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THE NEW York Giants built their Super Bowl legacy on a punishing rushing attack and on a defense that’s even harsher on opponents, going back to the days of Bill Parcells.
This season, they added nearly 5,000 yards worth of passing from quarterback Eli Manning to the mix.
None of those ingredients would have turned out to be such a Super Bowl treat for the Giants today if they didn’t start sizzling as a team.
“If you’ve got 53 guys in that locker room, all for one, one for all,” Giants defensive tackle Justin Tuck was saying a couple weeks ago, “you can do anything.”
The idea of teamwork has been around since the beginning of football time, and it has become so overplayed and overused in sports, people tend to quickly disregard it.
Try getting to the Super Bowl without it.
The Giants did for awhile.
And it nearly kept them out of the playoffs.
The Giants beat the Patriots, who they’ll see in Super Bowl XVLI tonight, in a midseason game while running their record to 6-2. After that, everyone suddenly wanted to be the toast of the town, to become the biggest star, to make the next headlining play.
It showed up when the Giants lost four straight games and five of six, very nearly dropping out of the playoff race.
“Early in the year, a lot of individual stuff showed up,” Tuck said.
The real individual star of this Giants season was Manning, who put up the best season of his career while carrying the Giants into the playoffs. But he’s the guy with the ball in his hands all the time.
Their true fate of this season was in the hands of the rest of the Giants.
Right at the end, they decided to adopt the type of attitude displayed by their rookie fullback Henry Hynoski, a glamour running back at Southern Columbia High School who has become such a hammer as a blocker people are nicknaming him “Hynocerous.”
“I don’t care about stats,” Hynoski said at the start of this Giants playoff run. “I don’t care about numbers. I just want to do whatever I can to help this team win.”
Suddenly, everyone else on the field for the Giants became just as unselfish.
“It’s the mentality you have to play with,” Giants defensive tackle Chris Canty said.
The showmanship stopped, unless you count Victor Cruz’s salsa dances, and the success began for the Giants again.
They won their last two games of the regular season to win the division, and haven’t stopped winning in the postseason.
“We’re a team,” Giants defensive end Osi Umenyura said.
It is why the Giants, as unspectacular as they may appear on paper without much star quality and with a 9-7 regular season, have a chance to upset the great Tom Brady and his New England Patriots today.
“Right now, we have a high level of belief in each other,” Tuck said. “As long as we have each other’s backs, we’ll be fine.
“If you believe, you can achieve.”
It’s all about teamwork. Those who develop such strong solidarity can wind up in the Super Bowl. Those who don’t just get bowled over.