Mike Vaccaro: Amazing March

GIANTS' 83-YARD DRIVE IN FINAL 2:39 ONE FOR THE AGES

February 4, 2008 -- GLENDALE, Ariz. - It didn't matter that much of the stadium had already begun to ponder the ceremony of coronation, that most of the 71,101 inside this plastic bubble had already started to imagine a world in which the Patriots had finished off their remarkable 19-0 dash.

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What the rest of the world wanted to think, they could think.

In here, in this huddle, there was a significant difference of opinion.

"Let's go win this thing," Eli ManningEli Manning said. "Who's with me?"

"That's what I'm here for," Plaxico BurressPlaxico Burress said.

"Let's go 80 yards," tackle David DiehlDavid Diehl said.

Actually, it was going to take 83 yards, in 159 seconds or less. The Patriots had just Brady-to-Mossed the Giants into the worst kind of hole, down 14-10, history preparing to pile on, getting ready to salute the Giants' grit and send them on their way.

Only the Giants had other ideas. You can go up and down the 41-year history of the Super Bowl and you will find one team that drove the length of the field in the final minutes of the game and turned a losing score into a winning score, 19 years ago. That team was the 49ers, and the quarteerback's name was Joe Montana.

Montana was built for moments such as this one. Was Eli Manning?

The Giants defense, who'd allowed them all to dream this long, thought so. Up and down the. Up and down the sideline, Michael Strahan kept chanting two numbers to any teammate who would listen: "Seventeen," he yelled. "Fourteen." That was his prediction. "Michael believed," Justin Tuck would say, "and so we all believed."



Still, 68 seconds into the drive, that faith would be tested, in a way championship teams are always forced to test themselves. It was fourth-and-one. Manning had just hit Amani Toomer for nine yards when they needed 10. The Pats were 36 inches away from touching the sky.

Brandon Jacobs barreled through them for two yards.

"If I didn't make a yard there," Jacobs would say, "They wouldn't have let me on the plane home. I was making the yard."

Still, the Pats could smell it now. They flushed Manning from the pocket, forcing the Giants to burn a time-out. They made him overthrow David Tyree on second down. Only 1:15 left now. Third and five. Then Richard Seymour and Jarvis Green descended, eager to make a sandwich out of Manning. They had him, then they didn't.

Eli escaped. Then heaved the ball as hard as he could. Tyree, who'd run the wrong route on the last play, was waiting, he leapt, he trapped the ball against his head, he kept it in his hands when both Rodney Harrison and gravity tried to jar it free. It was good for 32 yards. Fifty-nine seconds left.

And now, it was impossible not to believe.

"We have to win now," Tuck said.

"How can we not win this now?" John Mara, the Giants' co-owner, asked, his voice drowned in a jubilant team suite.

But there still 24 yards to cover. Eli was sacked, then had to burn the last time-out. Then another incompletion. Third-and-11.

"You come this close," Peyton Manning said, "you can touch it."

Eli's big brother was on his feet, in his own suite, and when Eli hooked up with Steve Smith for 12 yards, he started pounding his hands together. "I thought I might break them," he said, "and didn't care."

Tom Coughlin said, to no one in particular: "Plenty of time. We're good. We're good." Strahan kept up his mantra: "17-14 . . . 17-14 . . . 17-14." Belichick scowled, trying to will a fumble or a wayward pick.



SUPER POWER: Plaxico Burress celebrates after catching the game-winning 13-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter of yesterday's 17-14 Giants victory in Super Bowl XLII.

And Kevin Gilbride, the Giants' offensive coordinator, smiled. "I thought Plaxico would be open on first down," he said. "And there he was."

The ball seemed to sit in the sky for a month. Burress could wait all night. He'd beaten Ellis Hobbs to the corner of the end zone. He was all alone. He'd slipped in the shower earlier in the week, nearly busted his knee. But he'd also been dreaming of this moment since 1984, the first time he slipped on a football uniform.

"If I catch the ball," he said, "we win the Super Bowl."

He caught it. They won it. Soon, there would be confetti and there would be tears and there would be a locker room overflowing with giddy delight. No coronation tonight. Just a regular celebration would have to do.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com