drove the Giants 83 yards in two minutes, a drive that included a scrambling 32-yard pass to David Tyree, who plucked it out of the air at the 24-yard-line with 1:15 to play.
"It was just a great catch by David Tyree," Manning said. "I found a way to get loose and just really threw it up. He made an unbelievable catch and saved the game."
Four plays later, Manning found Burress in the corner of the end zone to give the Giants the most significant Super Bowl upset since the 1968 New York Jets shocked the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl 3.
Manning completed 19-of-34 passes for 255 yards, two touchdowns and an interception - his only one of the postseason.
He followed in the footsteps of his elder brother, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, who earned Super Bowl MVP honors last season in taking his team to the title.
Brady finished 29-of-48 for 266 yards and one touchdown but he was sacked a season-high five times by a New York defense that said before the game that bottling up the regular season MVP was key.
"We knew we had to get to Tom Brady," said Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, saying he had talked about it before the game with teammate Osi Umenyiora.
"Osi came up to me at breakfast and said, 'Do you realize, if we don't hit Brady, we don't win the game?'"
"They are very good on defense," Brady said. "They have some great pressure schemes. They have some great pass rushers. We didn't score enough points. That was our lowest total of the season. That's what got us beat."
Brady was sacked for the fourth time of the night in the third quarter, when Strahan reached him to deny the Patriots' best scoring chance of the period.
That left New England facing 4th-down-and-13 at the 31-yard line.
Pats coach Bill Belichick decided to go for it rather than attempt a 49-yard field goal and Brady's pass went out of bounds in the end zone.
New York sacked Brady three times in the first half and he finished 29-of-48 for 266 yards and one touchdown.
Laurence Maroney's 1-yard run provided the only touchdown of the opening half and allowed the Patriots to hold a 7-3 halftime lead, which they still held going into the fourth quarter.
Early in the fourth, Manning capped an 80-yard drive with a five-yard touchdown pass to Tyree, the first touchdown allowed by New England's defense in 11 quarters.
Both teams scored on their first possession of the game.
The Giants opened with a 16-play, 63-yard drive that ended with Scottish-born Lawrence Tynes' 32-yard field goal and gobbled up nearly 10 minutes.
Jump-started by a 43-yard kickoff return by Maroney, the Patriots responded with their own scoring drive that ended with his touchdown dive on the first play of the second quarter.
"You've got to hand it to them. They made more plays than we did," Brady said. "I had a feeling it was going to come down to us with time for a few plays. We just didn't get it done."
The Giants won three playoff games on the road en route to capturing the title, matching the feat of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2005.
"The guys on this team and the run we've made, it's hard to believe - it really is," Manning said. "We had a great fight and the defense played outstanding. The drive at the end there were so many clutch plays by so many guys.
"It is an unbelievable game and an unbelievable feeling."
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